Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

A stream of articles have been published this month about the state of our town centres. How festive did your one look this year? (And does Waterford’s Winterval do a much better job?) Despite the handful of carols at last weekend’s Christmas Cocktail concerts I sang in as part of We Are Sound, I’ve hardlyContinue reading “Did Christmas save your town centre?”

‘…after we were so rudely interrupted…’, our Cambridge-based music collective performed two successful sold-out shows at the 460-year-old Trinity College Chapel “…described by the press as “a harmonic phenomenon bursting onto the scene like a firecracker” and by fans as “explosive”, “thrilling” and “a tour de force”, Cambridge’s finest sound collective returns after a 5Continue reading “‘We Are Sound’ are back!”

Those who say Cambridge is the perfect small city have not been looking closely enough. In the meantime, Ministers need to come up with a new vision for what they think 21st Century Municipal Government should be like – so that villages, towns, and cities can start putting it together for their part of theContinue reading “Enfeebled Cambridge City Council cannot run its own tourist information centre”

The long-awaited formal statement of government policy on the governance of England, English regions, and local government in England has been published You can: Above – from BBC News The new structure raises the importance of combined authorities. Above – structure of government proposed by the Government The two points I want to focus onContinue reading “Government Publishes Devolution White Paper”

Can Cambridge Pledge-makers help find a much-improved solution for town and gown alike with the old Hobson Street Cinema building? You can read the article here. This follows the refusal of Cambridge City Council to authorise the comprehensive redevelopment of the cinema for offices back in November 2024 following significant representations from a number ofContinue reading “BBC Cambridgeshire interviews the owner of Hobson Street Cinema”

The board of HM Treasury needs updating as it’s over 3 years out of date. And if the personnel are still the same, then the lack of local government experience speaks volumes You can read the biographies here Government to abolish district councils – says the FT See Jen Williams here. The line that leftContinue reading “HM Treasury is the weak link in the Government’s devolution plans”

And none of them account for the the needs of the wider city and economic sub-region as a whole – which is why ministers need to strengthen local councils and combined authorities to push back against the financiers most likely to profit handsomely from a new generation of housebuilding I’m posting this to coincide withContinue reading “A reminder of who has what plans for the future of Cambridge”

It would have been nice to have. had a few more local residents coming along to this event given the number of council staff there were, but even that handful of residents reflected a diversity of views and life experiences that taught us something new Let’s face it, an evening session in the middle ofContinue reading “The future of local government for Cambridge – Coleridge ward”

Following on from Part 1 here, in this blogpost I look at the things in the Britain Remade/Create Streets report that I quite like The first thing to note with the map below is ***Yes! Trams!*** Above – from Britain Remade/Create Streets 2024 Compare that with the latest iteration of the Cambridge Connect Light RailContinue reading “Cambridge Remade – looking at a proposal to expand our city: part 2”

This is from a report published by Britain Remade with Create Streets here Both the principles they have set out and their list of case studies are worth reading and scrutinising. For decades I’ve said “Bad news first” so in part 1, I’ll look at some issues and how you can scrutinise what has alreadyContinue reading “Cambridge Remade – looking at a proposal to expand our city: part 1”