Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

TL:DR Do we know how successful planners and developers were at building the homes that Cambridge needs? (And if one has been completed, could it be placed somewhere more high profile please?)  Local plans are periodically reviewed, with additional policies and documents added to them. But one thing I’ve not seen – and one thingContinue reading “Who will evaluate the Cambridge Local Plan 2006-2016?”

Just as one planning round closes, another one starts – and we go through it all over again! Scroll down to the end here to look at the maps. It’s 2020 at the time of writing this, and it will be at least 2031 before any of the sites identified and ultimately selected will beContinue reading “The new Greater Cambridge Local Plan for after 2030 – first identified sites for development.”

TL:DR – Proposals in this paper risk solidifying Conservative rural rule over urban and suburban areas, which if implemented only create an incentive for a future non-Conservative government to overhaul them once again…which is a sort of reverse of what happened in the 1960s & 1970s. The publication by the Centre for Cities is here.Continue reading “Levelling up local government in England – by Centre for Cities”

We need answers to why so many of us are becoming ill in the first place, and why successive ministers have failed to respond with anything like the policies needed to deal with the problems. Journalist Debbie Luxon, who has written extensively on equalities issues, featured a local-to-Cambridge case for World Suicide Prevention Day. It’sContinue reading ““Talk to someone” and “Yay! Charidee!” no longer suffice for mental health campaigns.”

The city found out early on Wednesday morning that one of our town’s civic champions, Allan Brigham, had died. For those of you interested in Allan’s published work, see Capturing Cambridge here, which published a number of his pieces. Above – The late Allan Brigham, local historian, giving a short, sharp history lesson to aContinue reading “Allan Brigham – the passing of one of Cambridge’s greatest ambassadors”

….and in trying to dampen down the outrage, ministers are only making it worse. This is the front page that won the internet today: Wednesday's front page: Britannia waives the rules – revolt over Brexit deal flouting international law#TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/eVmbnzkBmk — i newspaper (@theipaper) September 8, 2020 …and it relates to this. 🚨 Brandon LewisContinue reading “A Cabinet Minister telling the Commons that the Gov’t intends to break international law, is not normal.”

TL:DR. Boris Johnson’s “Back to work, peasants!” call, amplified by the print press has fallen on deaf ears – with the exception of car drivers. Even though air pollution makes things even worse for those experiencing breathing difficulties with the Corona Virus. A quarter (25%) of business leaders have become work-from-home converts as a resultContinue reading “I don’t like this ‘getting back to normal’ – and it turns out not a lot of you do either”

TL:DR. It’s community cohesion and a shared story. This stems from the blogpost Hopeful towns and how to make them, and focuses in on one of the factors identified in the HNH Report on Hopeful Towns. <<– Essential reading if you are in local government. That factor is on heritage assets. You could add theContinue reading “The community action case for investing in local history”

TL:DR – They’re not like they used to be, and are a consequence of policies of successive governments as well as corporate cost-cutting pressure. But now those policies have come back to consume them, and the response to CoVID 19 has exposed them. This post stems from this thread on Twitter. via Kim Spence-Jones. It’sContinue reading “The changing nature of office-based workplaces in the 21st Century”

TL:DR “Politicians like to panic. They need activity; it’s their substitute for achievement!” Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister, 1980. Rose Grayston discovered this interesting chart in Urban Geography by Michael Pacione (2009, Routledge). It has been part-digitised here, with the accompanying text to the chart. Above – UK major policy initiatives 1965-2005, from Pacione 2009. Rose Grayston thenContinue reading “Did all those ministerial initiatives work?”