Cambridgeshire Conservatives’ decision to move the county council to a bespoke building that isn’t large enough to accommodate all of the county councillors was as farcical as the time taken to do something with the existing site
Image – the old Cambridgeshire County Council coat of arms from 1889-1965 when we covered a much smaller area. (See the old county map in this blogpost)
TL/DR? Email your county council candidates via who can I vote for? and ask them to get a moratorium on asset disposals by the county council in advance of the creation of the new unitary council for Cambridge. (Failing that, email your city/district councillors or MPs)
For a political party that is supposed to be good at conserving things, the ongoing shambles of what to do with Cambridge’s Shire Hall site on Castle Hill continues, as Hannah Brown LDR for the Cambridge News reports here.
“Hang on – this has been going on for nearly eight years!”
Yes – and it is an issue I feel particularly bitter about because councillors ***promised** they were not looking at a freehold sale of the site.
“The County has a preference for a long term lease. Nuance lost in journalistic license. You can be assured that the Conservatives running the council will seek the best deal for the Cambridgeshire taxpayer. Aiming to deliver well over £30 million pounds into front line services. https://t.co/3bk8qBtmz2
— Steve Count (@SteveCount) November 5, 2018“
“No they didn’t – they indicated a preference”
“How are we still in this situation?”
Don’t blame me – I called for the abolition of the county council back in October 2017.
‘Cambridgeshire County Council cannot serve North Cambs and Cambridge City at the same time – it must go.’
…I demanded following the latest outrage from the county council at the time – this one resulting in Romsey Mill in Cambridge tearing shreds out of the Conservative-led council. Here’s Neil Perry, their CEO on 17 Oct 2017
Above – PQ Neil Perry of Romsey Mill to Cambridgeshire County Council 17 Ot 2017, old Shire Hall, Cambridge, filmed by Antony Carpen.
This was in the days before the county council got their in-house system set up (something I had been calling for across councils for several years – in the end the pandemic forced the hands of the entire sector.)
Put it this way, in those days the relationships between city and county were particularly toxic. The creation of the Combined Authority appeared to make them even worse because the first mayor of the CPCA had a particularly dim view of the officer corps at Shire Hall at the time, to the extent that he said as Mayor he would not work with county council transport officers. Furthermore – and perhaps with good reason, he also didn’t have time for the Greater Cambridge Partnership, which when he took office still had two Conservative board members on it – thus a Conservative majority.
Te utterly dysfunctional relationships between multiple local government institutions was the context of me calling for the abolition of the structures and the creation of separate unitary councils.
When the county Tories made it clear they didn’t want to go anywhere near Cambridge again, I shrugged my shoulders and focused on what alternatives could be made for the site.
The first we heard of the proposals was back in August 2017. Seven and a half years ago.
Above – the Cambridge Independent screengrabbed in my old blog from 30 Aug 2017
This was also a time when I was trying to encourage more people to table public questions, and demystify what happened inside the council chamber. Again, this was in the days before councils had their own in-house media teams making videos. At the time it was Richard Taylor, and me and Puffles the Dragon Fairy – such as in this excruciatingly cringeworthy video guide from eight years ago here.
“That is particularly woeful”
I’ve filmed worse. But at the time I wanted to give myself permission to try things out and make mistakes with something that few others were experimenting with at the time. Because the system I grew up in was one that didn’t allow you to make mistakes because of religious teaching combined with a macho culture of ‘You have to get things right first time, every time’. I didn’t know it at the time but with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria my response for the first 20 years of my life was to take as few risks as possible that involved either rejection or getting stuff wrong. (And because the Conservatives were in Government for most of those 20 years, my neuro-diverse+ mind has (somewhat irrationally but instinctively) blamed them for all of the bad stuff that happened in that era because they had the power to make better decisions and chose not to).
So that was the political, and my personal context to the run up of the disposal decision
My vision for Cambridge’s Castle Hill in 2017 – a new heritage site
You can read it here. Basically there are ***lots of lovely proposals*** from the olden days that a unitary council with a civic vision could work with. And that was what I suggested.
“Personally I think it’s an opportunity for local government reform – and to get a unitary authority for (Greater) Cambridge.”
Above – Antony Carpen (me) in A Dragon’s Best Friend, 30 Aug 2017
Expanding the Museum of Cambridge
I introduced the idea to the county council in a committee meeting back in 2018 – which I filmed here. Again in those days there were no facilities to film meetings. If you wanted something on audio/visual public record, you had to do it yourself.
If they wanted to make the site a boutique hotel, I was fine in principle – so long as it ensured an expanded Museum of Cambridge could be subsidised by it.
“My take would be to rebuild a castle tower inspired by the drawings of the past, but have it designed and constructed so that it becomes taller than the top of Castle Mound – itself an ancient monument. That way you divert some of the crowds from a site at risk from erosion while putting a rooftop bar at the top that charges expensive prices for small glasses of wine like the Varsity Hotel does. Splendid views across the city and the building pays for itself.“
It’s not like proposals for a big tower at the top of the hill had not been proposed before. In 1967 a brutalist tower was proposed – but inevitably dropped due to the Devaluation Crisis that scrapped a number of public building works across the country.
Above – A new proposed legal quarter with brutalist tower. Cambridge Evening News 06 May 1967 via Mike Petty MBE / Cambs Collection
Fast Forward to 2021 and the Tories are ejected by an alliance of opposition councillors
Above – the earthquake of May 2021 that also saw Dr Nik Johnson unexpectedly win the mayoral contest
There was also the success of independent candidate Sam Davies MBE who polled the most votes of any candidate standing that year in Cambridge due to the super-election – and there were *a lot* of candidates standing. Cllr Lewis Herbert was quoted in the Cambridge Independent saying:
“I’ve known Sam for a long time. I’m sure she’ll give us a hard time sometimes – and quite right. She’ll champion her ward. She stormed the ward and was way ahead of all of the other candidates. We will get challenged by her, but we look forward to her contribution. If Sam, or the Greens, come up with good ideas – we’ll be the first to listen.”
Sadly such were the barriers in local and central government that she stood down a few years later.
“I have worked as hard as I could to do my bit, but it is more apparent than ever that, without a major overhaul of local government structures, financing and powers, our council will struggle with relentless demands to maintain current levels of service and protect residents’ quality of life.”
Above – Sam Davies MBE – 09 Oct 2023
As I said at the time and since, Cambridge cannot afford to lose councillors of the calibre of Sam Davies, Alex Collis, and Hilary Cox Condron as we did because of the fallout from the Greater Cambridge Partnership amongst other things. And such was my frustration that in Spring 2023 I consented to being nominated as an independent candidate in Queen Edith’s and had this to say about the GCP and the state of local government in and around Cambridge
Above – from 12m30s Queen Edith’s hustings, 23 Apr 2023 (Spot the Cambridge Town Owl)
And so to today with the ongoing inability to do anything with the site
I’m of the view that all major building and asset disposals should be put on hold.
Because of the current situation, it might be that a future unitary council with a different set of revenue-raising powers and grant funding from ministers might want to take a different view with the Shire Hall site. Therefore councillors should really approach ministers with a view to seeking whatever permissions are necessary in order to do this, and possibly seek government support to bring the site back into public use as a heritage site. Not least because we don’t have enough display space for the archaeological discoveries being made from all of the excavations prior to the house building and infrastructure work.
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
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
The Cambridge Town Owl 