…well, you only have to look at what local residents in communities all over the country are saying what their areas are short of.
Furthermore, with trust at such a low point combined with the threats to our imperfect democracy coming from multiple sources, ministers cannot afford to do a ‘GCP’ and go headlong into a controversial policy thinking there won’t be Political consequences down the line. One of the responses (as per the image of this blogpost) is citizenship education, and not just for children either!
Fragmentation matters – and the public is not letting ministers or councillors pass the buck onto other institutions
I should know – as one of the people who has been calling for a new large concert hall (I managed to persuade one or two others!) for our growing city, one persistent theme was that with Cambridge’s housing crisis, we could not afford to spend large amounts of money on grand things while people lay homeless on the street. Which is a fair point. At the end of the First World War during the great labour and materials shortages in the construction industry, councils blocked construction of non-essential buildings of leisure eg cinemas while huge demand for housing remained unmet.
With chronic shortages in NHS primary care such as GPs and NHS dentists – to the extent that I’m surprised the poor state of the latter has not started hitting productive capacity (you try working at your optimum with chronic dental pain!) especially where people cannot afford to go private.
“The Omnishambles of municipal government?”
While the electorate might be disengaged from day-to-day party politics, they are more than aware of the inconsistencies and conflicts between different policy areas. One of the things I try to look out for in the fun and games of local online message boards/fora are the roots of the issues that people are complaining about when they go off on something. For example the latest sci-tech planning application. Which is why I’ve said that the promoters of growth must be up front with residents affected about the risks and how those risks will be managed.
The problem is the mindset and the culture of those at the top of the construction industry, and the professions and financial institutions that serve them is that those problems are for someone else.
“What is the strategy to get the workforce needed to provide essential public services not just in the prosperous growth areas, but across the country?”
Three years ago I wrote about the option of building a new school of dentistry for the new ARU Peterborough. I followed it up with a public question to the Combined Authority:
“Following the post by the Mayor Dr Nik Johnson of 21 April 2022 to Healthwatch
Cambs & Peterborough
(see https://twitter.com/NikJohnsonCA/status/1517184697461350403) and also
my own blogpost of 11 Jan 2022
(https://cambridgetownowl.com/2022/01/11/could-the-new-aru-peterboroughhost-a-new-school-of-dentistry/) asking if a new school of dentistry could be
opened at the new ARU Peterborough Campus, please could you ask the Mayor,
in conjunction with our county MPs to write to the Secretary of State for Health,
and the Minister for Universities to consider funding a new dental school at ARU
Peterborough, alongside their Health, Education, and Social Care school.”
The Mayor Dr Nik Johnson responded:
“The development of ARU Peterborough is currently in the first phase of a ten-year programme. The new specialist facilities and equipment in the first building have been designed to support the curriculum for the first few years, and that doesn’t currently include dentistry. New medical courses, including dentistry, require significant financial investment and specialist staff from the profession. It is also important to highlight these courses must be developed with support from the regulatory bodies, which can take several years to establish.
“I am pleased to share that ARU are exploring whether they might be able to open a School of Dentistry at one of their campuses in the medium term. They are also investigating whether they can aid supply by developing an appropriate access course which has the potential to be offered in Peterborough. They work closely with Health Education England and the six Integrated Care Boards in the East of England, and their portfolio is continually being reviewed and developed in response to national priorities and local workforce needs.“
Above – see line 6, item 1.4 in Minutes of the CPCA meeting of 08 June 2022
So being the annoying pest/diligent civic-minded member of the public that I am, I’ve submitted a public question to the CPCA’s Skills and Employment Committee due to meet on 24 Feb 2025 asking them for a progress update. This isn’t the only occasion I’ve followed up responses to public questions – it’s a standard move for anyone campaigning on anything through local government, as I did so last month asking about whether the CPCA had met with the big sci-tech park owners and tenants to see if these wealthy institutions could provide funding for new lifelong learning facilities. It’s also worth noting Cllr Lucy Nethsingha’s comments just beforehand here, where she (rightly) complains that the CPCA has little to do with the adult education and skills budget other than being the commissioner of services – when really they need to be an active local policy-maker raising revenues from our wealthy and large employers in order to invest in skills and retraining to compensate for the huge, chronic, and collective failures of employers and ‘the market’ to do it themselves. (I wrote more on this here, calling for greater state intervention)
The public can see the mismatch between the cuts to local council services vs the growth debate
It was soul-destroying to hear of more cuts to Cambridge City Council services from representatives of Unison’s Cambridge branch – the trade union for frontline local government and local public service workers. (If any student wants to research and write about the history of any of the trade unions in Cambridge ‘town’, Unison is one of the first places to call). It stood in stark contrast to the millions and billions being talked about in university, business, and sci-tech circles. The contrast between the run-down guildhall and the glass-and-steel Botanic House at the Bennett Institute’s event a couple of weeks ago.
Not surprisingly, the local media has picked up on it – as have Unison. Which is why it’s ever so important that residents make the case for far greater, deeper, and wider independent revenue raising powers for unitary councils when as I assume it will, the new proposals go out to consultation.
Unitary councils – the campaign steps up a gear
The Cambs Unitaries Campaign of which I am a member, will be holding a public meeting in early/mid March 2025 in order to raise awareness of what the Government is proposing, and to encourage people to discuss their ideas and issues with what unitary councils involve – mindful that the campaign itself supports the principle of unitary councils as an alternative to the existing multi-tiered/structured mess that we currently have.
As the CUC writes here, ministers have stated they are using existing legislation to restructure local government in England. Therefore there are no significant *legal* barriers to stopping them from doing so. The only thing that might stop them is the prospect of sorting out one almighty big mess that successive governments have left behind for them to clean up!
Above – via my earlier post, how many unitary councils would you make out of this?
My longer term hope is that the unitaries debate will open up some much wider conversations about how our villages, towns, and cities are governed – having reached the logical end of micromanagement from the centre. For now anyway.
The discussion isn’t just about boundaries either. In the longer term (in my view anyway) it has to involve breaking the artificial barriers between local government and the provision of essential services such as frontline education (schools for children, community education and lifelong learning for adults) and primary healthcare provision (doctors, dentists, community nurses etc) that are essential for day-to-day living for so many of us.
But to have those sorts of conversations involves having to provide the means and the incentives for adults to learn about what used to be called Civics. And one of the last people to run a properly-structured series of workshops on that was one of our greatest residents: Cllr Clara Rackham – who ran them for the Workers’ Educational Association after WWII. And for that to be successful city and county-wide, we will need some informed teachers and facilitators. Any takers for becoming citizenship teachers?
In the meantime, there are a handful of us who meet fortnightly on Sunday afternoons at The Rock Pub in Cambridge – the next gathering is on 23 Feb 2025 from 2.30pm. I normally bring along some books or meeting print-outs for people to browse through and discuss – it helps people stay up-to-date and spark ideas on activities they can do in their own time. I’ve also got some new workshops coming up which will be listed at https://cambridgetownowl.com/workshops/ (just waiting for venue confirmation).
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
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
Below – should you wish to get involved in local discussions on possible unitaries, see the Cambs Unitaries Campaign at https://www.cambsunitaries.org.uk/
The Cambridge Town Owl 