So, who’s in charge of what at Cambridge City Council?

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

In more parochial news, Cambridge City Council has updated its committee pages

Which sort of matters if you are a ‘Guildhall Groupie’ like me (a title bestowed by a former councillor nearly 15 years ago!) but which probably won’t make much difference to the rest of you given the looming unitarisation.

The minority-led Cabinet of Labour councillors includes:

The Labour group will inevitably feel the losses of its three former executive councillors, two of whom are former council leaders:

  • Simon Smith (Castle)
  • Anna Smith (Coleridge)
  • Cameron Holloway (Newnham / Petersfield)

I don’t expect the three of them will retire completely from local democracy, and would expect to see all three contesting seats in the next few years.

The three most influential ones include the two scrutiny committees and the planning committee.
Performance, Assets, Strategy – LibDem Chair

Experience city and county councillor Cllr Karen Young (LibDems – Queen Edith’s, who also blogs here) – formerly on St Alban’s City Council in a previous life, becomes the chair of the committee that will be dealing with much of what central government is proposing, both on restructuring and also from the Cambridge Growth Company.

The new deputy chair of the Committee is former Mayor of Cambridge Barry Gardiner’s daughter, Cllr Beth Gardiner-Smith (Lab – Romsey) who represents the part of town that she spent her early childhood in. (Don’t underestimate the value that this can have – especially in a rapidly-changing city such as Cambridge where the collective local historical memory can be hard to maintain).

Services, Climate, Communities – Green Party Chair

The new chair is Cllr Jean Glasberg (Greens – Newnham) who in the last Millennium was a Labour Party councillor in the early 1990s. She’s not the first former Labour councillor to move to The Green Party. The former city council leader in the early 1990s the late Simon Sedgwick-Jell, leader of the Labour Group when Brent MP Barry Gardiner was Mayor of Cambridge, left the Labour Party over Tony Blair’s leadership.

The deputy chair is Cllr Anthony Martinelli, a graduate of Medicine from Cambridge and a researcher on lung disease. As mentioned at the meeting yesterday, the sole Conservative councillor, Cllr Deloware Hossain (Cons – King’s Hedges) also joins this committee. Cllr Dave Baigent (Ind – Romsey) who left Labour to join Your Party also has a committee seat, retaking his place on the Planning Committee.

Seats on the Greater Cambridge Partnership and on the Combined Authority

At the moment only the Liberal Democrats have appointed their GCP Assembly representative – former city council leader Cllr Tim Bick (LD – Market) who was one of the negotiators provides that much-needed continuity. This presumably means that the Green Party will be able to take one of the three assembly seats for the first time in the GCP’s history. With the next GCP Assembly meeting on 18 June at The Guildhall in Cambridge, we should get to see which councillor will take on the role and also what approach the party will take towards the partnership mindful of their strong opposition to the Cambourne-Cambridge busway.

Labour’s Cllr Mike Davey (Lab – Petersfield), a former city council leader, is joined by The Greens on the Combined Authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee – again a new post for the Greens. Their nominee Cllr Hugh Clough (Greens – Newnham) is a management accountant by profession so that should strengthen the scrutiny of the much-troubled institution.

Not met your local councillors before?

Why not drop them an email (https://www.writetothem.com/), introduce yourself and put a few questions to them on local issues? (Alternatively if you have children, invite them to come up with the questions and see how your councillors respond).

And if your children are over 16 and live in/around Cambridge, point them to the recently-announced Cambridge Student Summit.

The University of Cambridge has promoted this event on the CUSU’s website – please encourage as many as possible to take part.

  • Thursday 18 June 2026
  • 9:30am – 4pm
  • Cambridge Guildhall, Market Hill, Cambridge CB2 3QJ

“The Cambridge Student Summit brings together students from across the city for a free, student‑centred day focused on issues shaping Cambridge. Students from both universities and local sixth‑form colleges will join local leaders and community organisations to discuss the city, its challenges and its future.”

Above – from Cambridge SU

My generation of 1990s teenagers didn’t have such things. We didn’t even have citizenship/civics lessons so left school knowing nothing about democracy, politics, and local government. How we were meant to find out about such things I don’t know. Maybe this could be the start of something much better for Cambridge’s teenagers and young adults.

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: