Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

The vetoing of the Combined Authority’s Local Transport and Connectivity Plan by the Conservative Leader of Peterborough City Council means the CPCA Board and council leaders must refer the issue to ministers – and ask them to change the governance structures of the county. (Blogpost Image is from Hutton and Lewis’s book How to beContinue reading “Ministers must intervene and restructure local government for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough following today’s CPCA Board Meeting”

A snapshot of what an over-complicated and fragmented system of public service governance is like. Imagine you are a resident living in a part of town where your neighbourhood is due to be comprehensively redeveloped (and with sound principles for doing so). That part of town is also where proposed transport infrastructure improvements are dueContinue reading “Nearly 2,000 pages of meeting papers to plough through for just four meetings.”

Can they deliver? Or might Angela Rayner and team under a future Labour Government have to come up with an alternative for Labour given that the original City Deal was signed off by ministers? You can read the papers here. Cambridge Unitaries Campaign See Phil Rodgers’ post below. “The campaign has been setup by CambridgeshireContinue reading “Make or break for the Greater Cambridge Partnership”

The papers for Cambridge City Council’s Transport & Planning Scrutiny Committee for 28 Sept 2023 have been published – and there’s a statement of community involvement that needs scrutinising. You can see the papers here. You can also see the Get Involved pages by the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service. This is really heavy goingContinue reading “Training the teachers on town planning essentials”

The joys of trying to transport books by electric cycle – but it was worth the experiment! It was a lovely sunny day for it too at what has become the annual Greener Queen Edith’s event which sort of combines campaign and info stalls, a skip day, a food hub, and ‘bring and buy/swap’, andContinue reading “Community books for community events”

Cllr Anna Smith (Lab – Coleridge) made the point following last week’s Greater Cambridge Partnership Assembly where her neighbouring councillor Cllr Sam Davies MBE (Ind – Queen Edith’s) was given an abrupt response by its Transport Director. You can watch Cllr Smith’s full remarks below: Above – this followed my own PQ [see here] thatContinue reading ““Public questions are a really vital part of the work that we do””

Utterly disappointed but so not surprised. I’m gutted for the town planners on the GCSP and city council, along with the planning committee, to whom this decision must feel like an epic slap in the face after the decision on the Flying Pig Pub. You can read the papers here. This is the impact ofContinue reading “Planning Inspector overturns refusal of planning permission by Cambridge City Council on Romsey Labour Club”

Or should one be incorporated into a wider Commission on the Governance of England as the House of Commons Public Administration & Constitutional Affairs Committee recommended in October 2022? Or alternatively, not have one at all and ‘let the market’ sort things out. Some of you may have seen the call by former Treasury seniorContinue reading “Should there be a Royal Commission on the state of Britain’s High Streets?”

The group We’re Right Here is making the case for a new Community Power Act The problem is that the proposals need a host of other radical policies – ones that ministers are showing little genuine interest in – for the proposed legislation to achieve its aims. These radical policies include but are not limitedContinue reading “A Community Power Act will fail *unless* other radical policies are brought in alongside it”

I stumbled across the syllabus for the old BTEC National in Public Services from 2010 for both the uniformed and non-uniformed syllabuses. You can read the course outlines here. For those of you who are old like me, “Level 3” is the equivalent of A-level academic standard. The core units for a BTEC Diploma areContinue reading “Learning about local public services and how they function. And malfunction”