Category Archives: Uncategorized

Creating and voting through transport plans were supposed to be one of the main reasons for creating combined authorities in the first place. Yet today’s CPCA Board Meeting demonstrated yet again that the institution was broken from the start. It was item 6 of today’s Combined Authority Board Meeting. You can watch the meeting ofContinue reading “Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority fail to approve transport plan”

Several of you have been asking about this, so let’s have a look. Essentially this is the proposal from the CamBedRailRoad campaign which opposes the southern route into Cambridge in favour of a northern route. And inevitably there were those that preferred what ministers have now chosen is their preferred option – the southern routeContinue reading “What about the northern entrance into Cambridge for East West Rail?”

Going back through some old notes, I found some things I wrote down after the first lockdown on what community recoveries might be like. Having some sort of positive future vision for neighbourhoods to aspire and work towards was one of them. I was at The Junction in Cambridge earlier this morning for their regularContinue reading “What could five year social plans for neighbourhoods be like”

TL/DR? We used to have regional plan / regional spatial strategies. They got bogged down in bureaucracy and Eric Pickles zapped them when the Coalition came in. But we’ve seen the impact of a lack of co-ordination. So what can we learn from the last one from March 2010? You can read the draft EastContinue reading “Not everything needs to be in Cambridge – so what’s the plan to share things out locally & regionally?”

And Cambridge’ overheating economy, broken governance systems, and huge inequalities are set to continue without some big changes in government policy In my previous blogpost I pointed readers to the long-awaited reports on East West Rail’s route into Cambridge, and to the consultation results from the proposed Sustainable Transport Zone for Cambridge (AKA the GCP’sContinue reading “The Chancellor’s life sciences strategy is broken at source without an integrated regional (electrified) rail”

A reminder of the structural mess of our local and regional governance structures is hard to avoid with today’s multiple announcements and comment pieces on the future of transport in and around Cambridge It’s a heavy and long-awaited report from the Greater Cambridge Partnership – you can read it at http://www.greatercambridge.org.uk/mc-22. I’m not going toContinue reading “East-West-Rail’s plan for Cambridge – how does it sit with the Greater Cambridge Partnership & Combined Authority?”

Could it be a model that a future Great Cambridge Unitary Council adopt to help ease the housing and cost of living crises? This blogpost stems from two tweets: Andrew Jones: Above: “This is what Cambridge should do…only permit new housing within 500m of a train or tram station. Watch developers suddenly become interested inContinue reading “What would ‘transit-oriented development’ look like for the Cambridge sub-region?”

We don’t yet have the policy detail, but I suspect this will become one of the debating grounds in local government policy circles – and one where the Liberal Democrats and Labour may have very different proposals. You can read the Shadow Chancellor’s proposals here It’s more of an art than a science when itContinue reading “In Rachel Reeves’ New Economic Model for Britain, how much power is HM Treasury prepared to devolve?”

For all the criticisms I have of the content – and I have more than a few, the buck stops with ministers for establishing a tier of administration with few powers, convoluted systems of democratic accountability, and funding systems that keeps Whitehall in control of things that should really be devolved to local areas –Continue reading “The new Local Transport Plan shows why the Combined Authority is not fit for purpose – and ministers own this”

What ‘elephant in the room’ questions could you put to rooms full of people of whose firms/employers much is written about the financial wealth they create for UK PLC? TL/DR? See https://cambridgewideopenday.com/about/ and sign up here as I don’t want to be the only grumpy town person going! (I’m good at moaning about stuff –Continue reading “What’s going on inside ‘Cambridge’? (The sci/tech bubble) Cambridge-wide Open Day on Wed 14 June 2023”