Great Cambridge Plan

A landing page for proposals and ideas to improve city and county in the 21st Century

The embedded map of this page is a detail from the Redcliffe-Maud Report 1966-69 on Local Government in England and Wales. For those of you interested, Redcliffe-Maud’s report (which has its own WikiPage here) can be seen as follows:

The two pillars that underpin how Cambridge got to here as far as politics is concerned are as follows:

  1. Parliamentary Sovereignty – Parliament can legislate for what it likes in the UK and furthermore
    • The current Parliament cannot be bound by the decisions of a previous one (which is not the same as saying ‘reversing decisions are without consequence)
    • The current Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments to its decisions
  2. Cambridge is not a museum piece – it has changed over time. Cambridge might look like it hasn’t changed much when you walk around some of the college courts, but as far as its governance and boundaries are concerned, it has changes significantly over the past 150 years. The changes in population size, new technologies, new industries, and new legal responsibilities imposed by Parliament created huge pressures to change how the town was governed.

The creation of the modern day Cambridge City Council was through the creation of its predecessor institution, Cambridge Borough Council. While the civic history of Cambridge’s charter goes back over 800 years, the modern day council was established by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. The concept of county councils as we know them today was brought about by the Local Government Act 1888, coming into effect in 1889 when amongst other things, Cambridgeshire County Council (sometimes called ‘Cambridge County’) was established.

The map below shows the proposed expansion of the old Cambridge Borough in 1913 within Cambridge County – and the old rural districts that surrounded the University Town.

Above – Cambridge Borough and Cambridge County 1913

You can also just about make out the individual parishes (Formally created by the Local Government Act 1894 which took non-church matters out of the hands of church parishes and into the new civil parishes that we know today).

**Cambridge is a city with a globally-recognised name that is run like a market town**

I coined the above-phrase which summarises the scale of the challenge our city (irrespective of how you choose to define it) faces today. This landing page will build up over time to provide links to my many previous articles (as well as those by others) that analyse the state of our city and potential responses to its multiple problems. If only because next year will be my fifteenth year of blogposts that cover the challenges we face – and I need to collate them somehow!

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:

The Great Cambridge Plan

More articles will be linked over time. As a starter for ten, I’m going to go for the first group of people seeking to overhaul how Cambridge is governed: The cross-party Cambs Unitaries Campaign.

Other sub-headings for articles will include amongst other things:

The governance of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire

Rail and light rail for Cambridge and Cambridgeshire

Active travel

Adult education and lifelong learning in and around our University City

Central Government’s impact on city and county

Environmental issues linked to our growing city

Chronic inequalities – what’s making them worse, and how can we deal with them?

A future fit for our children and young people

It’s not all science – sustaining and safeguarding arts, sports, music, and leisure