Could you become a new councillor for your area? See https://www.local.gov.uk/be-councillor on the national ‘Be A Councillor’ campaign
See outgoing councillor Seb Kindersley below:
Above – from Cambridgeshire County Council
“What does the county council do?”
Have a listen to chief executive (i.e. the permanent head of paid service whose job is to ensure the council carries out the policy instructions of the elected councillors, while at the same time ensuring that the council’s activities and policies remain lawful).
Above – from Cambridgeshire County Council
“Hang on – aren’t we moving to a system of unitary councils?”
That is a process that will take several years – see the English Devolution White Paper that I wrote about here.
Ministers have stated to Parliament that the earliest they expect any elections for the new generation of unitary councils will be in May 2027 – so that’s over 2 years away. In the meantime, the functions of local government have to continue. Even more so for somewhere like Cambridge where our existing combined authority and city deal – i.e. the Greater Cambridge Partnership, both require functioning member councils to have properly appointed council representatives on. Otherwise they cannot function. Which also reminds me, the Greater Cambridge Partnership is back after what feels like ages – with its first assembly meeting of the year at Cambridge Guildhall on 20 Jan 2025 from 4pm. (Papers should be published on Friday).
Will the Conservatives recover to retake control?
That’s what they will be hoping for, although it’s not clear whether they have recovered from the general election thumping that they received at the hands of Labour and the Liberal Democrats back in July 2024. It’s also easy to overlook the fact that TeamNigel’s candidates tore lumps out of the Conservative vote last year to the extent that the party lost control of North West Cambridgeshire constituency to Labour’s Sam Carling, the youngest MP in the Commons. It remains to be seen if he’s been able to build up enough support in his rural divisions outside of Peterborough to secure seats in the normally Tory/TeamNigel-voting parts of the county.
Recall the 2021 earthquake
The party political picture is far more volatile than in recent decades – perhaps with the exception of 2013 when TeamNigel under the U K I P banner won 12 seats, effectively providing the ruling Conservative Group with a confidence-and-supply-type support to get council-tax-freezing budgets through at the expense of their Cambridge and southern Cambs opponents on the red and yellow benches.
Despite the bumps in the road, the Joint Administration of the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and the Independent Group held up far better than many had expected. What that will mean in terms of tone of campaigning and which party candidates stand where remains to be seen. The Conservatives accused their opponents of not standing candidates in some areas where a split anti-Tory vote might have enabled the Conservatives to win. The big unknown in the looming county council elections is the impact that TeamNigel’s RUK candidates will have – mindful of their impact at the general election in Cambridgeshire constituencies. Will they win any seats outright? (They could do). Which seats could they split the traditional Tory vote and let in LD/L/G candidates? And could the Tories benefit from a ‘protest vote’ splitting a traditional Labour or LD vote?
Start organising your hustings and public debates
We normally have these every year in Queen Edith’s, but it would be good to see the rest of the county organising, hosting, and live-streaming or recording their own public debates. Chris Rand produced this guide in 2016 on how to organise one. With only three months to go until polling day, now is the time to search for willing community groups and organisations who can help you organise one. In rural areas, quite often the parish council or the local church has been the setting for such things. In Cambridge, campaign groups sometimes organise them with a specific theme in mind. See also the Cambridge CVS who may be able to advise on who to seek support from. And if you’ve not seen a hustings before, have a look at this one from 2016 in Queen Edith’s.
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on BSky <- A critical mass of public policy people seem to have moved here
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And if you want to browse through some books from previous eras on issues covering local government, have a look at some of those here, including these three below.
The Cambridge Town Owl 