Category Archives: Uncategorized

What are the prospects for the constituency that has lost 40% of its old districts, while gaining some new ones from the soon-to-be-vanquished South East Cambridgeshire, along with Cherry Hinton Village from Cambridge? The changes to constituency boundaries have now been finalised by the Boundary Commission for England. To understand the sign-off process sadly requiresContinue reading “On the revamped and reoriented South Cambridgeshire Constituency”

TL/DR? The thing that replaced the OxCamArc is having a public meeting on 29 Sept. You can table public questions. Click here and then click on the drop-down tab for the papers. And feel free to table any public questions too! You should see something that looks like the ‘text as an image file’ below.Continue reading “Oxford-Cambridge Pan-Regional Partnership meets England’s Economic Heartland”

This, they told Cambridge City Council’s East Area Committee is why so many schools in Cambridge cannot afford to offer GCSE Citizenship – they cannot afford to take the risk of hiring a specialist teacher given how low the uptake is likely to be in the short term. They also slammed ministers over the lackContinue reading “Cambridge City Councillors slam Conservative ministers for slashing education budgets”

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”