County Council in potholes and pavements update – and ideas for leisure amenities

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Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways Committee meets on 03 March 2026 with a big list of funding for repairs to vote through – but will some of their works make things worse in hot summers? Also, some leisure ideas from Huntingdonshire – Lots!

You can read the meeting papers here

There’s £58 million of works budgeted for the next financial year (2026/27). Item 5 Appendix 1 has the big tables. A rough in-head calculation gives Cambridge around £7m – of which £2m will go on resurfacing Hills Road.

Above – Detail from Appendix 1 p5 confirming £1,848,000 of spending on resurfacing Hills Road.

Above – Detail from Appendix 1 p6 note the ‘slurry seal’.

“What’s slurry seal? And who are Ann, Rachel, and Dennis?”

No idea who the three people are. As for the slurry seal, Cambridgeshire County Council describes it here. They used it on a number of pavements in south Cambridge last year, turning pavements with grey stone paving slabs on the surface into a black surface just as some very hot weather was kicking in. I don’t know if anyone can tell council officers not to order stuff that has a habit of making the local urban heat island effect worse, but that would be nice. Otherwise there’s a risk of photographs with councillors and activists pointing at things glum councillor style being posted on social media.

Above – £750,000 worth of “Traffic Signal Replacements” too

“How are the Combined Authority getting on?”

You can see their list of meetings in March here – the papers for Skills, and Transport committees are now up.

Still waiting on news about light rail – I keep on giving away my copies of Tramway and Urban Transit magazine before I remember to read them. Interestingly there’s a feature on the French city of Bordeaux (population 265,000, metro area, just over 800,000). The debate on what the best model for Cambridge to copy for a light rail still rumbles on. More suitable examples include Caen (which replaced its 2002-era guided busway with a tram a few years ago) and Rouen in Normandy with a city and surrounding region having a population of just over 500,000 people. While Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire had just over 300,000 people in the 2021 census, the direction of travel / Government policy (both previous and current) means that ministers really should be looking at trams for cities as France has done – and as the Campaign for Better Transport more than hints at in their ‘side-by-side’ trams feature.

“On 28 November 2024, then-Transport Secretary Louise Haigh used Dijon as a model for UK cities with a population of 150,000+ to aspire towards in her unveiling of a national integrated transport system. Dijon is among the most recent of the 20+ towns and cities that have reintroduced trams over the last 40 years.”

Time for Trams side-by-side series: Dijon and Oxford

You can see the vital statistics of the Dijon Metropole in France here – also feel free to browse through the others here as cities larger than Cambridge are also just as deserving. Note at the same time the structures, powers, and responsibilities of local government in France are not the same as in England. For decades we’ve had Treasury-imposed austerity. And the failure of John Prescott’s 10 year transport plan.

“We were once world leaders in tramways”

As Chris Wolmar lamented in Sept 2025 here.

“So what happened?”

Transport 2000 Ten Year Plan

Above – The late former Deputy Prime Minister’s Vision

“Trams are set for a revival across Britain as part of the government’s 10-year strategy for transport announced today by John Prescott.”

Above – John Prescott featured in summer 2000 in The Guardian

“Transport 2010, says Phil Goodwin, had “a lifespan not of 10 years, but of two or three years”. Commentators were quick to pronounce it dead.”

Above – picking over the bones by the BBC in January 2010

Anything on the district-level councils?

Huntingdonshire looks to diversify and commercialise more of its parks and open spaces

See item 4 – with the monster document at Appendix 1

Above – Consultant’s report on commercial opportunities in Huntingdonshire district’s parks and open spaces

Actually, it’s a really interesting report – and a challenging one too

Above – the consultants looked at UK, EU, and global case studies of public parks.

Note one of their case studies is the English Garden in Bavaria, Germany.

The Achilles heel of the plan? Public transport

Above – Item 4, Appendix 1, p35

You can see on G-Maps how the southern-most parks are difficult to get to by public transport – noting also the scar on the landscape from the hugely expensive trunk road upgrade south of St Neots. (Don’t ask me why East West Rail could not have been scoped in to run alongside the dual carriageway under construction in the same corridor)

Their assessment on demographics is not the same as Cambridge

So their recommendations cannot be copied and pasted onto other areas.

Above – Item 4, Appendix 1, p54-55

They have a huge range of options. Including:

Above – Item 4, Appendix 1, ideas (one on each page) pp64-128

Isn’t this something Cambridge’s planners (and even the growth company) could look at?

Definitely when it comes to the new towns.

Above – Item 4, Appendix 1, p64-73

Have a browse. They also make for a good source for South Cambridgeshire District Council to look through for their new and growing settlements. Back in September 2021 I suggested some ideas for three of them.

“I picked three out of the air:

  • Waterbeach Town – Cambridge Sport Lakes
  • Northstowe – An indoor rollerrink (for the Rollerbillies) and large skatepark. (Build it as close to the guided busway and cycleway as possible)
  • Cambourne – A very large adventure playground on a scale not seen within a 40 mile radius.

…but it could be anything that the residents could make work.“

Above – CTO 14 Sept 2021 on the future of public sport and leisure services

Any other suggestions? Mindful of the suggestions in:

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: