Confusing new speed limit signage in Cambridge. (Now fixed thanks to FixMyStreet).

In Cambridge City Centre a 20 MPH speed limit now applies to all roads, apart from Victoria Avenue, within an area bound by the inner ring road (East Road though Lensfield Road to Fen Causeway) and the River Cam. The inner ring road itsself retains a 30MPH limit. The Cambridge Historic Centre (20 MPH Speed Limit) Order 2010 imposing the new “zone” came into force on the 12th of April 2010. Despite it now being four months after the order, signage marking the area has only gone up in the last week or so and is currently being tweaked.

At the West Central Area Committee on the 26th of August 2010 the County Councillor for most of the area covered, Liberal Democrat Sarah Whitebread, proposed adding a new policing priority to get the police to enforce the new speed limits.

Police Sergeant Jane Drury looked worried when this suggestion was made. She turned to her boss, Inspector Steve Kerridge, and said:

Sorry to put you on the spot Sir, but we’re not enforcing it yet are we?

While waiting for the Inspector to gather his thoughts and stand up the Sergeant expanded her comment saying:

I am under the impression the new 20MPH limits are a trial and we’re not enforcing it because if we enforce it we don’t know if the signage alone is sufficient or if we need to enforce.”

When Inspector Kerridge spoke he waffled a lot about the fact enforcement of 20MPH speed limits had been discussed a lot at area committee meetings, but he didn’t deny what his Sergeant had told councillors and the public. He appeared not to be completely ruling out enforcement action should councillors make it a priority, saying there were approaches which could be taken.

Following the police’s statement that they were not enforcing the new limits as part of the “trial” Cllr Whitebread failed to get support from any of her her fellow councillors and enforcing the new 20 MPH limit was not set as a police priority.

No councillors questioned if publicly stating the new zones were not going to be enforced by the police was part of the plan, or might change drivers’ behaviour.

Public Question

During the open forum a member of the public, Andrea Ryan, spoke to suggest better signage of the 20MPH “zone” where it starts at the city end of Victoria Avenue; she told the committee the signs were too close to the roundabout at a point where drivers would be concentrating on dealing with the roundabout. She asked councillors to consider prioritising enforcing the speed limit, especially in relation to buses, on Short Street and Emmanuel Road.

County Officer Mr Preston spoke to say the signage complied with regulations.

Cllr Hipkin asked for more information on the police’s view of enforcement. The inspector told the committee that the East Area had raised it as a priority and said that in that area “we are currently having discussions with them regarding speedwatch and traditional options available to us”.

Cllr Whitebread asked about busses, particularly on Maid’s Causeway. The police inspector responded to say they had a good relationship with Stagecoach. Cllr Whitebread asked if Stagecoach had educated their drivers about the change; the answer to this question wasn’t known.

A County Council officer who introduced himself as the “Park and Ride Manager” said that he had staff undertaking speed checks and they had spent twenty days monitoring Maid’s Causeway and Trumpington Street.

Member of the public Mr Lawton spoke to compare the city’s 20 MPH signs with the kind of speed limit signs seen elsewhere. He noted the 30MPH limit in Histon was signed with the speed limit signs mounted on large bright yellow rectangles. He suggested the county council had been “rather grudging with the profile given to the new limits”.

The Leader of the Council, Liberal Democrat Sian Reid told the committee she hadn’t seen the signs in question (by which I believe she meant the 20 MPH limit signs at the Maid’s Causeway / Victoria Avenue roundabout). She added that she had been campaigning against the proliferation of signs, and defended the county council who she said were treading a fine line [between signing the area and introducing clutter]. Cllr Reid then made a really bizarre contribution to the debate she said:

I’m not sure signs work. I’m not sure people see information and obey it.

Cllr Reid didn’t offer any suggestion of how she expected drivers to learn of speed limits which were in-force if not through signs. If what she was saying was a clunky way of suggesting speed reduction in the City Centre ought not be by speed limits at all, but though changes to the road environment to discourage speeding, then I would agree with her entirely.

Tackling Speeding Buses

In a section of the meeting discussing air quality in Cambridge, County Council officers reported they were actively doing speed checks on buses every week. They said that they obtained details of many buses going at 25 MPH and the fastest one they’d got was going at 29 MPH (Presumably in the new 20 “zone”). They then reported these instances to the bus operators, who they said disciplined drivers.

As there is no joined up government, and the City Council is responsible for licensing taxis whereas the county regulates buses, it appears the county officers take no action with respect to speeding taxis.

See Also

• Enforcement of the previous 20 MPH limits in the city centre
• Police obtain equipment to enforce 20 MPH zones (after resisting councillors’ attempts to get them to enforce the old 20 MPH limits).
• Councillors ask police to tackle speeding
• Debating a blanket 20 MPH limit for residential streets.

File containing reports from Cambridge City Council’s accounting system relating to items I had expressed an interest prior to my visit to inspect background material supporting the published accounts.

On Thursday the 22nd of July 2010 I visited Cambridge City Council’s accounts office to make use of the provision in the Audit Commission Act 1998 which allows electors to inspect documents backing up the council’s published accounts.

As I had done in 2009 I wrote to the council prior to my visit letting them know which areas I was interested in. I have written separate articles on two contracts which I asked to see:

• The council’s contract with Viridor Waste Kent Limited for recycling the waste collected in the city’s blue (mixed dry recycling) bins
• The council’s contract with Sports and Leisure Management Limited (SLM) for managing publicly owned leisure facilities, including swimming pools.

Unlike last year when I was refused access to the SLM contract this year the council complied with what they are required to do under the act and provided me access to the contracts requested.

Access to the contracts was not the only improvement; this year the council were able to supply electronic copies (on CD) of the reports they had extracted from their accounting system for me. I was told this capability was a side-effect of an upgrade to the council’s accounting system which was not directly intended to enable increased openness.

The council officer assigned to assist me was accountant Charity Main; who as she was last year, was very welcoming and helpful. When I visited the council I first asked why I couldn’t be given a copy of everything I could ask for from the council’s accounting system - either on a CD or better published on the council’s website. I was told that in some ways that might actually be practical; in that the relevant system, the “Financial Management System”, does not include personal details of individual staff salaries so there was unlikely to be problem with personal information. However it was not possible to produce a report, of the kind I was given, on every cost centre, and every third party the council has transactions with, on the grounds that there are many thousands of cost centres and third parties. I was told that the reports I had been supplied with had been manually created and had taken many hours to produce.

I asked how, in light of that, the council was planning to be able to comply with the Government requirement to publish all spending over a certain figure (£500) from January 2011. When I was told this was something the current system could achieve I was surprised to hear this was considered a much simpler thing to do than release the kind of reports produced for me. I was told though that a team within the council is working on the system for publishing the spending data so that it is in a format which will be navigable by those seeking to use the data released.

As well as transactions with value of under £500 the proactive release will not cover monies paid into the council, or internal transfers, so there will still be a need for FOI requests or visits in-person during the open period to obtain the full details of the council’s finances. A listing of amounts spent, and descriptions, along will not be as useful as data which can be browsed, searched, and sorted eg. by cost centre, supplier etc. I was told that central government still has not given any guidance or instructions to local councils detailing exactly what they need to publish and how and that was not helping the council’s preparations. While setting some standards enabling comparisons between councils and ensuring information released by all councils will be meaningful appears clearly desirable it is apparently not something the Government has yet addressed.

At the moment there are some examples cited on the Department of Communities and Local Government website of councils already producing what we might expect from all councils by January 2011. Following the links on that page shows Bedford Council release a monthly file listing the “Directorate” (department of the council), supplier, transaction number and amount for each payment. This gives very little information about what a particular payment is for. Barnet offers a little more, with a date of the transaction, and transactions classified by type. In neither case though is there a even a “description” line for the transaction, and there is no grouping of transactions into cost centres. It looks as if the kind of information councils are planning to proactively release January is going to be a world away from the detail provided to me in the data released by Cambridge City Council in response to the areas of interest I had noted.

I think there’s a need to lobby government to try and get more information included in the proactive release. ie. I want dates / description fields / groupings into cost centres / browsable trees we can drill down etc. for all councils. I was encouraged by what I was told by Cambridge City Council and it appears they are already planning on going above and beyond the minimum and the poor quality of detail given by councils supposedly already releasing information on their spending, but think it is something councillors on the scrutiny committee should keep a close eye on.

Back to my visit to Cambridge City Council ….

Each report from the finance system which Cambridge City Council had produced for me was introduced by the accountant accountant Charity Main; the various strategies used to locate transactions in the areas in which I expressed an interest were described. For example I had asked about money spent with local newspapers, to obtain this there were searches both on transactions with the newspaper companies but also the agency through which the council buys advertising space.

In respect of external legal advice, the accounts department had been in touch with the legal department to identify which transactions related to Quayside - an area I had asked about - this level of detail wasn’t in the financial management system.

With respect to accounting for S.106 payments I was told there was a cost centre for each planning reference, and talked through how a search for re-payments (which I had requested details of) had been carried out. I have written a separate article on the £49,894.26 of “S.106” money which I saw had been returned to the developers who had built the Belvedere flats on Hills Road.

Selected Items of Spending

Advertising in the Cambridge News

• £434.86 on advertising the open period for the council’s accounts in the Cambridge News.
• £1,202.26 on publicising the councillors’ expenses in the Cambridge News.
• £28,840.23 in total was spent directly with the Cambridge News on public notice adverts, primarily for planning related matters.
• £41,806.59 in total was spent directly Cambridge News this includes Entertainments adverts (The City Council runs the Corn Exchange) and other adverts eg. relating to the council’s commercial property portfolio, their role running the Markets etc.
• £128,802.12 in total spent via Agency “Tribal Resourcing” on advertising. This includes the agency fee for design and copyrighting which I’d estimate from looking at the prices to be somewhere between 10-20%. Adverts in this category are mainly job adverts but include consultation notices, advertising the council’s “forward plan” and some planning related adverts. There was one advert/campaign in the Law Society Gazette costing £2,971.62 and one in the London Gazette costing £106.39 (costs inc. agency fee). All other spending was with the Cambridge News and it was confirmed the council doesn’t advertise with any other local media.

My view is that almost all of this advertising could be done more effectively via the city council’s own website, or via other public sector websites. The above is only the public money channelled to the Cambridge News via the City Council, the County Council and central government departments will also be buying advertising space.

CCTV

• Around £350,000 was spent on staffing relating to the city’s immense CCTV network. Staffing costs are currently the main expense in this cost centre.
• £9,949.25 was spent on platforms for getting access to the CCTV cameras, mainly for battery changes.
• £58,597.01 was spent on repairs and maintenance.
• Additionally there was spending on new equipment, and £105,000.00 was placed in an account to save up for future renewal of the system
• The amount the city council pays for its CCTV shortcode which lets people text the CCTV operators rose to £700 per month in 2009/10. Councillors at the North Area committee told the public present that this number was a memorable one but none of them could actually recall it. (It is 6228 and it’s mentioned on the council’s CCTV webpage). The system has been running since June 2006 Published statistics show an average of 55 texts per month were sent over the last three years. The cost to the public purse comes out at £12.73 per text.
• The CCTV team spent £410.34 on clothing (fleeces, shirts and polo shirts); their £1,978.90 office stationery bill included a subscription to the Cambridge News - perhaps reading material for when playing Big Brother gets a bit dull, though they’re far from the only group of council officers to have a subscription to the paper.
• £536.20 was spent by the CCTV team on bottled water during the year. While I understand, from seeing this spending discussed a scrutiny committee meetings, the operators work in a secure environment and don’t have access to a tap I can’t see why they are unable to fill their own water bottles from a tap before work and if necessary during breaks and take them in with them.
• £859,658.83 in total was spent on CCTV by Cambridge City Council, though this includes the service provided to Magdelene College, East Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council which they pay for.

Democratic Services

• £22,080.50 is spent on printing committee papers (which are available online!)
• Councillors’ and officers’ refreshments at full council meetings typically cost about £450, at the annual meeting (where they invite guests) the food and drink cost £1,238.75
• Cllr Nimmo-Smith, now deputy mayor, has regularly chastised those like me, and some of his Liberal Democrat colleagues who push for more openness, saying eventually we’ll be asking for details of how much tea and coffee councillors drink from the vending machine in the Guildhall (to which councillors get a key which makes the machine vend for free). The report I obtained shows that about £30 of drinks are consumed per month.
• Room hire for an area committee generally costs between £130 and £280; though there is an entry for the Cambridge University Hicks Room at £392.62. The West Central Area Committee have been critical, in public, about Cambridge University and its College’s failing to show any sense of civic responsibility by refusing to hire rooms at reasonable rates and insisting room hire can only be made in association with orders for catering. As the University owns most of the usable space in the West/Central area in which such meetings can be held this is a problem.
• Provision of microphones and speakers for council committees, including the area committees, cost between £281 and £340, a time which looks like a nice earner for the company supplying the service - “Audio and Visual Electrical Services”. Even in the main chamber of the guildhall where there is a fixed system they get regular maintenance fees.
• There is no entry for officer overtime in relation to the area committees, so I am baffled by the high costs of running them - typically cited in debate as over £100K a year. Room and A/V equipment hire appears to total only about a tenth of that.

Green Spaces / Trees

• £7.99 payment to a Louise Franklin for “reimbursement of a car wash complaint” under “Trees and Tree maintenance”. I guess that someone’s had the temerity to complain to the council about something like tree sap on their car and the council has paid them to have their car washed?
• £68.00 to GASCO Cambridge apparently for reading the water metres on Parkers’ Piece and email the readings to a council officer.
• £1,355.00 paid in November 2009 for preparation for the Ice Rink and £3,325.00 for work to the Ice Rink footprint and cricket pitch surround in paid in March 2010.
• £5,073.81 spent on Bailff fees in relation to mooring. This could be the council contributing to the cost of the Conservator’s River Bailiff or it could relate to enforcement of the mooring fee. As some Bailiff fees are under “enforcement” along with court letters the latter appears possible.
• £1,619.25 on a consultant’s report on mooring
• £1,790.68 paid to consultant Robert Myers in relation to Jesus Green tree planting plans.
• £2,500.00 / year GreenStat website subscription - intended to record feedback on users experience of using open space
• £6,659.00 advertising the city’s green spaces - on maps and in the local press, and in Cambridge Matters.
• £9559.95 under temporary staffing for Malcolm Oviatt-Ham. A Malcolm Oviatt-Ham has previously been linked to a Diana Oviatt-Hamm. The City Council’s principal tree officer is Diana Oviatt-Hamm, she was been absent from work due to a health problem during 2009-10 (this fact was made known at many public meetings). Why the council took on someone who appears to be her husband as a member of temporary staff during this time might warrant looking into.

For more detail see the raw data released to me by the council, in particular the Transactions under Trees and Tree Maintainance and Conservation and Design Cost Centre Transactions. (XLS files).

Policing

• The city council received £82.00 from the police, after they charged them a hiring fee to rent part of Parkers Police during their open day. (They landed their helicopter on the grass). This kind of silly shuffling of taxpayer’s money between bits of the public sector is bizarre, it must be designed to keep the legions of administrators in each organisation busy.
• A number of payments to the police for policing various events were made by the council
  • The Big Weekend £6,930.58
  • The Folk Festival £31,751.03
  • Midsummer Fair £9,150.26
  • Bonfire Night £694.75
• The city council made a number of other payments to the police which look like payments to get the police to do a job they ought have been doing anyway. eg. £2,000.00 for “Additional patrols to tackle ASB in the city centre”. There are also tens of thousands of pounds for the streetlife officer and PCSOs; I have seen these queried before and it appears the Government gives ring-fenced money to the City Council which it has to pass on to the police for these things. Utterly bonkers.

Quayside

• External legal fees for objecting to a “adverse possession application” - Reportedly Scudamores claiming “squatters rights” over Quayside - only cost the council about £4K in the 09/10 financial year. (There’s now been a negotiated agreement)

See Also

• Raw data on which this article is based.
• My article on looking at the Cambridge City Council accounts in 2009.

Cambridge City Council’s Contract with Viridor Waste Kent Ltd. for Dry Mixed (Blue Bin) Recycling

I have previously asked questions about Cambridge City Council’s contract to sort the city’s blue bin recycling. Writing to the Executive Councillor responsible, and asking public questions at the council’s Environment Scrutiny Committee failed to get details of the arrangement published or my questions answered. I asked to view the contract when I visited the council the in the “open period” during which any elector can inspect the documents behind the published accounts.

Having previously been denied access to a contract backing up the accounts I was rather surprised when I was provided with the document I had requested.

Blue Bin (Mixed Recycling) waste from Cambridge is taken off the city’s hands by a company called Viridor under a joint arrangement with Huntingdonshire District Council and Fenland District Council. The procurement process was run by the Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation which I felt meant there was little, if any, open, transparent, local, democratic input into the specification of the requirements or the assessment of the tenders received.

Who Pays Who

A key part of the contract appears to be the “Gate Fee Adjustment Mechanism”; this suggests that as long as the average sale value of a defined “basket” of recycles is above £70/tonne then the contractor pays the councils for the recyclable materials they send to them. There is a sliding scale which protects the contractor in case the value of the materials plummets; so as usual all the risk is on the public sector and the vast majority of the profits from high resale values of waste go straight to the private company’s bottom line. If we end up with a situation where the materials in the blue bin are worthless the councils could be in for quite a bill for getting rid of it, but at the moment re-sale values are high and the Cambridge is selling its recyclable waste.

The City Council currently gets paid none of those rates though, but a “Starting Gate Fee” of £1.41/tonne. Quite why I don’t know; I may have missed something. I was provided with copies of raw invoices from Cambridge City Council to Viridor showing the following amounts:

• November 2009 310.68 Tonnes at £1.41 : £438.06 + VAT
• December 2009 616.60 Tonnes at £1.41 : £869.41 + VAT
• January 2010 761.62 Tonnes at £1.41 : £1,073.88 + VAT
• February 2010 552.32 Tonnes at £1.41 : £778.77 + VAT

Expanding What Can be Recycled

The contract is substantially formed from the answers Viridor gave to a tendering questionnaire. One question asked was: “Please state what additional materials you propose to have the capacity to handle during the term of the Contract?”

The response didn’t promise anything but said “Books (paper and hard back) and “Hard plastics (i.e. kerbside boxes or bins) “could be added … at any time”.

Fraction of Contamination Allowed

In October 2009 Cllr Ward, as Environment Scrutiny Committee chair, justified the Liberal Democrat secrecy surrounding the permitted level of food waste contamination by saying revealing the figure might encourage people to put such waste in the blue bins whereas what is wanted is recyclables to be as clean as possible.

At the time of asking the question I wanted to be able to assess the risks being taken by the city council; I was concerned that if the level had been set too low, and the council incurred charges for contaminated batches then the contractor could end up making a lot of money out of the city.

My question was answered by Appendix 3 of the contract which is titled the; “Input specification”. This states:

Where any Contract Material Load contains Contaminants or where the total level is greater than 10% in any Contract Material Load, the Contract Material Load may (following discussion with the relevant Authority) be rejected by the Contractor and not processed.

A Contract Material Load shall not be rejected where the level of Contaminants can be brought within the maximum allowable amounts by minimal and safe sorting using normal personal protective equipment (e.g. gloves, litter pickers, steel capped and soled boots etc.). Minimal sorting shall be undertaken by the Contractor at no additional cost to the Authority.

Despite the suggestion given by a literal reading of the first sentence of the above quote suggesting that simply containing “contaminants” could allow the contractor to reject a load the “Procedure for Contract Material Load rejection in the event of deemed Contamination” makes clear that contamination is defined as contaminants comprising more than 10% of the load.

If a load is determined to contain more than 10% contaminants (presumably by weight - it doesn’t say) then the authority has to pay a processing fee - which is the current price per tonne chargeable at the time of processing.

What Happens to the Material Recycled

One of the questions those tendering for the contract were required to answer was:

What will happen to the dry recyclables after sorting - i.e. where do you propose to dispose of or resell them, and as far as you can indicate, to what uses would the materials be put? Is it likely/possible that they would be exported, and if so are you confident that they would be properly disposed of / recycled?

The response is headed “Markets Portfolio” and includes a note, printed in red, stating :

Viridor respectfully requests that the Authorities treat the Commentary on markets portfolio as ‘Reserved Information’ and not for disclosure to third parties due to the commercial confidentiality of some of this information”

It has been suggested that one approach I could take is to offer to provide copies of this section of the document to any Cambridge City electors who ask me for one. I suppose the commercially valuable bit is the list of companies who might buy the materials, but they’re only a list of potential buyers, some of which are clearly processors and others are apparently end users. Other than not listing the companies though I won’t let the “commercial confidentiality” statement restrict my futher notes on the response which starts:
“Vididor markets all its recyclables through its specialist company, Viridor Resource Management Ltd. (VRML) which is the national marketing and sales arm of Viridor, for all recyclate materials and their onward logistics to our end market customers/users”.

Much of the response, in fact much of the material provided in response to the questions, is just marketing bumf apparently intended to puff up the image of the company. One key statement though is that: “During the current difficult trading period VRML has and continues to market all its processed stock”.

While all the end markets and applications proposed are in the UK, or in the case of “News and Pams” and “Mixed Papers” the UK and EU the response states: “VRML is one of only a few companies in the UK accredited by the Chinese Export/Import Authorities - AWSIQ and CCIC for export of all Paper, Plastics and metals grade recyclables to China”. … “VRML do not sell to agents by market and deliver the materials direct to the end customer/reprocessors door, no matter where in the world.”

A special Chinese quality assurance scheme involving photographs of waste consignments being taken is described. Having read what is described I am left not understanding what the photographs actually achieve. Viridor has told the councils that for material exported to Asian/Chinese markets:

Every load’s material is photographed twice as it is loaded. The last photograph has to include the unique serial number of the container, ie. with one door shut. These photographs, along with all shipping documentation, must me submitted to the UK based Chinese Environmental import inspection authority (CCIC) for approval prior to shipment. Random and regular site visits by CCIC are made to inspect material quality in stock and despatch. Certificates of import approval are issued before shipping can occur.

It appears to be a system for allowing the Chinese to, should they wish, reject a shipment based on what it looks like, before it has left the UK. I can’t see how it addresses the key question of if the material exported to China is actually productively recycled, and not landfilled.

See also

• Unbelievable Presentation on Blue Recycling Bins - South Area Committee September 2009
• 2009/10 Accounting records relating to Blue Bin waste recycling - released to me during inspection of accounts during open period. Includes details of spending on the binds themselves, their delivery and publicity.
• Secrecy Surrounding Contract to Sort Cambridge’s Recycling in Peterborough - October 2009
• Introducing Co-mingled Recycling to Cambridge -January 2009

The five volume contract between Sports and Leisure Management Limited and Cambridge City Council.

Sports and Leisure Management Limited (SLM) currently has a contract with Cambridge City Council under which it runs:

• Parkside Pools
• The Abbey Pools, including the floodlit pitches
• The King’s Hedges Learner Pool
• The Jesus Green Pool
• The city’s six paddling pools (in various parks and recreation grounds)
• Cherry Hinton Village Centre
• The city’s grass sports pitches

The city council owns all these facilities. One might expect that the company running them would pay rent to the city for the rights to generate income from these substantial publicly funded assets. In fact though money flows in the opposite direction and the city pays SLM a “management fee” which as of March 2010 was £47,681.93 per month. This had increased from the £44,977.11 per month which was paid in 2009. Overall in the financial year 2009-10 the council paid SLM £551,554.32 in management fees. Those are all ex.VAT figures. SLM will have taken around £5m of public money from Cambridge City Council during the period of the contract which was signed in 2003 and presumably similar arrangements will have been repeated in many cities around the country where SLM runs publicly owned leisure facilities.

These amounts and the detail of SLM contract itsself have previously been kept secret by the Liberal Democrats running Cambridge City Council. I was able to obtain access when I visited the council during the open period for Cambridge City Council’s accounts which ran from the 7th of July to the 3rd of August this year. Last year I similarly requested such access during the open period but my request was refused. A freedom of information request I made for the contract resulted in only a small section being released in which the part on the management fee was redacted. The council omitted to mention the fact what they released in redacted form was far from the whole contract. Whenever the SLM contract has been discussed at council meetings the press and public have been sent out as councillors have decided to hold their debates in a closed session.

I do not know what has changed between this year and last. There are a number of things which may have influenced the council’s u-turn:

• The SLM contact is coming to an end in 2013; the council may have decided transparency is in the public interest and will enable them to get a better deal on behalf of the public when they seek to negotiate a new contract. (This is unlikely though as they have not proactively published the material on their own website)
• The council may have realised their previous stance on secrecy was contrary to their responsibilities under the Audit Commission Act 1998. They may have been influenced by judgement in the Veolia case where Nottinghamshire County Council were ordered to release their waste management contract after denying access to it to one of their electors who asked to inspect it. (Article by Julian Todd with more background.)
• I have publicised the fact I was denied access to the SLM contract, have lobbied councillors and mentioned it when using the public speaking opportunity at council meetings. This may have helped prompt the council to reverse their position though it is, as is often the case, difficult to categorically link cause and effect when what you are lobbying for actually happens.
• There has been public outcry, and political interest, in the way SLM are managing both the Swimming Pools (where there have been complaints about maintenance, cleanliness and water temperature) and the Cherry Hinton Village Centre where a local group has been unable to maintain its established booking.

The Contract

The contract was presented to me in a large legal archive box. The main body of the document was presented in five hefty bound volumes, a number of which were many inches thick. Along with the bound volumes there were a number of associated additional papers.

I think the weight of the document in itself highlights one of the main problems with this contract, and with a lot of public sector outsourcing in general. The contract is so prescriptive and the council maintains so much detailed control over the management of the facilities that in many respects the private company may as well not be involved at all. What we have is an odd half-way position between running the facilities in-house and fully privatising them. The existence of such complex arrangements probably explain why a company like SLM (and many others like it) can exist specialising running in public sector services. Private companies with the expertise to run leisure facilities without public subsidy would probably quite understandably run a mile when presented with the mass of a council’s requirements. (We’re talking here only about running the facilities, not about the saving up to make a capital investment in building new pools or paying off loans taken out for such major work. I believe building new publicly accessible leisure facilities like swimming pools is a reasonable way to spend public money, and I also approve of subsidies for some users. )

Under the current arrangements we lose the potential benefits of democratic control - one thing the SLM contract does is ensure the Liberal Democrats running Cambridge City Council are able to deny responsibility when services are unacceptable. As the arrangements are a half-way house fudge we don’t fully benefit from the potential cost savings, and matching of services to what people want to pay for, which operating in a less regulated commercial environment could offer.

Protected Bookings

An interesting element of the contract states:

The facilities have a number of clubs and club activities that will need to be continued under the new arrangement. The details are contained in appendix 17b. The provision needs to be at least the same as at present. Variations will only be permissible following consultation and agreement with the club and the Council.

The relevant appendix 17 (there were many within the five volumes!) included the “Friends with Disabilities” group who have been having trouble booking Cherry Hinton Village Centre. They are listed as having a booking of the large meeting room in the centre on the second Tuesday of every month. Their representatives were still complaining about their treatment at the East Area Committee on the 19th of August; councillors were specifically asked if when they recently extended the SLM contract they had sought to deal with the problems faced by “Friends with Disabilities”. Councillors responded only to say they would have to wait for the contract to be re-negiotated/re-awarded for the matter to be resolved (suggesting it was not dealt with during the extension).

The SLM contract was due to expire, but councillors have decided to extend it another year to 2013. I did make a request for the part of the contract referring to that extension but it was not disclosed to me. The council denied me permission to inspect the extension/variation documentation under the provisions of the Audit Commission Act this year on the grounds no payments were made under that element of the contract.

Further Notes on Content

The SLM contract is generally very favourable to SLM; with the council taking responsibility for the maintenance of items one would not necessarily consider part of the fabric of the building. For example the Omega timing system at Parkside pools is maintained at the council’s expense despite income from the hire of the pool for competitive swimming going to SLM.

City Council staff get free swimming under the contract; (this wasn’t a secret) but the city still has to pay for other usage of its own facilities for example room hire on polling days.

The contract contains details of salaries/wages, home addresses, bank details, national insurance numbers etc. for all staff involved in the provision of Leisure Services at the council at the point of transfer of responsibilities to SLM. It includes those details for individuals who are now relatively senior council officers right down to those who were casually employed lifeguards.

Payments were made to SLM in relation to free swimming for those aged over sixty. The amount paid during 2009/10 was £7,318.89.

Something I did not locate was any reference to business rates. Contract negotiations with SLM in Spelthorne reveal a 90% business rate reduction on their swimming pools. While I have obtained lists of money coming into the council and going out related to SLM there is no mention of anything relating to rates. The Spelthorne document also reveals the way SLM operates: demanding public investment in upgrading facilities before councils hand the improved facilities over to the company for them to make a profit from.

Personal Legal Risk in Publishing This

Running a website like mine is fraught with potential legal risks. In publishing the information I obtained from the council when I visited to inspect the accounts I am publishing material which I have been made aware SLM considers “commercially sensitive information”. That fact was conveyed to me in July 2009, shortly after the council refused to let me see the SLM contract or know how much the management fee was.

As I understand the position the fact material might be “commercially sensitive” is not really relevant from a legal perspective. I am after all free to publish all sorts of information which might, even quite seriously, damage someone’s commercial interests. (eg. a restaurant review; a price comparison website, etc.)

I do not believe though that currently I have any duty of confidentially with respect to the information I have published. I personally have no contract with SLM under which I am bound to keep their secrets. It appears Cambridge City Council have are not contractually bound to keep the management fee a secret either, as if they were they would have applied the S.41 “Information provided in confidence” exemption in their response to my FOI request.

I am sure I have not breached any confidence by publishing this material; if I become aware of the confidential character of the information at any point in the future I will of course immediately cease to publish any confidential information.

While I am in favour of openness I don’t simply publish material because I can. I think it is in the public interest for the management fee, and information about the contract to be openly available. For example knowing what SLM currently charge might help another organisation come in and offer to undercut them so we could save public money. Knowing details of the contract might help those not obtaining a satisfactory service from SLM go to their councillors and lobby them to get the council to ensure SLM do what they have agreed to.

See Also

• Data obtained when inspecting the City Council accounts during the open period (Excel files):
  • SLM Contract Management Fee Transactions
  • SLM Payables Transactions
  • SLM Recievables Transctions
• Report on my 2009 visit to view the Cambridge City Council accounts.
• My FOI request for the SLM contract
• The Future Management of Cambridge’s Swimming Pools - January 2009 Article
• Locals Priced Out of Cherry Hinton Village Centre

Belvedere Development, Hills Road, Cambridge.

During the open period for Cambridge City Council’s accounts which ran from the 7th of July to the 3rd of August this year I visited the council to look at some of the details behind the published information. I found that £49,894.26 of “S.106” money had been returned to the developers who had built the Belvedere flats on Hills Road. The money could have been used to build new infrastructure in the city to mitigate the impact of the development. The payments refunded included:

• A £34,575 affordable housing contribution.
• Contributions to informal open space of £14,523.00

To find out why this money had been paid back, rather than being used for its intended purpose, I made freedom of information request to the council.

The council’s response defensively states: “There was no failure on the Council’s part”; but reveals that the problem was the council was unable to find suitable ways to spend the money before the deadline for paying the money back to the developer expired.

The money repaid was only 2.2% of the total amount the council had available to spend from the Belvedere development; but it shows the council are struggling to spend the money they are amassing.

It is interesting that the money paid back was not part of the initial capital contribution paid by the developers, but interest which accrued on the money while it was in the council’s hands.

What happened in this case suggests there may be a problem with the way the Liberal Democrats running the council decided to account for S.106 money collected from April 2008 onwards. Just over two years ago councillors decided that they would not apply interest to S.106 accounts, but instead transfer any interest raised to the council’s general funds. Whereas S.106 money collected from developers can only be spent in certain areas, relating very broadly to mitigating the effects of the development, it appears councillors thought they could cream off the interest for them to spend as they liked. If unspent interest can be claimed back by developers, even if all the capital contribution has been spent, it looks as if a flaw may have been found in the Liberal Democrat’s attempts at accounting trickery.

Writing on his blog Cllr Chris Howell has said that the accounting change was a response to financial pressures the council found itsself in. These pressures arose, in part, from the council placing money in Icelandic banks which went bust and carelessly failing to ensure the £640K of Folk Festival ticket money was paid to the council.

What is not yet public is if the Belvedere re-payment was prompted by a particularly on-the-ball developer who spotted and objected to the Liberal Democrats siphoning off the interest or if the developer’s lawyers had outwitted council officers and negotiated a S.106 agreement which was unusually strongly in favour of the the developer.

If other S.106 agreements have the same terms as the one relating to the Belvedere then by only spending capital, and not capital plus interest, further re-payments may have to be made in the future.

S.106 agreements on large developments are negotiated individually so every one is unique. It is not possible to tell from the information the city council has proactively made public if further such re-payments will have to be made in respect of other developments in the future.

It has been suggested to me that the response to my FOI request might leave open the option that interest has been paid back to other developers. I think councillors ought look into this at a scrutiny committee and they ought ensure that their accounting policies are compatible with both existing and new S.106 agreements.

Reference to Change in Accounting Policy

The City Council’s draft statement of accounts for 2009/10 states:

Where a developers agreement (Section 106) provides for the return of contributions made if capital projects are not carried out within a specified period, any advances are held as creditors until the Council is able to satisfy the conditions for keeping the money, usually on commencement of a project or payment of the sum to another body, for example the County Council.

Members approved a change in accounting policy and practice, effective from 1April 2008, whereby the Council ceased allocating interest to unspent developers capital contributions held by the Council. Should a contribution become repayable and, under the terms of the individual agreement, the developer was entitled to interest, then that interest would be met from General Fund resources or reserves

There is a similar statement in the 2008-9 Draft Statement of Accounts.

What has happened with respect to the Belvedere development appears to be different from the circumstance foreseen by councillors and council officers (where a developer might be entitled to some of their capital back with interest). These re-payments have occurred where the developer has asked for the council’s unspent interest back, despite the council having spent the capital.

Liberal Democrat Inconsistency

When Cambridgeshire County Council were holding s.106 funds from the Vie development in Chesterton (as they were to be spend on the highway) Liberal Democrat Executive Councillor Clare Blair spoke at the Traffic Area Joint Committee to call on the County Council to spend the money, plus interest, on allowing parking on Church Street in Chesterton. Had the funds been held by the City Council the interest accrued would not have been available to spend.

My View

The transfer of the interest earnt on S.106 contributions to general funds are just one way the Liberal Democrats running the City Council treat the S.106 contributions as windfall spoils from harmless taxation. In fact it hits those trying to buy homes in the city and has the effect of keeping the open market price of housing artificially high.

I think that developer contributions should be limited to cases where funds are needed to pay for something, without which, the council would not give permission for the development to go ahead.

Coleridge Road, Cambridge.

A fantastic example of why transparency is good for democratic decision making occurred at the Cambridge City Council’s East Area Committee on the 19th of August 2010. Green Party Councillor Margaret Wright had proposed a motion removing an existing police priority aimed at reducing speeding on a range of target roads across the east of the city, particularly Coleridge Road. This was taken to a vote as some councillors, notably Conservative Cllr Howell and Labour Cllr Herbert who both represent Coleridge strongly support tackling speeding and having it as a police priority. The vote was taken via a quick show of hands and the committee clerk announced Cllr Wright had been successful and had won the vote 7:6.

Cllr Howell asked for some clarification on who had voted which way and councillors, particularly Liberal Democrats, quickly sat on their hands. Cllr Howell decided to call for a recorded vote so the chair asked councillors to put their hands up again. At this point County Councillors Tariq Sadiq (Labour, Coleridge) and Simon Sedgwick-Jell (Green, Abbey) both asked if they were eligible to vote. The meeting’s chair Cllr Herbert chastised them saying those who didn’t know what they were entitled to vote on were “not very good politicians”. After the fact County Councillors are able to vote on setting the police priorities was confirmed the vote was held again. The result was:

For Scrapping the Speeding Priority

• Cllr Margaret Wright (Green, Abbey)
• County Cllr Simon Sedgwick-Jell (Green, Abbey)
• Cllr Catherine Smart (Liberal Democrat, Romsey)
• Cllr Sarah Brown (Liberal Democrat, Petersfield)
• Cllr Paul Saunders (Liberal Democrat, Romsey)
• Cllr Raj Shah (Liberal Democrat, Romsey)
• Cllr Caroline Heart (Abbey, Labour)

For Keeping the Speeding Priority

• Cllr Chris Howell (Conservative, Coleridge)
• Cllr Lewis Herbert (Labour, Coleridge)
• Cllr Adam Pogonowski (Abbey, Green)
• Cllr Jeremy Bensted (Labour, Coleridge)
• Cllr Gail Marchant-Daisley (Labour, Petersfield)
• County Cllr Kilian Bourke (Liberal Democrat, Romsey)
• County Cllr Tariq Sadiq (Labour, Coleridge)

Following the 7:7 tie which occurred following the second, recorded, vote the meeting’s chair Cllr Herbert chose to use his casting vote in-line with the way he had originally voted (and inline with keeping the status quo) by voting to keep the speeding priority. Therefore the recorded vote went the opposite way to the unrecorded vote.

Cllr Wright complained, saying that she had already won her vote, and it wasn’t right to run it again. Cllr Bedstead joked that the East Area committee had joined the ranks of those democracies where you just keep voting until you get the right answer. Cllr Herbert justified his actions as chair saying that as there had been people unaware of their eligibility to vote it was right to re-run and allow them to have their say. However the voting record shows that removing either all, or just the confused pair, of county councillors doesn’t explain the initial result. For there to have been seven votes in favour of scrapping the speeding priority there must have been at least one councillor who voted for it when they thought no-one would have a chance to record it and changed their minds when they knew it would make the minutes.

The original vote was taken so unclearly neither I nor others in the public seating area could be sure who had switched their votes. While I have previously photographed key votes in an effort to record them the anti-transparancy Liberal Democrat run council continues to forbid photographing council meetings without prior permission.

In May 2009 the vote making speeding a priority was won by only one vote; only my website records which councillors voted for it and now reveals that Cllr Wright has withdrawn her support.

Only Cllrs Wright and Smart explained their reasons for voting against the speeding priority. They both argued essentially that as the police weren’t doing much as a result of having the priority set there wasn’t much point in keeping it.

The police have been reluctant to accept a speeding priority from the point it was first suggested. They prefer councillors to prioritise “anti-social behaviour” as this appears to fit in well with what the police culture appears to believe neighbourhood police officers ought be dealing with. I think it is excellent that unlike most of the Liberal Democrats who are generally very reluctant to do anything other than approve the police’s suggested priorities, Cllrs Howell and Herbert in the East have been willing to push for them to do something residents have asked for.

Cllr Howell has been pushing for an evidenced based approach, with speed surveys (conducted by automated black boxes on streetlights) conducted before and after action is taken by the police. Cllr Howell expressed concern that a plan agreed between city councillors, council officers and the police had not been acted upon.

August East Area Committee Speeding Update

Mr Fuller, The Community Engagement Manager at Cambridgeshire Police (Who has received an award from the Chief Constable), reported to councillors that “on speeding police activity has been slow and limited”. Despite councillors both setting the priority at the East Area Committee and meeting the police to agree a detailed plan of action Mr Fuller said there was a “need to reinvigorate”. In a shocking statement he told councillors, rather unconvincingly:

If you prioritise it again you can have my assurance that we will put some effort into it this

In addition Mr Fuller also admitted that the report to the meeting lacked statistics and said that he ought to have been providing details of “hours put in and checks done”.

Mr Fuller’s speech became even more astounding when he told councillors: “We need to take action before the nights draw in and we lose the daylight”. No councillors followed up on this and queried if the implication that Cambridgeshire Police are unable able to tackle speeding drivers in the dark is accurate. The police sergeant had already explained that the force’s health and safety policies meant officers had no choice but to carry out speed monitoring wearing high visibility jackets; on the grounds they could only work near roads if they were clearly seen; she did not explicitly say this meant they couldn’t work at night though.

Cllr Smart kicked off the speeding debate by explaining why she wasn’t going to vote for the speeding priority. She said: “The PCOSs have done monitoring but can’t … Does the PCSO monitoring show there’s a real problem? Is it a minor problem we thought was major?”
Cllr Burke interjected: “If we do pursue this it would be desirable for us to have more quantitive information so we can assess the reality. If we can’t have that information we need to be told the reason why we can’t.”
Cllr Howell spoke to say that he was all in favour of getting more information out of the police, he expressed his frustration that the committee had adopted a priority, a plan had been agreed and the basis of that plan was to look at proper quantitative data. He explained the problem with the speedwatch and PCSO data was that there the recording influenced the readings. He explained the agreed plan had called for for speed monitoring again on Coleridge Road -to be followed by some police enforcement, some high visibility work by PCSOs all to be joined by councillors and others campaigning. The plan had been to conduct a further survey afterwards and look at the data to see if the work had been effective. Cllr Howell commented on the fact the plan had not been put into action saying: “support from the police and other parties didn’t happen”.

Cllr Howell said that effectively we were right back in the situation we were “a couple of periods ago” (May 2009) and there was a need to say again “lets have some police activity”; he said the feedback from residents on Coleridge Road strongly suggested action was still needed. He said he hoped the police and others would “make a better go of it this time”.

County Cllr Tariq Sadiq noted the police had called for the County Council to co-ordinate tackling the speeding problem. He asked what exactly they had in mind when they said this, so that he as the County Councillor for one of the affected areas could go to the County and make the case for it.

Cllr Marchant-Daisley said that the police had raised this before, and Liberal Democrat County Councillor Nichola Harrison had promised to go to the County to get the required “co-ordination”. Cllr Marchant-Daisley noted with frustration that “the police have admitted they have not done as much as they said they were going to do”; she appeared to be suggesting getting the County Council to take a lead might be a more effective way of prompting police action.

Cllr Adam Pogonowski spoke up for his own Abbey ward noting that he wanted quantitative analysis there too, specifically on Wadloes Road and Barnwell Road; he said these were roads where drivers had an opportunity to go fast down them, particularly as “on Wadloes there is nothing coming the other way”.

Mr Fuller said that in the past there has been a speed survey in Wadloes Road (It was in Feb 08 and the results have been released). He said the police (who he represents) could have given statistics on PCSO hours, and numbers of vehicles speeding but hadn’t. He, redundantly (or possibly betraying a failure to comprehend the proposed plan) noted that the reality of high visibility enforcement is very few prosecutions as drivers see officers from a distance. Mr Fuller said that there were 60 sites for concern about speeding in the County to which the police deployed their covert safety camera vans and none of them were in the City of Cambridge.

Mr Fuller reported that the latest data from a speed survey on Coleridge Road showed only 2% of vehicles speeding at over 35mph. He postulated: “something’s happened, maybe the Mill Road closure has led to increased traffic and a reduction of speed in Coleridge Road.” Mr Fuller said the police needed to find locations where there is a significant problem, he said he was worried that if energy was put into Coleridge, with only 2% of vehicles going over 35 mph, many of which he said would be emergency vehicles, that would not be a good use of police time.

The police data shows the survey was conducted right next to the traffic lights at the junction with Radegund Road. (location on Google Maps) - perhaps the police were assessing the speed of vehicles queuing at the traffic lights and/or approaching the junction with caution. From my personal experience I would suggest speeding is more likely in the region of the Litchfield Road and Ashbury Close junctions.

Cllr Howell said he didn’t have an answer to the statistics (which I believe had only just been reported to him at that meeting); he tried to explain to Mr Fuller that the aim of the agreed plan was not to issue lots of tickets but to try and change people’s behaviour. He said that most of the people speeding on the roads in the East Area were likely to live in the East Area and the police enforcement role was a vital part of the plan and campaign but not necessarily something which would take up a lot of police time.

Cllr Adam Pogonowski asked the police sergeant, Kay Stevens what protocol or rule says the police have to wear high visibility jackets when trying to catch speeders; he said: “If there is a ridiculous rule I would like to know what it is”. Cllr Pogonowski then suggested an alternative solution of making residential areas 20mph zones; he questioned why Cambridge City Council had not done this. This prompted a rather weak heckle of “keep quiet” from a member of the public, who I believe may have been a young conservative. Sgt. Stevens said it was force health and safety policy which dictated: ‘Officers working on or near the road need to be seen”.

See Also

• Cambridge Councillors Ask Police to Tackle Speeding - September 2009
• Cambridgeshire Police Speed Survey Results
• Cambridge Cycling Campaign Hustings - Blanket 20 MPH Limit for Residential Streets
• Police tackling speeding and swerving on Fen Road in Chesterton by abusing anti-social behaviour laws. (More on Fen Road)

Burnside, Cambridge.

Councillors at Cambridge City Council’s East Area Committee on the 19th of August 2010 told officers to go ahead with, and give a high priority to, installing two thousand five hundred pounds worth of toad crossings at Burnside. These crossings are to take the form of dropped curbs. Councillors appeared to make the decision to spend public money on the project without having the question of if toads can jump the existing curbs or or not answered.

Public sector spending restraint has clearly not yet hit East Cambridge.

Background To The Project

The minutes of the East Area Committee held on the 15th of April 2010 state:

A toad crossing on Burnside had been added to the EIP (Environmental Improvements Programme).

That is the first mention of the toad crossing in the public record. It is not included in the EIP report to the April meeting. The minutes contain no description of the proposals or any record of any debate on the matter. No councillor’s name is publicly associated with the inception of the project.

My notes from the April 2010 meeting however record that was an introduction to the project from a council officer and this prompted quite some response from astonished local residents present. First residents suggested there already was a toad facility on Burnside - they told councillors they thought an existing gap in the curb by the footbridge to The Tins cycle path allowed toads to return to the water.

Road sign warning of toads at Burnside, Cambridge. This is rather battered sign is currently high up a pole, I believe it has been moved.

Public speakers also suggested, that as a cheaper option, the warning triangle, alerting drivers to the possibility of toads on the road, could be replaced (They appeared under the mistaken impression it had been removed; I think it has been moved though to a position out of most people’s line of sight). A public speaker also noted that local residents were able to help toads they found on the road over the curb if necessary. No councillors or officers responded to these comments.

The EIP report to the subsequent meeting, on the 17th of June, included an estimate of the cost of the work and gave a little more detail of the proposal, explaining it is intended to help toads along the length of Burnside. The single sentence present on the project states:

The lowering of the kerbs and slopping of the adjacent verge at four points along Burnside is estimated to cost £2000.

The minutes of the East Area Committee on the 17th June make no mention whatsoever of the toad crossing; I made no note on the subject there either suggesting it was not discussed at all.

By the August meeting of the East Area committee the cost of the toad crossings had risen, with the EIP report to that meeting stating;

The lowering of the kerbs and sloping of the adjacent verge at four points along Burnside is estimated to cost £2500.

Can Toads Jump? Image shows the curb at Burnside which may be an insurmountable hurdle to toads.

At the August meeting new Petersfield councillor Sarah Brown spoke to ask: “Can’t Toads Jump”; she appeared to be trying to hide her disbelief at the prospect of he colleagues spending £2500 of public money on this project by muttering her comment at a level rendering it impossible for many present to hear. Liberal Democrats appear to try to avoid conflict, even if this means not speaking up about things they think are wrong. Cllr Smart decided it was a point worth all present hearing and she repeated Cllr Brown’s words clearly into a microphone for everyone’s benefit.

Once the toad crossing had been raised, as happened in April, a member of the public with local with some local knowledge spoke up. They noted the unexplained increasing cost of the project - claiming that when they first heard it suggested it was only going to cost £1,000, and it had initially risen to £2,000 and was now at £2,500. They also questioned the need for the work, on the basis they hadn’t seen any toads on the road recently.

The council officer responsible for Environmental Improvements, Mr Preston did not address either Cllr Brown’s question or the comments made by the member of the public. Cllr Herbert, the meeting’s chair appeared to be trying to hurry things along and didn’t seem to be keen to spend much, if any, time discussing toads.

Green party councillor Adam Pogonowski was the only other councillor to comment on the project. After having explained that he generally takes a “bio-sympathetic viewpoint” he expressed incredulity as he questioned why the toad crossing was being given a high priority classification, the same level of priority as something he thought was a much more significant problem - dealing with muddy grass verges in the East Area. As no other councillors had indicated any dissent to the prioritisation the meeting’s chair Cllr Herbert appeared to indicate that Cllr Pogonowski was being impertinent to push the issue to a vote. Cllr Herbert and I think Cllr Pogonowski were surprised that some of the Liberal Democrats who don’t speak, stuck their hands up to support Cllr Pogonowski and his motion was passed (4:2, with many Cllrs abstaining). The result of the vote meant a “very high” priority was assigned to dealing with grass verges, putting them a fraction ahead of the toad crossings, which were given a priority of merely “high”.

My View

A webpage on the Burnside allotments states:

The most commonly seen amphibian is the aptly named common toad, which is very numerous especially in damp places such as piles of wood or compost heaps (turning over compost heaps must be done with care!).There are also common frogs on site.

It appears that we’re dealing with a species which at least locally is present in very healthy numbers and isn’t in any way endangered or threatened. Also there are no curbs directly between toads in the allotments and the water; the curbs are only a hurdle to toads approaching the water directly from properties on Burnside.

• The curbs appear quite new; the committee ought ask officers to look into why any problem was not anticipated and ensure the same situation doesn’t arise again. (Clearly there’s a lack of thinking in local councils about effects of new barriers on wildlife as the recently built guided bus has been reported to trap toads too).
• As usual with public sector procurement the costs involved here are far too high; if there is a need to do something then perhaps the cheapest option would be to remove a couple of curbs stones in the middle of the burnside and make good with some tarmac . It’s a short stretch and toads can already get round at either end, I’d have thought a couple of hundred pounds would go a long way.
• In situations like this where the toad crossing appears to be me to be a luxury extra and not a major problem I think the role of taxpayers and councillors ought not be to provide the funds but merely to facilitate action; ie. just as you can pay for a dropped curb outside your house if the council agrees to it; toad lovers ought be able to pay for toad crossings if they can persuade councillors to allow them. (I would expect toad lovers might direct their resources more efficiently than councillors)
• If there are rare, seasonal, problems then perhaps a less costly more community focused solution could be found. eg. a cheap temporary sign which could be kept at the allotments and deployed when there are toads on the road, this could be used to alert motorists and also encourage members of the public to help any struggling toads. Last March on Stanley Street a local resident appears to have taken it upon themselves to graffiti the road with a warning about toads on the road. (While a sign might have been better, this shows there are people prepared to take action without state assistance and state funding. )
• It may be that survival of the fittest (and smartest) has already solved the problem as it sounds as if this year’s toads are not ending up stuck on the road.
• Adding the Burnside site to Froglife’s online list of toad crossings might result assist in recruiting more people to voluntarily patrol - it appears a sites elsewhere in and around Cambridge are known and people regularly provide help to many toads trying to cross roads. According to the Froglife Map there’s a site in Madingley where over 1,000 toads have been helped (there is a BBC article on it too).

Contents of a needle exchange kit. Image: Todd Huffman (licence)

Cambridge City Council’s East Area Committee on the 19th of August 2010 was told of problems of drug use and drug dealing in the area around the York Street playground.

Police Sergent Kay Stevens painted a picture of dealers running rings around the police and astonishingly reported there was: “constant chat and banter between the lead dealer and a PCSO on the neighbourhood policing team”. Sgt. Stevens told councillors and the public that while the identity of the lead dealer was known to the police they were finding it hard to get the evidence required to arrest them.

The playground at the centre of the drug problem has recently been refurbished and had been re-opened by the Mayor. At the opening contractors told councillors about the drug dealing and drug use which had been occurring on the site while work was in-progress.

City and County Councillors at the East Area committee meeting unanimously made dealing with the drug related problems in the York Street area police priority. Sgt. Stevens gave the clearest explanation I have heard in a number of years of observing police priorities being set across Cambridge of the effects of councillors setting a police priority; however no clear strategy for bringing the dealers to justice was outlined.

Detailed Report

The drug use and dealing was first raised during the “Open Forum” section of the meeting by member of the public Catherine Slack. She said she wanted to raise residents’ concerns about drug taking and drug dealing of class A drugs in the East Area. She asked if she needed to go into details, or if councillors were already aware of what was happening. Councillors indicated she should continue and she explained her knowledge of drug dealing and use in the York Street area came from her membership of two neighbourhood watch groups and her attendance at the Petersfield Area Community Trust (PACT) annual meeting where she had heard concerns from local residents about drug dealing. She told the committee that she had herself personally witnessed drug deals and drug taking in broad daylight and was concerned as she was aware of other crime associated with the drug use occurring. She said she was aware some action was being taken as a CCTV camera had been put up in one location where dealing had been taking place, which she had been told would be in place for one month. She asked if this had pushed the problem to someone else’s street and questioned what the council and police’s properties were for the future. Her remarks concluded with her alerting councillors to the fact children were finding needles in play areas.

Discussion of this point was deferred to the police priority setting element of the meeting, (the obscurely titled agenda item called “Safer Neighbourhoods”).

Abbey Cllr Adam Pogonowski asked that the Thorpe Way area of his ward be discussed at that point too, saying there were similar problems there.

When it came to the police priority setting the police recommended setting a new priority of :

Anti-social behaviour in the York Street playground and adjacent streets linked to drug misuse

Sgt. Stevens said that even before complaints from members of the community started to come in PCSOs and Neighbourhood Policing Team officers had been aware of the problem and had been: “disrupting activity though both high visibility and plain clothes patrols; including stop and search of both subjects and vehicles”. The police sergeant added: “It isn’t as simple as just tackling those using drugs, it is a societal problem, the dealers are very careful and in what they’re prepared to do with the drugs if approached well [put it this way] they’re taking huge risks themselves”, she explained that as a result of the care with which the drug dealers’ practice their activities the police were left with “limited options on fines and enforcement”.

I think the Sergeant ought to have gone further and set out any loopholes in the law which are being exploited by the dealers so that councillors and the public can lobby to address them. I am worried that the police may consider that just because an individual is caught with less than the prescribed amount of a drug which if present a court would be required by law to assume was being carried for supply then they cannot, if other evidence is offered, be charged with the offence of supplying a controlled drug. If the problems are with police policies, or with the CPS, then we need that information to be released to so those matters can be addressed. Similarly the Sargent should, I think, have explained why even if a dealer swallows drugs, or hides them elsewhere inside their body that poses an insurmountable challenge to the police and prevents them from charging them and putting them in-front of magistrates.

The committee were told that the CCTV camera which has been installed near the York Street playground had indeed caused displacement into surrounding streets.

Sgt. Stevens explained to councillors why it would help if they made the issue a local priority, she said that currently a lot of the information on the drug dealing was anecdotal and there were very few formal reports from residents. By prioritising the matter councillors were told this would enable the police to encourage reporting (the committee wasn’t told how).

Interestingly the sergeant revealed that by setting the priority the response received by those calling the police to report instances of drug dealing in the area would change; she said that with a priority set “callers should get a better response from control room when reporting drug dealing in the East of the city”. This raises the question in my mind of what happens now when reports of drug dealing are received - are they not recorded? not acted upon? - councillors didn’t ask.

Member of the public Catherine Slack spoke again, she asked Sgt. Stevens about the resources the police had available to them to tackle the drug dealing problem in the York Street area. She spoke in a measured manner, making clear that she had a good relationship with local police officers, but questioned what would would change - pointing out that as reported by the sergeant: “the main dealer is running rings around the police”. Catherine Slack explained to the sergeant that she was “concerned you don’t have enough of something”. She also suggested that: “rather than repeatedly chasing one person - there must be a different approach”.

Sgt. Stevens reported that if councillors set a priority then she would be able to bid, on a daily basis, for resources from the police’s “reactive teams” and other additional local and central resources to be directed to address the problem. It was suggested that a priority would also help ensure City Council outreach teams engaged with the drug users, and would mean the police’s own engagement team would be able to “talk to users while they’re awaiting to receive their delivery”. (Are these police employees or police officers who will be tasked with chatting to those waiting to buy class A drugs? What do they do when a dealer arrives? - again councillors didn’t ask questions)

The final thing a priority would enable reported Sgt. Stevens was a: “regular first thing in the morning litter pick” to clear up needles.

Councillors noted the recent increase in the numbers of needles being found in the streets, not just in the York Street area but in Romsey and at the Coleridge Rec and in Abbey. They asked if this was a growing issue reflecting a growing prevalence of class A drug use in the city. Neither the police or the council’s officers working on “community safety” had any response.

As it had not been answered Cllr Howell asked the question again, asking: “Do we have data on the number of active drug users and how that is increasing?” He said “Clearly we know or at least suspect who the dealers are; do we know who the users are and do they have access to rehabilitation?”

Cllr Howell’s question wasn’t answered. Labour Councillor Tariq Sadiq interjected with a rather silly “declaration of a personal interest”. He said that when living on York Street he had been burgled by a drug addict. Cllr Sadiq reported that while the culprit was caught he never got his playstation back. Cllr Herbert jokingly asked if that was when he became a councillor.

Right at the last minute, after all councillors who had indicated their wish to speak on the matter had done so, new Liberal Democrat councillor for Petersfield Sarah Brown insisted on being given the opportunity to add something important before the vote. Cllr Brown appeared to me to be making the astounding argument that taking action on the drug dealing was essential to save the Liberal Democrat council embarrassment. She told the committee that the playground in question on York Street had just been redeveloped and was opened by the Mayor just a few weeks ago and stressed how this was a high profile, flagship, project in the area. (The implication I took from that was that she thought that it reflected badly on the council that it was now being rendered unsafe due to the drug use and dealing).

Cllr Brown reported that councillors at the opening had been told by the contractors who had been working on the project that drug use and sales were occurring on the site during construction; she also revealed to the committee that the CCTV had intentionally been deployed in an effort to displace the drug dealing from the new, prestigious, playground.

Tackling Drug Dealing in Abbey

Cllr Adam Pogonowski queried if drug dealing was classed as “anti-social behaviour” as he sought to amend another policing priority for Abbey Ward which the police had proposed ought read:

Youth-related anti-social behaviour and criminal damage in the public areas of the Thorpe Way estate and Jack Warren Green.

Cllr Pogonowski’s amendment was to add drug related problems involving people of all ages, to the priority. Sgt. Stevens initially argued against this amendment on the grounds it would leave the police unsure of which element of the priority councillors were asking them to focus on. The committee supported Cllr Pogonowski though and the chair, Cllr Herbert, argued that the priority was acceptably narrow by virtue of being tightly limited geographically.

Cllr Pogonowski suggested that drug dealers operated throughout the city and opined that tackling the problems in these areas of his ward would have a beneficial knock-on effect elsewhere.

Labour councillor for Abbey Cllr Heart made an an odd and rambling contribution apparently in the style of a speech by John Prescott. She said:

I want to investigate a new priority. I’m an Abbey ward councillor and am grateful for the updates on ASB and I support the continuation of youth related. I want to ask on process. If it is a resource issue how can the committee help on resources? Basically if you are aware and have intelligence that a certain house; that you have reliable evidence a person is dealing drugs at an address and have known about it for some time you obviously have to prove it is happening, prove witnesses are reliable, and it has to be evidence based. If for example in Thorpe Way you were aware of a house and had all the evidence…

Sgt. Stevens replied to say: “If you do have that sort of evidence, do pass it on. We do need a certain amount of intelligence and items to put before magistrates and we are doing more address warrants now but I only have a certain amount of officers and can only do so many things.

Cllr Wright another Abbey councillor spoke to support what Cllr Heart had said. She said it takes the police many years to close down known crack houses in Abbey, she said the problem was not so much the number of such houses in the ward but the degree of impact on the immediate community and impact she said was much more significant than other crimes that might be taking place.

As usual I have made my best efforts to make this an accurate report of the meeting; any corrections either by email or in the comments are welcome. Especially useful would be confirmation of the spelling of Catherine Slatt’s name [Update 16.20 20/08/2010 I have been informed by email that it is Catherine Slack and have amended the article]

Sometimes comedy can be found in the most unusual of places. Earlier this evening I was reading Cambridge City Council’s mayoral engagements webpage and my eye was caught by an entry for the deputy mayor, Liberal Democrat Ian Nimmo-Smith who was leader of the City Council up to May this year. The schedule reveals that at 7.30pm on Sunday the fifth of September he will be attending an Economic Crime Symposium dinner at Jesus College.

The list of engagements does not reveal if Liberal Democrat Cllr Nimmo-Smith will be speaking at the dinner at Jesus College. If he is to make a speech Cllr Nimmo-Smith’s period as leader of the City Council has certainly given him plenty of experience of what many might consider to be economic crimes. The major events which occurred on his watch that may be of interest to those attending the symposium are presumably:

• Losing around £640,000 when an online ticket seller for the Folk Festival failed to hand over the money taken to the council.
• Investing £9,000,000 of Cambridge City’s money in Icelandic banks, only for the banks to go bust.

If he’s looking to keep the conference goers entertained as he welcomes them to our city he could take the opportunity to eat his hat, something he promised to do if the city didn’t get all its money back from Iceland.

Delegates might also like to hear about council activities such as the harassment though the courts of junior research student for tax they are not liable for. There are also many council spending decisions which while involving much smaller sums than the main instances where under Cllr Nimmo-Smith’s tenure in charge Cambridge taxpayers lost money, still demonstrate a reckless disregard for the value of public money such as spending over the odds all sorts of items from CCTV operator chairs to double yellow lines.

Taking a wider view, one of Cambridge Liberal Democrat’s biggest economic crimes in my view has been to not support the A14 upgrade, leaving the City connected to the much of the country via a dangerous, congested road on which journey times are highly variable. The Liberal Democrat’s passionate anti-car stance has also made it harder to live, work, and run business in the city.

A further economic crime in my view has been the city council’s failure to act to make open market housing in the city more affordable. It has levied high “s.106″ development taxes where the funds have not been applied to projects without which planning permission for the new homes would not have been granted; it has expanded conservation areas; it has insisted on massive percentages of new developments being not open market housing, but social housing which has no effect on house prices. I believe its misguided environmental policies which call for the scientifically ludicrous 100% efficient homes to be built may result in higher energy costs in the long term as residents will have to maintain economically inefficient power sources and will not be free to benefit from the open market competition available to those on the grid.

The event programme states the Serious Fraud Office of England and Wales is a principle sponsor of the conference. Perhaps Cllr Nimmo-Smith will return from the event with an update for the city’s electors on investigations into the whereabouts of the £640,000 of folk festival ticket money councillors have indicated they believe to have been taken by fraudsters?

When acting as deputy mayor Cllr Nimmo-Smith wears a large gold medal on a thick blue ribbon.

Cambridge City Council leader, Liberal Democrat, Sian Reid went on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on Wednesday morning to talk about money which under her party’s leadership the city council had invested in Icelandic banks which have now gone bust. Cambridge City Council had invested £5 million with Landsbanki and £4 million with Heritable Bank Limited.

During her radio interview Cllr Reid said :

The Heritable loan; that should all be repaid by the end of 2012

and in response to a question asking “What about the £5m which is in Landsbanki how much of that will we get back?” she said:

we might expect up to 95% back … we would expect, to have settled it by something like 2013.

At Cambridge City Council’s Full Council meeting on the 22nd of July Cllr Reid came across as much less bullish about the prospect of getting such a large fraction of the lost money back. I think its wrong to give one impression to the public listening to breakfast radio and another to better informed councillors. Leader of the Labour opposition Lewis Herbert asked Cllr Reid an oral question:

What progress has been made, and what steps is she currently leading, to recover the £5m of the council’s money in Icelandic Bank Landsbanki, and also recover at least part of the £644,000 involved in the 2008 Folk Festival on-line tickets fiasco?

Cllr Reid responded to say that the council’s claim agianst Landsbanki was passing though Icelandic legal system and the court date date would be October 2010 at the earliest.

She said that the council was already receiving “dividends” from Heritable and had so far received £1.68m which amounted to 41.25 “pence in the pound”, she said she anticipated about twice that to be eventually returned.

Cllr Herbert suggested that the fact the council was getting money back from Heritable was due to the Labour chancellor Alistair Darling having used “any legislation possible” to keep the money in the UK protected.

He also commented that he thought it was over ambitious of leader to go on BBC Cambridgeshire and suggest that almost 100% of the money would come back.

Sian Reid brusquely replied: “I’ve not been on BBC Cambridgeshire saying we are going to get nearly 100% back”

Cllr Reid did not address the question of recovery of the Folk Festival funds.

Transcripts of Radio Exchanges

Below are some of the questions which Jeremy Sallis put to council leader Sian Reid, along with her replies. I think they strongly suggest that Cllr Reid is expecting almost all the money to be returned;

Jeremy Sallis: Ian Nimmo-Smith, the previous leader who you replaced, said he’d eat his hat if you didn’t get the money back. Has he got his salt and pepper out Sian? Are you confident you will get the majority of this money back?

Sian Reid: Yes, we’re very much on track with Heritable, we’ve got almost £1.7m back out of £4m and we’ve still got schedules, you know, payments - many payments to come and a schedule of payments running at about 5% of the loan running until September ‘12, so I think we’re very confident of that yeah.

[If those were monthly payments of 5% then as there are more than twenty months between now and September 2012 we'd be getting all our money back.]

[...]

Jeremy Sallis: What about the £5m which is in Landsbanki how much of that will we get back?

Sian Reid: The receivership arrangements for that will go through the Icelandic courts and not the British courts and that action is due to start there in the autumn and finish in Spring 2011 so we won’t really know the solid outcome until then. We are on the one hand being advised by the government public finance body that we might expect up to 95% back but on the other hand we’re being advised that you know until things go through the courts there’s obviously uncertainty about that and it depends on if British local authorities, of which there are very many of us, are seen as a priority ahead of other creditors.

[...]

Jeremy Sallis: So we’re looking at getting 85% of the money back from both of these banks by what point Sian, by twenty-what?

Sian Reid: More! More! On the Heritable loan that should all be repaid by the end of 2012. On the Landsbanki one as I said the matter still has to go through the Icelandic courts, we are acting with many other local authorities and we’re being advised by the Local Government Association and the timing of that, it will be over, we would expect, to have settled it by something like 2013.

Jeremy Sallis: OK Sian thank you very much, that’s Sian Reid who is the leader of Cambridge City Council.

The Impression I Gained

I listened to the above exchanges on the radio on Wednesday morning and I got the impression that Sian Reid was saying that she thought the city council would eventually get all our money back from Iceland.

While Cllr Reid did say during her BBC Cambridgeshire interview that she was expecting 85% of the money back from Heritable and 95% from Landsbanki I thought the overall impression given, especially given her cries of “more! more!” when the prospect of an 85% return was put to her was that she was expecting essentially all of the money back. I felt she repeatedly implied this towards the end of the interview.

Denial of Responsibility

The Liberal Democrats never act as if they’re actually running the council; they take the approach that things just happen around them. They are reluctant to grasp the reigns of power, apparently thinking they’ll get themselves into less trouble that way. The Lib Dems really appear to believe they are not responsible for losing the city’s money in Iceland, as is shown by the following exchange:

Jeremy Sallis: Does the City Council, do you consider yourselves culpable in any way for getting council tax payer’s money tied up in Icelandic banks? Do you accept any responsibility for that? Do you consider it was your fault that money was invested over there?

Sian Reid: We followed the very best advice that was available at the time and in-line with very many other authorities and this question has been discussed very often in committees and in council. We’ve never been able to pinpoint a decision, any kind of decision which we think was a poor decision - on the contrary we’ve always followed the very best practice guidance.

Rob Fairhead of Network Rail showing a Cambridge Cycling Campaign open meeting a computer generated image of Cambridge station with its new island platform. .

On the first Tuesday of every month the Cambridge Cycling Campaign hold an open meeting, usually at the Friends Meeting House. I attended the July 2010 event where Rob Fairhead and Alison Clark from Network Rail gave a presentation about the proposed new “Island Platform” at Cambridge station.

Key points

• The new island platform will allow more 12 coach trains to be run between Cambridge and London.
• The new platform is to be accessed by a footbridge. The bridge is to have stairs and a small lift which bikes will struggle to fit in. Members of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign are unhappy that Network Rail, by their own admission, did not consider the special nature of Cambridge station with its large number of cyclists.
• The new platform might provide a stepping stone to a new eastern access.
• The new platforms are to be officially known as “Platform 7″ and “Platform 8″. Mr Fairhead took credit for this, some present jokingly suggested his choice of names lacked a spark of creativity or magic. (The existing platforms are numbered 1-6)
• Network Rail are keen to experiment with double-decker cycle racks at Cambridge station as an immediate solution to the bike parking problem.
• Network Rail is keen to sell off railway land near the train washer for development
• Cambridge will be connected, via Thameslink, to the continent, by 2016. Trains from Cambridge to Paris are not promised but the possibility of them appears to be getting closer.

The presentation to the Cycling Campaign meeting was held following a similar, private, briefing the company had given city councillors the week before. A number of City Councillors, (Rosenstiel, Brown, Pogonowski and Howell) attended both briefings. Councillors, a number of whom are members of the campaign, commented saying they were present both to hear the views of members of the cycling campaign and just in-case the two presentations were different.

The presentation started with some history. We were told that proposals to expand Cambridge station had been prepared in 2006, as part of a scheme to introduce a high frequency rail shuttle service between a relocated Waterbeach station and Addenbrookes. While that scheme didn’t go forward some of the plans remained available to be utilised.

Mr Fairhead was asked if the new island platform proposal was potentially subject to public sector cuts. He responded to say: “No”. He explained that a complete rejig of the current access charges and Network Rail’s five year plan would be needed in order to cancel the scheme, and as such it had a 99.9% chance of going ahead.

The new platform will take 12 coach trains, and enable more 12 coach trains to be run to London. As currently trains would run full length only between Cambridge and London and would operate with fewer carriages to the north. We were told it would relieve congestion and overcrowding in rush times and would enable the separation of North and South bound traffic.

At the moment Cambridge is the bottleneck on routes through it, with the two new platforms (on either side of the island) the constraints on the rail network would move elsewhere.

New services would be possible, for example a half hourly Birmingham to Cambridge cross country train.

Currently safety time-outs (two minutes) on the points cause extra journey time with trains waiting out on tracks away from the platform waiting to get in. The “scissors” points arrangements in-front of platform 1 at Cambridge which allows different trains to get to, and leave from, the adjacent platforms 1 and 4 was described as “not seen much in the UK network” but we were told there are “lots in Europe”.

The platform will be built on space currently occupied by two freight tracks; the island will be 9m wide.

The footbridge to the new island platform will be enclosed, and dry, it will be accessed by 3.3m wide stairs. The footbridge will be to the left as you exit the ticket hall, its presence will result in platform 6 being shortened by a few metres (but if needed space is available for platform 6 to be extended further away from the station).

If the same timetable as is currently used (but with more 12 coach trains) the island platform would only need to be used in rush hour, however operators may use it to avoid conflicts. For example it could speed up access to Stansted airport from the north as currently trains are timetabled to take 7-8 minutes to get through Cambridge.

A full re-design of Cambridge station, moving the tracks and signals is at least a decade away. It was last done in 1982. This isn’t a “re-signalling”, its “just” a replacement of two tracks with a new platform.

A “St. Ives to Paris” service was noted to have been something pro rail and anti guided-bus group “Cast Iron” had used in their campaign. Connecting Cambridge to the channel tunnel and continental Europe was discussed in relation to a connection with Thameslink - using a tunnel which already exists but in which track has not been laid. Thameslink - Cambridge connection is being “assumed” to be in place by 2016. New “super fast” trains area also proposed though it is not yet determined if they will go only as far as Letchworth or if they will come to Cambridge. (I think getting the fast trains to Cambridge is something Cambridge’s MP ought be lobbying for).

We were told that “as of today the Thameslink related work is funded”.

If anyone knows more about Thameslink and connections to the continent please do expand in the comments

The Bridge to the Island Platform

Campaign members noted that Cambridge’s unique situation with respect to high levels of cycle usage had not been considered when designing the bridge. They pointed out that a proposed lift was too small to comfortably take a bike (a typical bike could only be put in diagonally). “Guttering” to make it possible to roll bikes up the stairs was suggested and discussed.

Network Rail apologised and accepted that the degree of cycling in Cambridge had not been properly considered in the design of the bridge. They said that as the plan is to have the new bridge in place by September 2011 it is not possible to change what is proposed at this late stage. (I’m sure that kind of nonsense wouldn’t happen in many other countries!)

Those present pushed the question of “guttering” - a track to wheel your bike up - along side the stairs. As a non-structural change this was something which the Network Rail reps said they would be able to look into. The guttering wasn’t presented as an ideal option though, more as a way of mitigating the effect of the failure to specify a decent sized lift or appropriate ramps.

It was questioned if a gutter would be permitted under the Disability Discrimination Act on the grounds that it made access to, and use of a handrail harder and might necessitate the removal of a lower handrail which the questioner said was now compulsory.

An assurance that Network Rail would consult closely with the Cambridge Cycling Campaign over the detailed design of any gutter and handrail was given. Members of the campaign noted examples present in other stations and Mr Fairhead said he would go and see them.

Cllr Adam Pogonowski suggested an escalator, with a special “non-step” section onto which a bike could be wheeled. He was told this wasn’t practical due to the late stage in the design process and the fact the space under the stairs was already earmarked to be used for the lift machinery. The reason for having the lift machinery under the stairs is to keep the profile of the new bridge low and prevent it having too much impact on the appearance of the station from the front. (Personally I’d prefer functional and elegant design and I’m not too fussed about preserving existing appearances and views in this utilitarian area).

Martin Lucas-Smith asked for some detail on exactly what was proposed, including what the dimensions of the lift were, so that those in the room who had not already been involved in campaigning on the subject could be brought up-to-speed. We were then told the lift was to be a square with sides 1.6m in length, giving a diameter of 2.25m. It was noted that the average bike was 1.8m long so would not fit straight in, but would need to go in diagonally.

Mr Fairhead said that the lift complies with regulations intended to make sure it was large enough for wheelchair users and it could comfortably carry “The Department for Transport’s regulation wheelchair”.

It was pointed out to Mr Fairhead that placing a bike diagonally in the lift would be likely to upset other lift users. Campaign members joined in to share their personal experience reporting that in practice such behaviour, understandably, did annoy others especially people who might be penned in behind the bike in the lift.

Continuing the Presentation

Having been distracted from the main thread of the presentation by discussion of the lift for some time the presentation returned to the prepared slides. We were told that the new platform would “not be minimal” and it would have the same “look and feel” as the existing platform. There will be a coffee shop there from day one, and more facilities, such as toilets, could be added in the future.

The potential for road access from the East; so that people dropping others off at the station had a wider range of options was discussed. Network rail said there was existing road access to the tracks near the toilet emptier and carriage washer. Work on this area is scheduled for May / November 2011 during weekend daytimes. Others may have grasped the detail of what is proposed better than I did, but I think the idea is to move the facilities, creating more land at the edge of the railway without tracks on it, the primary motive for this from Network Rail’s point of view would be to release land for development (they said they were keen to release the value of the land), but there would need to be master-planning with Cambridge City Council and the possibility of an access to the station is there.

The island platform was described as a potential “first link” to an eastern access to the station.

Giving an interesting insight into the way Network Rail runs, essentially as part of the Government, we were told that it would be up to the Department for Transport, and not Network Rail, to decide if the land to the eastern side of the tracks was needed for provision of the rail services. We were told a key meeting to discuss “if the Government has requirements” was to be held the week following the presentation to the cycling campaign. I would like to see Cambridge’s MP ensure he, and the Cambridge public are kept informed of the Government’s position with respect to selling off land near Cambridge station so representations can be made if necessary. We don’t want to see a quick “profit” for a here today gone tomorrow “company” at the expense of flexibility for the future of Cambridge’s key transport interchanges.

The fact that some land is currently “open green space” was noted and it was suggested that Network Rail ought do something with it before the local residents get too fond of it and might want it kept - making establishment of a new access harder. The potential for a walking / cycle access from near the mini-roundabout on Rustat Road was what was being discussed.

Mr Fairhead said that the position on potential new access routes to the station was much as discussed in the cycling campaign’s newsletter 42 produced in June/July 2002.

Mention of newsletter 42 prompted Mr Fairhead to note that it had been the issue which a contained a cartoon, drawn in response to a letter he had written to the campaign. He told the group that as a junior official in Railtrack, in his first few weeks after joining the organisation, he had been asked to respond to a letter from Cambridge Cycling Campaign about the Tins Path between Mill Road and Cherry Hinton. He admitted, and now joked, about his inappropriate and pompous response to lobbying from the Cycling Campaign who were seeking improvements to the railway bridge:

Railtrack agrees with Mr Richards’ view that cycling across the bridge is an act of trespass, as the bridge is not dedicated to the public save as a footpath. I would be grateful if you could brief members of your campaign of this

Mr Fairhead said that he found the cartoon which accompanied his quote in the Cycling Campaign’s newsletter funny and well deserved.

Back to the Lift

Cycling Campaign member Simon Nuttall described Network Rail as being “on a different planet”. He was complaining about them: “designing a footbridge which doesn’t accept cycles” and specifying a lift which would only take one bike at a time. Exasperated he asked: “How has this happened”.

Mr Fairhead responded to say that Network Rail’s design decisions had been made under pressure.

Those present made further comments on the proposed bridge. One expressed concern that there might be an “unfortunate accident” involving users of Brompton bikes. The rationale behind this statement wasn’t explained and the concern didn’t appear to be widely shared . Another person predicted cyclists getting off trains on the island platform and queuing up to get up the stairs. Cycle congestion was specifically anticipated with the first train either end of the period during which carrying bikes on trains is banned during rush hour.

Mr Fairhead said; “there is understandable concern and anger, I am not standing up here and defending it”.

It was pointed out that it was not only cyclists who had a demand for a decent sized lift (or ramped access to the bridge), many people with wheeled luggage use Cambridge Station, for example students, tourists, and those travelling via Stansted Airport.

It was noted that planning / listed building permission will be needed for the new bridge.

It may be worth objecting on the grounds of the lift being too small, and negating the utility of the proposed development, though quite if councillors would be able and willing to reject the application, or impose conditions requiring a bigger lift. Even if councillors don’t feel they are in a position to reject the planning application I think they, and Cambridge’s MP, ought to put pressure on Network Rail to revisit their bridge designs. I have not noticed a planning application yet.

A Second Bridge

A bridge at the Hills Road end of the station was suggested, where there might be more room to create large, gently sloping ramps.

Mr Fairhead said that a footbridge from the Cambridge Leisure site still had planning permission, but that was proposed to land outside the station, and not on the island platform.

New cycle park

The question of who is to pay for the new cycle park proposed as part of the CB1 development was discussed.

The group was told that while it was “part of the CB1 development” it relied on money put in by the City Council.

David Earl asked if it would be possible to link to the new bridge directly from the first floor level of the proposed new multi-story cycle park. Mr Fairhead said while it might be structurally relatively straightforward there would be a challenge relating to the “paid and unpaid areas” needing a staffed barrier. When those present suggested staffing wasn’t necessary as those needing assistance wouldn’t have far to go to the main ticket hall we were told Network Rail does not allow unstaffed barriers.

Mr Fairhead suggested that was the kind of thing that a potential new franchisee might include in a bid.

Access from Mill Road

Jim Chisholm noted a potential cycle and pedestrian access route under Mill Road bridge was currently blocked by the presence of equipment related to electric trains. He suggested that if the electric had to be turned off and adjusted when the footbridge was put into place then that might be an opportune moment to also move the equipment from under the bridge. He suggested opening up access from Mill Road bridge, letting people cycle to the station without having to cycle on Devonshire Road (where parked cars mean there is little space for a bike and car to pass).

See also:

• The Chisholm Trail - first publication of the idea
• Chisholm Trail page on the Cycling Campaign website including a clearer map.

Mr Fairhead was encouraging on the subject of access from Mill Road, he said that the mindset within Network Rail had changed and they were now quite pro people having more access to, and along, railway land as they had found that the presence of paths and cycle routes reduced vandalism and graffiti of their trains and property.

Double Deck Cycle Parking

The suggestion of installing double deck cycle parking as seen in London Liverpool Street was raised. Various alternative formats two-layer racks were debated. There was some concern people would find them difficult to operate, but Network Rail appeared very open to the idea of installing some different rack types as a trial to see if they would get used. Their representatives promised to pursue the idea.

Martin Lucas-Smith suggested switching some car parking spaces to cycle parking. He said the cost of a car park space was clear - it was £1,500 / year but there was no one putting a value on the cycle parking. He made a suggestion that Cycle Cambridge (the bit of the County Council which details with the Cycling Demonstration Town improvements) ought to “buy out” the spaces as a way of forcing the issue, i.e. pay the cost of the lost revenue that the train company would have received from car parking and pay for the installation of stands. I got the impression that an alternative option to achieve the same aim might be for the Department for Transport to say that they don’t need or want the funds raised from the car parking spaces and make clear they would prefer some of land to be used for cycle parking, and adjust Network Rail’s public funding by the consequent, negligible, amount.

Chesterton Station

There was a brief discussion of Chesterton Station, with the suggestion that opening would reduce the demand for car parking in Cambridge. Those present asked why a simple “Waterbeach style” station couldn’t be installed very rapidly at Chesterton, with someone pointing to the fact a new station in Workington was put up in six days following floods. Network rail’s response was that in Chesterton there are freight tracks and freight trains in the way, the land is contaminated, and the Disability Discrimination Act created challenges. Those present jokingly queried if those barriers would disappear if “we managed to flood Cambridge Station”.

Plane Tree Avenue, Jesus Green, Cambridge.

On Thursday the 1st of July 2010 I attended a seminar and workshop on new tree planting for Jesus Green and Midsummer Common. The fact the meeting had been scheduled was only revealed in public following a question I asked at the West Central Area committee on the 24th of June. At the time of West Central Area Committee the meeting was reported to be invite-only. I made my opposition to this clear but the executive councillor responsible, Cllr Cantrill, said he was not opening up the meeting to everyone.

During the afternoon of Tuesday the 29th of June, with just one clear day left before the meeting, the decision to hold the session in private was reversed and the meeting was opened up to all who expressed an interest. This U-Turn was announced in a city council press release. I was sent a copy of the press release by email, though at the time I wasn’t aware it was a public press release and not a personal email to me offering me the opportunity to register to attend. Even as people were walking into the building some of those attending were unsure of if it was open to the public or not.

I tweeted about my plan to attend the meeting when I was still unsure of its status and Cambridge resident Daniel O’Donovan responded to say:

@RTaylorUK JG resident here, would have come had I; 1) Not thought that it was ‘private’ 2) Knew when and where it was.

and then

Cambridge CC fulfilling ‘openness’ pledge by running an open meeting but neglecting to tell anyone about it. #CambridgeCityCouncil

I suspect Mr O’Donovan was not alone. Open meetings of the Jesus Green Association (JGA) and Friends of Midsummer Common (FoMC) can each attract around a hundred people, with relatively little overlap between the two groups yet I think only four members of the public, including me, attended the event. We were joined by representatives of Jesus College, the JGA, FoMC, Brunswick and North Kite Residents Association, Cambridge Past Present and Future and an ex. council tree officer. The eight to ten attendees were almost outnumbered by councillors and council officers. Roderick Cantrill the executive councillor for Arts and Recreation (an area which includes responsibility for the city’s green spaces) was present from the start and he was joined later by East Chesterton Councillor Clare Blair and Market Ward Councillor Tim Bick. Despite Midsummer Common and Jesus Green being in their ward the other representatives of Market Ward, Cllrs Rosenstiel and Dixon, were not present, and it wasn’t clear if they had been invited. A large contingent of city council officers were present including:

• Director of Environment and Planning - Simon Payne
• Principal Arboricultural Officer - Diana Oviatt-Ham
• Head of Active Communities - Debbie Kaye
• Principal Landscape Architect - Dinah Foley-Norman
• Tree Officer - Kenny McGregor
• Historic Environment Manager - John Preston
• Green Space Manager - Alistair Wilson

I hope they weren’t all on overtime.

Cllr Cantrill’s Introduction

Mr Payne introduced Cllr Cantrill, making clear he had only recently taken on responsibility for the Arts and Recreation portfolio.

Cllr Cantrill began rather abstractly by saying Midsummer Common had evolved over time and told those present that five hundred years ago there had been no crossings over the river and now there were two. He eventually moved onto the purpose of the meeting, which he said was “speaking to you the residents” and talked about the responsibility our generation has to leave the common in a condition so that future generations can enjoy it.

Cantrill admitted that there had been a “rocky journey over the last few years” with respect to tree planting on the Midsummer Common and Jesus Green. He said: “on behalf of the City Council - we would like to have done things better”. Cantrill outlined his timetable for the future and said: “the journey will deliver planting in the autumn”.

He then made the astoundingly unqualified statement that:

This public event is the first part of the public consultation process.

He made no mention of the fact it was Thursday afternoon and the meeting had only become “Public” on the Tuesday afternoon (though still apparently required registration). Cllr Cantrill has form for doing this when he, as Executive Councillor for Customer Services and Resources he was a member of the Love Cambridge board. There a members meeting was only opened to the public at the last moment and afterwards cited as being public.

John Preston - The Wider Context

Mr Preston said that the tree planting plans should be looked at in the context of Cambridge and with particular regard to Jesus Green and Midsummer Common’s place in a line of green spaces from the “Mays course”, by which I think he means Ditton Fields, through Stourbridge Common, and the green areas along the river on the other side of the city. He said these were a “sequence of historic spaces” and showed an image of Cambridge from before Midsummer Common and Jesus Green were split in the mid 1800s.
arbrocultureal
Mr Preston said that large stature trees were an important part of the character of the spaces.

Mr Preston also told the group about what Trinity College were doing at their avenue of trees between the college and the backs, they’ve planted new trees on either side to create the avenue of the future.

We were also told about the council’s plans to review its Arboricultural Strategy. (I have previously made an FOI request for the council’s current Arboricultural Strategy, but a year after it was made the request has yet to be fulfilled Discussion FOI correspondence)

Maps were shown of the various conservation areas, in areas surrounding the commons. Victoria Avenue is the border of the the central conservation area.

Mr Preston pointed out there are downloadable assessments of Jesus Green and Victoria Avenue created as part of the Cambridge Historic Core Appraisal.

Peter Constable - Chairman of the JGA

Mr Constable addressed the meeting saying he felt he was in the presence of people who loved Cambridge’s green spaces even more than he did. He said the members of the JGA looked on the green as their garden. He said that the layout of the green at the moment is “excellent and historic” and he didn’t think that would want altering at all. He said the JGA’s would like to see the area conserved, preserved, maintained and enhanced. He said he was in favour of re-planting for the long-term and said we ought be planning now, in the current exercise, to replace trees which are expected to need to be felled in the next 10-20 years.

Cambridge’s City Council’s principal tree officer admits Midsummer Common’s trees have been in a poor state for a decade.

Principal Arboricultural Officer - Diana Oviatt-Ham on “Issues, Principles and Choices”

The officer started by saying: “In the past we had not involved you very much, but we have changed and are trying to now”. I thought that was quite an ironic way to start given the small number of people who she was addressing. She showed a photograph of officer Kenny McGregor talking to a group of people about the trees on Lammas Land to illustrate the concept of tree officers engaging with the public.

Diana Oviatt-Ham then told us all how trees were good for people’s physical and mental health and said they made places attractive both for residents as well as tourists and those seeking to hold events on the green spaces. She asserted that trees “reduce pollution”, and said that temperatures in the shade of a tree can be up to 10˚C cooler than in direct sunlight. Turning to noise, we were told that in fact trees did not have any effect on noise levels but that people had an impression that they did and Diana Oviatt-Ham claimed that “a calming effect exists”. I felt this passage had more than a hint of new-age mumbo jumbo to it.

We were next told that most of the trees in the city had been deliberately planted; with the exception of some trees in back gardens. In the 1800s people from the university and colleges had planted many of the city’s green spaces.

We were also told that the substantial trees had a life-span of 100-200 years and were interspersed with trees which lasted about 50-70 years which, on Jesus Green had already been replaced once or twice. Diana Oviatt-Ham said that the Plane Tree Avenue on Jesus Green had 100 years or so left.

Diana Oviatt-Ham then drew attention to the damming statements on the health of the trees in the 2001 Midsummer Common Conservation plan which says:

With a few notable exceptions the condition of the trees on the common is generally poor.

Victoria Avenue was highlighted as an area needing work to protect, and the irrational replacement of a failed horse chestnut with a rowan was given as an example of haphazard management without a clear plan.

Diana Oviatt-Ham expressed her opinion that having eleven different species of tree along the riverside of Midsummer Common resulted in the area “losing coherence”, she also talked about the need to remove leylandii from the swimming pool screen to protect the row of limes within them was also mentioned. She also suggested that Midsummer Common and Jesus Green were currently a gap in the line of willows seen down the hailingway on one side and out to Granchester in the other.

The need to consider the soil, amount of water available and other factors before deciding which tree to plant in a particular location was mentioned by the senior tree officer. She also listed a few of the constraints to planting including recreational use, events, cattle, electricity and other utilities. She suggested trees could be used to focus the eye and mask traffic routes as well as mark the line of the river so it can be seen from further away. The suggestion that trees could be used to hide the Elizabeth Way bridge was also made. Suggestions were also made that the camber of the bank on Midsummer Common could be reflected in the tree planting and that the views of the trees on the green spaces should be considered from different perspectives, both within and outside of the green spaces.

Diana Oviatt-Ham expressed her view that planting ought be kept simple, saying “we’re not planting an Arboretum”.

We were told that the principal tree officer had produced her own, very draft, proposals for a planting scheme, but these were not revealed at any point during the event.

She said the aim of the workshop sessions would be to produce ideas and proposals which could be turned into plans which could be consulted on.

Questioned on the future of the Horse Chestnut avenue on Victoria Avenue Diana Oviatt-Ham explained that trees had recently been lost, and two more on the Jesus Green side were likely to be lost in the near future due to them having “structural problems”. She described these as those trees with the helical trunks. I don’t know if these were being condemned because of their helical trunks or if that was mentioned simply to identify them. While saying she felt there was need for “succession planting” now, there was not a threat that the miner moths which had evaded the trees would kill them.

Anthony Bowen Cambridge, Orator of the University of Cambridge, an ex. Liberal Democrat Councillor, and Liberal Democrat supporter who attempted to discredit me at the December 2009 West Central Area Committee spoke next. Mr Bowen introduced himself as a fellow of Jesus College, and a member of the garden committee there. He reported that the college loses one or two chestnuts every year. He said the leaf miner moth weakens the tree and “the canker gets it”. He said he was more pessimistic about the future of the avenue of chestnuts on Victoria Avenue than the tree officer, he said action ought be taken now in respect of the avenue as he didn’t see why there would be any different future for the trees on the avenue than there had been for those in the college.

Someone suggested we ought be talking about planting and not felling, and someone else asked the principal tree officer what the council’s policies were on when a tree was felled. Simon Payne stepped in to intercept that question and said the council intends to do a separate session on that in the future. Cllr Cantrill stood up to confirm that event would be held in the near future and would explain “the present approach we take on trees in the city”.

Group Sessions

As the plane tree avenue is expected to last another century or more, we ought fill in the gaps.

Those present then split into four groups of four, and marked their thoughts on maps of Jesus Green and Midsummer Common.

During the discussion Diana Oviatt-Ham revealed that one of the plane trees on the avenue in Jesus Green was being considered for felling. When looking towards Jesus Lock the tree is on the right, two up towards the lock from the large gap/path in the middle of the avenue.

Diana Oviatt-Ham also raised for discussion the possibility of “clear felling” and replanting with a new avenue of trees along the line described as “the cycle path” from Park Street to Victoria Avenue. I heard no enthusiasm for this proposal. I think this was largely because everyone present primarily wanted the council to get on and plant some trees given the amount it has been felling, and didn’t want to see any immediate proposals start with felling.

I discussed the proposals with a group comprising Martin Thompson of the Jesus Green Association, Barry Higgs of the Friends of Midsummer Common, and a resident from the Manhattan Drive area on the opposite bank of the river. Simon Payne, Diana Oviatt-Ham, Kenny McGregor and Dinah Foley-Norman were also on-hand.
We agreed:

• Replanting in the gaps, and gaps which emerge, in the Plane Tree Avenue on Jesus Green was worth doing, as the avenue as the initial trees have an expected life time of another century and new trees reach a reasonable size to contribute to the avenue in 20-30 years. (There are three replacement trees in the avenue already which are of that kind of age.) We said we’d hope the avenue could be managed indefinitely in that manner but Diana Oviatt-Ham gave her opinion that wasn’t practical because she thought at some point many of the original trees would fail in one go.
• Maintaining the existing clear space in the middle of Midsummer Common, including the triangle of clear space down to the cutter ferry bridge. To maintain the open spaces on Jesus Green where the Beer Festival has recently been held, and on the other side of the plane tree avenue.
• New planting of trees, especially willows, including tall willows, and other native riverside trees such as black poplar along the riverside of both Midsummer Common and Jesus Green. On Midsummer Common we wanted clumps of trees and in places not a single line. The aim would be to make the riverside path a mix of shaded and open.
• Retaining all the existing trees along the river of both Midsummer Common and Jesus Green.
• A substantial, long lived, tree to replace the recently felled Lime by the Cutter Ferry bridge
• Taller trees between the common and the new development on the Cambridge Regional College site, with the aim of them providing some shielding of the view of the new, tall, development from the common
• Succession planting of oak or elm on both sides of Victoria Avenue, Midsummer Common Jesus Green and outside Jesus College. Spacing the trees in between the existing and setting them back a couple of metres to get them as close to the road as possible while allowing them to thrive and grow straight.
• Felling the conifer screen around the swimming pool and the conifers by the boardwalk on Jesus Green
• Planting to hide the Elizabeth Way Bridge, but keeping the area between that bridge and the cutter ferry bridge open in the middle.
• Planting of various spaced out new, substantial, long living, trees in a scattered fashion down the south side of the common in front of North Terrace and down towards the Cutter Ferry Bridge.
• More trees like the one existing English Oak to be included in any new scattered planting on Jesus Green.
• The cherry trees avenue on Jesus Green - from Jesus Lock to Park Parade is appropriately scaled, future planting on that axis should be essentially the same again when those trees get past their best and stop producing such impressive blossom.
• Planting to screen the armidilloos (This was one element I was less keen on - but there are ideas for how it could be done to screen from some directions, and to not create a place to hide)

There was a lot of agreement between the four groups which had been discussing independently.

A second group including Cllr Clare Blair and Alistair Wilson proposed replacing the Victoria Avenue trees directly in between the existing trees and no further out; the aim of this specifically being to preclude and prevent any future road widening “by the county council”. They also marked the path between Jesus Lock and Park Street as a “possible new avenue”.

A third group’s suggestions, presented by Caroline, the representative of CPPF, started with their proposal for the Horse Chestnuts along Victoria Avenue. They suggested removing them all within the next 5-15 years. They said we should now plant a new row of shorter lived trees outside of them (ignoring the scrappy planting on Jesus Green) to act as an avenue while the inner trees were replaced. They suggested replacement with planes or oaks.

The third group also suggested a “false edge” for Jesus Green - planting in line with the back edge of the swimming pool creating a new and separate space between the river and the green in which the pool, skate park, play area, and all other recreational facilities which might be desired over the next century could be located without impinging on the green itself. This group felt that shade along the tow-path was a bad thing (as do the city council tree officers who think shading watercourses, even the flowing Cam, is bad for biodiversity). For that reason they were proposing clumps of riverside trees rather than a line following the river. They too suggested willow/black poplar. The group also suggested tree planting to integrate the pub and Midsummer House better into the common.

Group Sessions

This old tree makes a significant contribution to the character of the common.

At the Cutter Ferry bridge this third group wanted to use tree planting to better define the directions of the various paths and to reduce the encroachment of tarmac. They also wanted the path junctions elsewhere to be marked by trees. They too wanted some tree planting around the toilets. The final, non-tree related, but evidently strongly held view by the group was that the CCTV which has become a permanent feature on a lamppost in the middle of teh common was “not appropriate” and should be removed. I completely agree and think that the CCTV, especially in that semi-covert format - a device that doesn’t look like a camera and in an area which isn’t signed ought not be there - I hope Cllr Cantrill was listening - and remembered he stood on a Liberal Democrat and not a New Labour manifesto.

The final group’s suggestions including considering non-native trees on the grounds of offering more varied appearance and potential to resist climate change. On Victoria Avenue they proposed interspersing new planting and setting them back, on the south side of the common they called for trees which could be looked around so the houses retained their vistas. They also requested Walnut Trees on Walnut Tree Avenue. On the riverbank they suggested that formality in the planting wasn’t necessary.

Annotated Plans

High resolution photos of the plans, click to download: (1.3MB JPG).

• Group One : Midsummer Common Jesus Green
• Group Two : Midsummer Common Jesus Green
• Group Three : Midsummer Common
• Group Four : Midsummer Common

Summing Up

Cllr Cantrill and officers suggested that what they would primarily be looking for was a proposal to spend the 50K already allocated by the West/Central Area Committee.

The CPPF representative suggested it would be easy to raise money to buy trees, and sell off wood from felled trees and the public money ought go into other things such as tree guards. The friends of Midsummer Common who have already raised money for a lot of planting on the common argued against this, and it was pointed out the money was for tree guards and maintenance and not just trees. (Previous City Council fellings have come with assurances the wood will go to good use eg. burrs from Lammas Land going to local artists and Midsummer Common wood being made available for boaters to burn, but I’ve not seen any evidence these assurances have been kept and the wood isn’t seen as an extra bonus for those employed to fell the trees).

Cllr Tim Bick, who angrily opposed residents, including me, when we successfully fought off the Liberal Democrat’s plans to fell fifty nine trees on Jesus Green as part of a lottery bid which involved paving over lots of grass spoke to say he would like to see some significant planting come out of the 50K as: “we might not have the same size of pot in the future”.

Cllr Cantrill indicated that he was open to the idea of felling the leylandii and working on Victoria Avenue. He repeated his intent to hold further public consultation; he said those who attended the workshop could see the proposals which would be worked up by the tree officers prior to them going out to public consultation - which he thought would be possible in August. To allow for the fact many people are away in August Cllr Cantrill said that the decision would be taken at a West Central Area Committee later in the year - possibly a special one just to discuss the tree planting plans, to be held in September.

Cllr Clare Blair, a Liberal Democrat who stood for election on a manifesto including the current area committee system, spoke to complain about the fact the decision was being taken by the West Central Area Committee despite many people from across the city having an interest in, and regularly using the open spaces - for example by regularly travelling through them.

Cllr Cantill said he agreed, but appeared to be saying he too was constrained by the Lib Dems’ excessive drives for inappropriate localism as he responded: “It is a West/Central EIP (Environmental Improvement Project)”.

A couple of final questions were raised. Mr Higgs wanted an assurance that the trees’ running costs would be covered and they would be looked after. He was so assured that the council was able to look after the trees it was to plant.

Cllr Bick noted that the council had already got a fund to replace the trees it had recently felled; and the 50K should be used for new planting over and above what the council had recently removed.

Council Officer Debbie Kaye essentially said she agreed in principle, but wasn’t sure the council’s tree replacement fund actually had much money in it. Cllr Cantrill said he wasn’t sure what the position was (this is astonishing as Cllr Cantrill has been present at many West/Central Area committees where members of the public have raised questions about replanting on Midsummer Common and have been assured by the council that funds have been set aside for replacing the felled trees). Mr Lawton - who regularly attends - and pays attention to - the West Central Area Committees assured Cllr Cantrill that what Cllr Bick had said was accurate and that prior to the approval of the 50K there were already funds committed to replanting. Cllr Cantrill reminded everyone he was new to this portfolio of responsibility and appeared to promise to get a grip saying he would do all he could to get as much money as he could for the trees. He then thanked the officers for the work they had done in preparing for the discussion and promised he was committed to getting some significant new planting done, particularly in light of the fact such funds might not be available in future years.

On BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Breakfast with Jeremy Sallis on the Monday 28th of June a news report stated:

Over 20 schools in Cambridgeshire are thinking of cutting ties with the Local Education Authority to become academies. The legislation which would make this possible should become law before the end of July. Kevin Bullock is the headteacher of Fordham primary school; he’s on the “interested parties” list but hasn’t decided whether to go for it:

“Cambridgeshire are very good; if they see that you’re getting good results at schools they will leave you to do your own thing so I said: ‘what else will I gain’ and to be honest there wasn’t lots to entice us so at the moment our Governing body are discussing [the matter] and we’ve registered interest but that’s all. It’s a long long way down there before we become an academy.’

Later in the show there were interviews with Andrew Hutchinson Executive Principal of the Parkside Federation and Cambridge City Councillor, and Orchard Park Primary School Governor, Clare Blair. I have transcribed these below and have followed them with my own views.

Interview with Andrew Hutchinson

Jeremy Sallis: Andrew Hutchinson is the Executive Principal of the Parkside Foundation, good morning to you Andrew:
Andrew Hutchinson : Good Morning

JS: Good to have you on. And the Parkside Federation comprises which schools?
AH: Two schools in central Cambridge. Parkside Community College and Coleridge Community College.

JS: So they’d both become an academy?
AH: They would both become an academy if our proposal goes through.

JS: And what exactly does that mean - to have academy status Andrew?
AH: Well the two key things for us are that it gives us freedom from following the national curriculum so we can teach what we think is important - much in the same was as local private schools do - they’re not bound by the national curriculum and we’d like those same freedoms. The second freedom it gives us is that it gives us full control over our own budgets. We can choose where we spend the money and what we spend it on and make sure we get the best outcomes for our students.

JS: What are you spending your money on at the minute which you think you shouldn’t be?
AH: Well at the moment some of the money is held back by the local authority and we get services provided by the local authority rather than getting the money to spend to choose what we think is important for us. So we only get about 92% of our budget directly and with academy status we’d get the 100% and could make the best choices. We think that is particularly important going forward as obviously budgets are going to be much tighter over the next five years and we want the maximum choices.

JS: What would you do better then? Is it just a question of who you bring in to provide those services or are we talking about different services for the pupils?
AH: It might be different services, it might be deciding if we need more of one service and less of the other. We obviously know best what it is we need to improve our schools. We know what we need to buy in. It gives us more choice to say we need more of this, or we need more textbooks next year or we need an extra teacher to teach a specialist subject then we’d have the freedom to make that choice.

JS: As far as the curriculum goes, and you being able to teach what you think is in the best interests of the students what do you think you can do better than how it is at the minute Andrew?
AH: Well I think obviously we’ll continue to teach the core subjects: English; Maths; Science, ICT and others the humanities and so on - so we’ll have a core curriculum that all students will follow. But it also gives us a bit more freedom, particularly in years 7,8 and 9 the first years to give teachers the possibility to use their professional knowledge to devise lessons and courses that students really engage with. The other thing is it allows students to make choices as well. Part of this is about giving students a say on what they really want to learn and what’s important for them.

JS: What’s wrong with the curriculum as it stands? Is it just a question of churning out exam results and the curriculum is purely aimed at getting that result as opposed to getting a more rounded education?
AH: I think there is a danger of that and you can get obsessed with just following exam courses and getting results at all costs. But I think also it recognises that different schools might be in different circumstances. In particular locations in the country there might be a particular strong industry which has close links with schools and it is a good idea therefore to provide a curriculum which picks up on some of those opportunities available.

JS: What do you think therefore of critics who say that this academy status gives you too much autonomy, that you’re not accountable as much as you should be and as you are at the moment?
AH: I think schools will always be accountable and the governing body is an elected governing body it has a majority of elected members from the local community, parents and so on. We also get inspected by OfSTED those reports are available. I mean I’ve been working in schools for a very long time and we’ve never been more accountable than we are now and we would continue to be so as an academy.

JS: [Would you have control over] who you let through your doors?
AH: No, admissions would stay exactly the same. There is a national code on admissions and all academies, all schools, have to follow that code. We’re committed to being a community comprehensive school if we have academy status or trust status as we currently have.

JS: When do you hope to achieve academy status?
AH: We’re consulting at the moment and governors are going to look at this again in September and if we decide to go ahead we probably change from January 2011.

JS: OK thank you Andrew, good to talk to you this morning, thank you for joining us.
AH: Thanks very much bye-bye

JS: That’s Andrew Hutchinson Executive Principal of Parkside Foundation it’s coming up to a quarter past eight.

Interview with Cllr Clare Blair

Jeremy Sallis: The Executive Principle from the Parkside Federation was interviewed on the show earlier saying that there are many good reasons for becoming one [an academy School] and they’ve started the consultation process, but not everybody is a fan. Let’s have a chat with Councillor Clare Blair who is a Cambridge City Councillor and also a governor of a Cambridgeshire primary school.

JS: Good morning to you.
Clare Blair: Good morning Jeremy.

JS: Why are you against them then Clare?
CB: Well I think there are lots of key questions which need to be asked and of course it is right when government asks people to look at ‘do you want to change the status of the schools’ that schools consider it, but I think there’s some really key issues which have to be addressed. Academies were actually set up for underachieving schools and the average consultation time before taking academy status was listed as being twelve to eighteen months. It’s extremely difficult to see why now there seams to be such a wholesale rush especially when its now for schools graded outstanding who are being asked to look at this it is of course a key driver of raising attainment to pupils is no longer the issue for them so what I think we ought to do is look at what academies can offer that their current status doesn’t give them. It is often said that you have the ability to have 100% of your budget devolved well that’s an attraction - I’m chair of governors at a Cambridgeshire primary school and budget issues are always key in what we consider. But the part that is held back by the local authority is the part which amounts to around 8% is that part that deals with the services which all schools require and which arguably are best provided centrally, admissions, exclusions, dealing with students with special educational needs, in school and out of school support. I have… there is a real concern that those services will be fractured if a large number of schools can chose to opt-out and there’s an equal concern that those children even in successful academies will not have their needs fully addressed.

JS: Those schools which don’t take on academy status - why should they suffer if those which are academy schools are just taking their small part of the pie.

CB: Because all these are funded by top-slicing the central budget and by providing services across a whole range of schools. If some schools choose to go elsewhere clearly then they would have to revisit if those services can be provided at all. It may well be the best thing, I’m not saying that its not. But these are key questions which have to be addressed on how do we deal with the children.

JS: What about the benefit to the schools who are then able to set the curriculum because there’s no better people placed to say what’s best for those children and their education than the people who are teaching them than somebody in Whitehall so the ability to do what’s best for those children and give them a more rounded education rather than churning out exam results autobots - this is a good thing isn’t it?

CB: Absolutely, but I’m not convinced the current system doesn’t do that. I got involved in setting up a primary school and we’re incredibly proud of our curriculum and we’ve never found that we’ve been constrained. There are times when you disagree with some things coming out, but all good schools at the moment and I’m sure all of the schools because it is outstanding schools who are applying actually provide an excellent curriculum at the current time and there is a lot of flexibility.

JS: Sorry Clare, on that point, we hear from leaders of industry that people come out of school with good qualifications and they know nothing.

CB: While there’s always an issue about what happens the higher up you go and what people want. There’s always a dialogue to be had between schools and between industry that’s incredibly important and valuable but I don’t think what this is doing is saying you can put in place what industry wants, it is about the freedom of schools to innovate. I don’t think at the moment that schools are constrained by government in the sense that is being said. The other issue is the democratic accountability of academies, it was only in the 1980s that school governance was reformed and it gave every school a genuine, community based, governing body - one made up of elected parents and staff and representatives of the local authority and the wider community. That system has been highly successful, and highly regarded. In my own primary we had five elected parent governors for example. Now in academies this system doesn’t apply; they only need to have a single parent governor and a single staff governor the majority of governors not elected but appointed.

JS: But there are OfSTED inspections.

CB: There are OfSTED inspections, but OfSTED means accountability to the central government for what they are providing, its not the same as accountability to local people and the local community. Academies also sit outside much of the framework that schools operate in, and all schools, and I’m sure that Andrew Hutchinson as principal of Parkside would have said the same thing, all schools want to operate within a framework where each school complements others in the community and we’re not at odds with each other. For example within Cambridgeshire the remit of the local government ombundsman to consider parental complaints has recently been extended and from april of this year parents who have had issues with schools, over final analysis, could go along to a local government ombundsman and ask him to intervene, now he can’t do that in academies.

JS: Clare, thank you for joining us this morning, we’ll have to leave it there.

CB: Thank you very much.

JS: Take care. That’s Clare Blair who’s a Cambridge City Councillor and also a governor of a Cambridgeshire Primary, It’s 08:46

Party Commitments

Page 37 of the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto stated:

We will ensure a level playing field for admissions and funding and replace Academies with our own model of ‘Sponsor-Managed Schools’. These schools will be commissioned by and accountable to local authorities and not Whitehall, and would allow other appropriate providers, such as educational charities and parent groups, to be involved in delivering state-funded education.

In 2005 the Liberal Democrats were split on academies and decided not to mention them at all in their manifesto. A faction of the Liberal Democrats is currently calling on Lib Dem MPs and Peers to vote against the Academies Bill.

The section on schools in the coalition programme for government states:

We will promote the reform of schools in order to ensure [...] that all schools have greater freedom over the curriculum; and that all schools are held properly to account.

and

We will ensure that all new Academies follow an inclusive admissions policy.

The coalition agreement doesn’t directly include measures the academies bill seeks to bring in.

My View

The Education Secretary’s letter to outstanding schools inviting them to become academies says: “A key principle behind this partnership Government is trusting professionals. That is why this Government will give you more power and control and will trust you to get on with the job.” I fully agree with that principle however I think the current government proposals go to far towards delegating power and freedom to schools - to the point where might well end up with uncontrolled chaos. I think there needs to be an appropriate balance between freedoms for teachers and schools, but within a framework of minimum standards and expectations. I think it is particularly important that state funded schools are under democratic control.

The Education Secretary lists some of the benefits of becoming an academy as:

• freedom from local authority control;
• ability to set your own pay and conditions for staff;
• freedom from following the national curriculum;
• ability to change the length of terms and school days;
• having greater control over school budgets; and
• freedom to spend the money the local authority currently spends on your behalf.

While I like the direction of change in each case, there do need to be limits. We can’t have state schools teaching creationism or homeopathy or deciding to have children spending more time gardening than learning maths. While I think there should be a lot of freedom for schools to locally tailor their curriculum; I don’t think that there ought be complete delegation to schools about what they teach.

I am not in principle opposed to people and companies making a profit from the provision of tax-payer funded public services. I do think though that there need to be safeguards to ensure that profits for those running academies are not put before pupil’s education, and that publicly funded assets cannot be sold off to create a profit.

One of the problems being addressed is the poor quality of local authorities; if schools were free to choose who they purchased centrally provided services from - and could for example turn to neighbouring local authorities that would introduce competition which would push standards up and lower costs.

By removing the role of local authorities schools which become academies end up answerable only to central government. This is a step in the wrong direction - it is astonishing centralisation. The academies bill in its current draft gives huge amounts of power to the secretary of state, hopefully when the bill passes through the commons some of that power eg. to close academies back to locally elected representatives.

When we have a few academies then there is always the potential for local authorities to take them back; if there is an explosion in the number of academies then local authorities may lose the ability to run schools and there will be no way of reversing the decision to set the schools free.

I think there are enormous risks that the current coalition government schools policies may lead to greater inequalities in state school provision. Resources, and more importantly quality of educational provision, need to be distributed fairly. It would be wrong if areas where parents are willing and able to set up their own schools, or where schools were willing to become academies ended up with much better schools than other areas. I think education can, and ought be a great equaliser, and schools ought form the key part of the foundation of a meritocratic society. I think it is right to allow a signifiant degree of independence and variety between schools so that innovative new ideas can emerge and when proven can be shared. Diversity is healthy when accompanied by mechanisms to ensure minimum standards are maintained and best practices shared.

While the Parkside principal made a commitment to operate accountably as an academy I don’t think that is sufficient. I think that academy schools ought, by law, be held to the same levels of accountability as other state schools. I think that is a clear pre-requsite for a wider roll-out of academy schools.

Academy schools to-date have had large investments of private money, often resulting in new buildings and lots of modern technology. I think if there is an explosion in the numbers of academies then corporate, or individual sponsors will be harder to find. While I support allowing schools to accept “sponsorship” and realise it has worked in a small number of cases, this isn’t a practical way of funding education nationwide. I think it is wrong to compare directly what is now being proposed with the small number of academy schools established under the Labour government (not all by any means have been successful).

I think both Cllr Blair and the Parkside principal made too much of the current elected, and local community based, nature of governing bodies. What they described was an ideal which isn’t common in practice. There are a number of problems, with the present arrangements - for example if too few parents stand for election the vacancies can be filled by appointments and there is nothing to stop parents who lose elections from being appointed to one of the other positions. If Cllr Blair was accurate in saying that in her school five parent governors were elected then I think that would be unusual. When I’ve spoken to my county councillor about matters related to schools (issuing laptops to primary school children, fingerprinting pupils, creating databases of what children do outside of school) he has complained he has no influence due to the closed manner in which Local Authority governors are appointed in Cambridgeshire.

Unlike Cllr Blair I think that OfSTED reports - as public documents - are a route through which schools are accountable to the public. I would like to see inspections all take place unannounced to reduce the current huge extra pressure put on teachers by the inspection process. Inspectors should view normal life at a school, not a special charade put on for their benefit as happens currently.

The Academies Bill

The Academies Bill is due to be debated in the House of Commons and the bill’s committee during July. I think MPs ought introduce amendments which:

• Forbid academies selling off or mortgaging publicly funded assets, particularly land, without a democratically approved and legally binding re-investment programme.
• Ensure democratic control over academy schools, and ensure that transparency and accountability is as great as possible, particularly with respect to who is selected to run academy schools and the details of the “scheme” (contract) with them. ie. there ought be something akin to an open tender process.
• Make academy schools subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
• Define the minimum components of a core curriculum.
• Require minimum standards of maths for those teaching maths and science.
• Ensure profits for those running academies are not put before pupils’ education.

Link

BBC iPlayer : Cambridgeshire Breakfast with Jeremy Sallis - Mon, 28 Jun 2010 - Mr Hutchinson is at about 1hr14 and Cllr Blair is at 1hr42

The NHS in the UK spends huge amounts of public money on “homoeopathic” treatments. This is despite a report published earlier this year by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee which concluded:

That the NHS should cease funding homeopathy.

Having been selected to ask a topical question on Health in the House of Commons on the 29th of June 2010 Cambridge MP Julian Huppert asked:

Does the Secretary of State accept:

• the conclusions of the Science and Technology Committee’s “Evidence Check 2” on Homeopathy
• his minister’s commitment earlier today to evidence based [decision making], and
• the BMA motion passed today about homeopathy.

Given the financial constraints which we all share can he defend spending millions of pounds of NHS money on methods which simply do not work?

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was present, but he delegated answering the question to a junior minister, Anne Milton. In reply she said:

I thank the honourable gentleman for his friend, for his question. And say that he seams to know something no one else seems to know that is exactly how much is spent on homeopathic treatments. They are a decision that should be taken by doctors locally. The effectiveness, the safety and the efficacy of a treatment should be taken into account. The estimate is that 0.001% of the drugs bill is currently spent [on homeopathic remedies] at the present time. We are currently looking at the Science and Technology Committee’s report and we will hope to respond to it before the summer recess.

I am shocked that the junior minister is prepared to stand up and do anything other than announce an immediate stop to the state funding of nonsense remedies. It is also scandalous that she doesn’t know how much the NHS is wasting. Some people have made FOI requests in public via mySociety’s Freedom of Information website - WhatDoTheyKnow.com to look into the costs involved. One request to Bath and North East Somerset Primary Care Trust (PCT) revealed the existence of the “Bristol Homeopathic Hospital”, which has been “treating” thousands of people at a cost to the NHS of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The report from the Science and Technology committee reports that in oral evidence a Health Minister said that “several million” was spent each year by the NHS on homeopathy.

Early Day Motions

On the 21st of June David Tredinnick the MP for Bosworth, a Conservative, put down four Early Day motions in support of homeopathy. Julian Huppert very rapidly responded to amend them pointing out the flaws in the scientific publications cited and the approach being taken by Mr Tredinnick.

• Homeopathy And Chronic Primary Insomnia (Original, Julian Huppert’s Ammended Version)
• Homeopathic Medicines In The Treatment Of Moderate To Severe Depression (Original, Julian Huppert’s Ammended Version)
• Effect Of Homeopathic Remedies On Breast Cancer Cells (Original, Julian Huppert’s Ammended Version)
• BMA Annual Representative Meeting Motions On Homeopathy (Original, Julian Huppert’s Ammended Version)

At the time of writing while up to sixteen MPs have supported Mr Tredinnick’s motions, none have signed up to Julian Huppert’s amendments. James Moffatt has tweeted to suggest this is because Mr Huppert’s amendments have so categorically shown up the flaws in the motions that most MPs will consider them a sufficient response in and of them themselves. Mr Moffatt wrote:

Most MPs see EDM as a bit of joke. @JulianHuppert ’s additions will make them giggle, but probably think “enough said”

The full text of the articles refereed to in the motions can be found online so the accuracy of what Mr Huppert has said in his amendments can be verified:

Title: Homeopathic Individualized Q-potencies versus Fluoxetine for Moderate to Severe Depression: Double-blind, Randomized Non-inferiority Trial
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2009 Aug 17.,
Full Text:http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/nep114

Title: Cytotoxic effects of ultra-diluted remedies on breast cancer cells
Int J Oncol. 2010 Feb;36(2):395-403.
Full Text: http://scepticsbook.com/wp-content/uploads/Cytotoxic-effects-of-homeopathic-remedies-on-breast-cancer-cells-2010.pdf

Title: Chronic primary insomnia: Efficacy of homeopathic simillimum
Homeopathy Volume 99, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 63-68
Full Text: http://www.wellnesshp.com/homeopathyresearch/ehs.pdf

The problems highlighted include small sample sizes, the abstract not reflecting the content of the paper (a flaw in peer review) and a failure to statistically justify the conclusions being drawn. The paper on the Cytotoxic effects of ultra-diluted remedies on breast cancer cells is particularly shocking as the results suggest merely that the solvent being applied to the cells is more toxic to one cell line than another - though without the raw data or a statistical analysis not even that conclusion can be drawn. The control cell line is an immortalized cell line, which means its Huppert’s amendments also point out that policy decisions ought not be based on individual papers and individual trials but on a wider view of all the evidence.

One side issue highlighted by this is the difficulty and costs involved in accessing scientific publications. Access to one of the above papers is being sold by publisher Elsevier B.V at a price of $31.50 for the article and a further $31.50 for the erratum notice associated with it. Often arrangements for distributing the publications describing the results of scientific research are bizarre.

Support for Tredinnick

Homeopathy supporting MP David Tredinnick has been appointed by the Conservatives to the Health Select Committee.

This worryingly suggests that he isn’t a lone crackpot, but has the support of others in one of the UK Governing parties. His EDMs in this parliament and, in the last, have gained signatures from other MPs.

Twittering

There is no system run by Parliament for alerting people when their MPs have been selected to ask questions in the House of Commons (or any system to give advanced notice of other things MPs might be selected to do eg. hold adjournment debates). With respect to this topical question Mr Huppert tweeted to let people know he had been selected to ask it, and he invited people to suggest topics which he should raise.

I responded to the call and was one of those who suggested Mr Huppert ought use the opportunity to yet more attention to the public money wasted on homeopathy by the NHS and the worrying stance being taken by other MPs. I tweeted:

@JulianHuppert Hoping you use your topical Q to keep drawing attention to ludicrous public spending on homeopathy eg. http://bit.ly/9kefDf

Mr Huppert also tweeted on an encounter he had with Mr Tredinnick:

@julianhuppert: Bumped into David Tredinnick in lobby. He said it was illiberal to oppose homeopathy. I said it was about evidence.

June 2010 North Area Committee.

On Thursday the 10th of June 2010 I attended Cambridge City Council’s North Area Committee. The meeting started at 18.30 to consider planning applications but the main agenda was not scheduled to begin until 19.30. When I arrived at just before 19.30 councillors were still debating the first of three planning applications which had been put before them. The application was for a new access from the road and change of use to a day nursery for the Old Manor House St Andrews Road. Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith was in the chair and I saw the tail end of the debate with councillors expressing concern about access, particularly with respect to the different type of traffic the new use would be expected to attract, I saw councillors eventually reject the application on those grounds - they decided to give particular weight to a representation against the proposed development from the County Council highways department.

When they turned to their second planning application, for a two storey rear extension to 2 Primrose Street, councillors were told by their planning officer that this had come to the committee as it was an application being made by a member of the council staff and so by law could not be determined by officers. Councillors were told that if the applicant had not worked for the council the application would have been approved under delegated powers. Councillors approved the application without a word of debate or discussion.

The final planning application was for a new house on Scotland Close; councillors were told this was the third time an application for this site had been submitted. Last time the application was rejected on the grounds that access to bin storage and bike parking at the rear wasn’t easy enough. I watched the debate the last time when Cllr Upstone made the insightful comment that land ownership was not immutable, clearly implying that in order to make room for a house on this plot it would be really be necessary use some of the land which is currently a neighbouring garden. The applicants had decided to reverting to their original plan of having bikes and bins stored at the front of the house and councillors summarily refused the application without any debate. I understand this is often the case when councillors agree with an officer recommendation but I would like to see some indication that councillors have actually understood and considered the proposal, even if only one of them makes a statement and the others concur. I am left wondering if the applicants have understood councillors’ previous decisions and if they have effectively been communicated to them; or if the applicants thought that following the election they’d have a go again with a different bunch of councillors.

As well as dealing with the planning applications during the first section of the meeting the committee were also scheduled to receive a report on the council’s new online planning system on which residents associations, but not the wider public, have been consulted. While this is a great step forward and may well remove the need for councillors or members of the public to visit the council offices to view planning applications and comments on them there are a number of problematic flaws with the technical implementation. I have written a separate article on the upgrade to the planning system.

Another item which took place during the first part of the meeting was the election of a chair. Labour Councillor Mike Todd-Jones doesn’t take part in planning decisions as a protest against restrictive rules which he feels prevent him from fulfilling his role as an elected representative so he didn’t turn up till the scheduled start of the main agenda. As he did last year he complained that by the time he turned up a chair had already been elected; he said he would have stood and that Cllr McGovern had agreed to second him and that he hoped he might have obtained wider support. I suggested in advance of the meeting that the election of chair ought be delayed until the main agenda when Cllr Mike Todd-Jones would be likely to be present, Cllr McGovern replied:

@RTaylorUK as for Mike’s absence, that’s a matter for him to arrive for the published start of business.

Main Agenda

Liberal Democrat County Councillors Moss-Eccardt, Wijsenbeek, and Wilkins were absent without explanation; but all the North Area’s city councillors were present.

Open Forum

The meeting started with the “Open Forum” where members of the public are able to ask questions of councillors, and in this case, the police too.

Verges

The first question was about parking on grass verges, and what the council was doing about establishing a by-law to prevent it. Cllr Pitt responded to say that action by the relevant minister was being awaited and the city’s MP Julian Huppert was on the case.

Arbury Park to Riverside Cycle Route

I then asked about the way the public consultation relating to the Arbury Park to Riverside Cycle route in Church Street Chesterton had been run in a secretive and non inclusive manner. I had asked about what was happening at a previous North Area Committee but councillors had not revealed their intent to hold a private consultation event which was only open to selected invitees. The Liberal Democrats, supported by residents association members in the public gallery, aggressively defended their closed and secretive approach to decision making. Cllr Blair told me that if I wanted to know what had been decided at the secret meeting I should go and read the lamp-posts in the Church Street area. I have written a comprehensive note on my question and the answer given which I have appended to my article on the “consultation”.

Mitcham’s Corner

Member of the public Mr Cook asked about “Anti Social Behaviour” on Mitcham’s corner, which he said was a “matter for concern”. He raised the fact that there was a significant difference to the licence for the premises formally called The Graduate as the new applicants were seeking to serve alcohol without live music. Mr Cook asked if the council followed the “Cardiff model” which he said involved measuring the level of all crime relating to a particular licensed premises and rating them on a traffic light red, amber green scale. Those premises rated red would have their licences reviewed and conditions looked at.

Cllr Boyce responded. He said that The Graduate was due to be renamed The Tivoli and the pub had been leased by Weatherspoons. He said a licensing consultation was currently running and responses should be sent to the council by the 2nd of July. Cllr Boyce noted that only if there were objections would there be a licensing hearing. Cllr Boyce said that two applications had been made, one to simply amend the floorplan associated with the current licence and another wholly new application which would remove the entertainment restriction from the licence.

Policing

Following the police presentation of their report I tried to make some comments. Firstly I noted that Cllr Bick had been appointed as the Executive Councillor for Policing. I asked how that appointment had changed the framework for democratically influencing policing in the city. I asked if Cllr Bick was now taking on a role akin to an elected police commissioner in the city. Cllr Bick was present, he’s not a member of the North Area Committee so I presume he was attending in his policing capacity; he blushed at my comparison of his role with an elected police chief. I noted that in his first speech as Executive Councillor for policing he had called for Fixed Penalty Notices to be used where there was a lack of evidence which could be used to take someone to court. I asked what the police view was on using FPNs in that way.

I drew a parallel between such use of FPNs and the police’s use of powers under S.59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 against those speeding and swerving around speed humps on Fen Road.

I said that supported tackling the problems on Fen Road, which is clearly one of the most dangerous and lawless roads in the city, with many vehicles speeding, being driven badly, many being obviously unroadworthy. What I opposed was the strategy being deployed with the approval of councillors - the use of S.59. I complained this amounted to one law for some and another for others. I said that S.59 denied people access to due process and justice and I was surprised to see the Lib Dems support the use of such powers at their last priority setting meeting and urged them not to do so again. I suggested those voting Liberal Democrat weren’t voting to ditch due process, to deny people justice, and deny people access to magistrates and that Liberal Democrats shouldn’t be voting for measures against the interests of civil liberties and justice. I explained that those caught speeding elsewhere in the city would have the opportunity to go to court and contest the allegation; but there was no route of appeal against a S.59 notice. I said I felt it was inappropriate to use S.59 in cases such as speeding if the reason for using S.59 was the police had no evidence which would stand up in court that an offence had been committed.

The meeting’s chair, Cllr Nimmo-Smith stopped me from speaking as I made my representation and instructed me to hand the microphone back to the council officer running the meeting. He explained his action saying: “you don’t understand what goes on at meetings”. Cllr Nimmo-Smith then directed Inspector Kerridge, who was present on behalf of the police, not to answer my question about the new role which had been taken on by Cllr Bick. I protested, maintaining it was a legitimate question. Cllr Pitt protested saying I had misrepresented the role to which Cllr Bick had been appointed.

I suspect that the city council might not have told the police about the new role they have given Cllr Bick and didn’t want to be shown up by the police officer saying he had no idea what had changed. (I am concerned that while when as City Council leader Ian Nimmo-Smith made illiberal decisions such as approving giving police powers to security guards at Addenbrookes he could be scrutinised at the Strategy and Resources scrutiny committee; Cllr Bick is not subject to that process.) Later Cllr Nimmo-Smith explained it was his idea to give responsibility for policing to someone other than the council leader, and confirmed to the meeting that the council leader’s policing powers had been given to Cllr Bick.

The police officer, Inspector Kerridge, replied and addressed a couple of my points.

He said that the S.59 powers were not only being used in Fen Road in relation to the North Area priority, but were also used elsewhere in the city by traffic officers. He also said that if “primary offences” such as drink driving were being committed then those committing them would be dealt with for those offences and not by the issuing of a S.59 notice.

Cllr Pitt asked what “come back or appeal process” there was for those issued with a S.59 notice.

This appeared to throw Inspector Kerridge and he ummed for a good ten or twenty seconds. He eventually stated: “There is follow up” and explained how people could pay a fine and get their cars back if they were seized. He reported that most don’t bother though.

Shockingly Cllr Pitt appeared happy with this response.

Being able to pay a fine to get your car back is no route to obtain justice for someone who has been wrongly issued with a S.59 notice - for one it’s not a route which can be taken by people who’ve wrongly been issued with their first notice.

Cllr Pellew asked for confirmation that cycle theft remained a priority to be dealt with as a result of the city wide designation; he was assured it was. (Though councillors are free to direct even more resource is directed at a problem by making it a local priority too).

Councillors also received a representation from the Shirley School about parking problems. They decided add those parking issues as a priority and also to renew the Fen Road priority , continue work on St. Luke’s school on the grounds that during the school holidays the lack of staff might permit the re-emergence of vandalism etc. which had been a problem there recently.

Cambridge City Liberal Democrats fought the last election on manifesto which stated the would:

Continue to work in close partnership with the Police, sanctioning and withdrawing special Police powers sparingly and in strict response to hard evidence of incidents and avoiding measures likely to limit innocent behaviour

and

Encourage greater transparency, public debate and scrutiny on Policing priorities

I think they breached both of those manifesto commitments here by renewing the Fen Road priority and implicitly approving the police strategy. They also went against core Liberal Democrat principles.

Community Development and Leisure Grant

The only notable element of this discussion was new Liberal Democrat councillor for West Chesterton Damien Tunnacliffe speaking against a grant for £900 to a Guide group. He claimed the group only had six members (this wasn’t in the report - it said the grant would benefit 15 people). Cllr Ward said that some scout and guide groups had more affluent parents than others and the council funded those which asked for grants. Cllr Boyce said membership numbers were variable and there were systems for equipment sharing.

When it came to the vote on this issue Cllr Tunnacliffe looked hesitant and despite speaking strongly against the award was putting his hand up to vote. He was then reassured by some of his Liberal Democrat colleges that he was in fact free to vote with in line with his beliefs on this matter. Having been presumably been reassured there would be no party disciplinary action resulting Cllr Tunnacliffe abstained from the vote; all other councillors present voted for the grant which was awarded.

Environmental Improvements

Councillors are to spend £1,000 altering the pedestrian gap alongside this gate between Fen Road and the river.

Interesting items here are covered in other articles:

• New Plants for Akeman Street to Cost £42,000
• Renovation of native hedge in Downhams Lane - Link to Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith’s blog where he has written a rare article
• Trees in front of Campkin Road Tesco Update

Related to the dangerous traffic on Fen Road, councillors agreed to remove the “pram arms” on a path from Fen Road to the Hailingway. £1,000 is to be spent removing the arms and installing a replacement chicane of barriers. (They’ve approved initial development of a plan to spend this money, they never get on and make a decision in one go.)

There was also a very brief discussion of the Riverside scheme as on-the-ball (ish) newly elected councillors insightfully noted it wasn’t in the North Area. Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith left it to council officer Mr Preston to explain the bizarre arrangements where by the Liberal Democrats had pretended to locally allocate some of their budget only to then re-centralise it again.

Background Papers

• Agenda and Papers - North Area Committee
  Thursday, 10th June, 2010

Cambridge City Council has felled many trees from Midsummer Common; significant funds have been allocated for replacements.

During the “open forum” of the 24th of June 2010 West Central Area committee where members of the public are able to question councillors I asked:

Is there a date yet for the proposed meeting to discuss new tree planting on Jesus Green, Midsummer Common and New Square? If, or when, there is a date can it be publicised openly?

Cllr Cantrill, the Executive Councillor for Arts and Recreation, who has responsibility for the city’s green spaces, responded. He said “there is no date for the tree workshop to discuss broader issues” and added that when it was decided it would be publicised and he would specifically tell me the date.

Following up on that response Barry Higgs, the secretary of the Friends of Midsummer common, asked for a “paper” on the council’s proposals to be produced in advance of the meeting so there would be something to discuss.

Cllr Cantrill responded but insubstantively and without addressing the question. He said the meeting would be: “consultation with certain residents associations”.

John Lawton, the chair of the Brunswick and North Kite Resident’s Association also followed up. In response to Executive Councillor Cantrill’s statement that there was not date for the meeting, Mr Lawton told Cllr Cantrill: “We have a date; we have an agenda, but there are no proposals”.

This failed to prompt any more information from Cllr Cantrill and the chair, Cllr Kightley, moved on to the next public question.

Much later on in the meeting, during an item on Environmental Improvements, City Council officer Andrew Preston, spoke about the Midsummer Common and Jesus Green tree planting. The report to the meeting on the Environmental Improvements stated only:

A Tree Management and Planting Seminar is being organised. The seminar will include a talk about the management and planting of the trees on open spaces and focus on Midsummer Common and Jesus Green followed by a walk of the two areas and then get invitees involved in the plans for the future.

In his oral update, Mr Preston referred to my question, and directly contradicted what Executive Councillor Cantrill had said in response. Mr Preston said that a meeting was scheduled for the 1st of July, and told the committee that it was only open to invitees who were “local stakeholders”.

This prompted the meeting’s chair Cllr Kightley to express confusion. Cllr Rosenstiel verbalised what Cllr Kightley was showing on his face. Expressing incredulity at what was going on he said: “here we have decided on a date but not on who to involve”, he appeared to suggest that even he, as a ward councillor for the area, was not aware of the 1st July meeting. Cllr Kightley looked in my direction which I took as a prompt to point out the inconsistency between what Executive Councillor Cantrill had said in response to my question and what had been reported by the officer. Cllr Cantrill became agitated and he ranted and complained that I had misrepresented what he said and claimed not to have said there was no date set for the meeting in his original answer, he went on to claim that I had previously mis-represented what he had said as well (presumably he was referring to an article on this website). I asked if by agreeing to openly publicise the meeting it would be reasonable to infer he would be making it open to all. Cllr Cantrill stated that his commitment to publicise the date of the meeting was different to making it a public meeting open to all and stressed that by agreeing to publicise the date he was not agreeing to open up the meeting.

Later, during a break in the meeting both Mr Higgs and Mr Lawton let me know that what I had said was accurate and Cllr Cantrill had indeed stated that there was no date set. I would hope that the minutes will also record Cllr Cantrill’s inconsistency. Mr Lawton said that his residents association had been invited to send a representative to the meeting, which will be outside on the green spaces, on the 1st of July and offered to help me attend; he didn’t know for sure what time the meeting would be, but thought it was in the evening for a couple of hours - something like 17.30 till 20.00.

Brief Background

A lot of trees have been felled on Midsummer Common in recent years and the City Council has not replaced them. In early 2009 the City Council proposed a scheme of felling, tree moving, and new planting for Jesus Green, Midsummer Common and New Square. I and others successfully campaigned against these proposals on grounds including excessive felling of good trees, encroachment of the open space on Midsummer Common, and a lack of a long term plan and vision.

My comments on the April 2009 felling and planting proposals.

On the 30th of April 2009 the West Central Area committee rejected their officer’s proposals for tree works and approved £50,000 for new planting in the area. This is very large unprecedented sum which has the potential to allow us to plant new trees and place great foundations for the future of these three green spaces over the next century or more.

My article on the discussion at the 30th April 2009 West Central Area Committee

My View on Cllr Cantrill’s Comments

It is possible that despite the clarity and brevity of my question Cllr Cantrill, who has only been in the role of Executive Councillor with responsibility for green spaces for a month or so was confused between the two meetings on trees which his predecessor had promised. One is a meeting on city wide tree strategy, which which no councillors or officers turned up to when it was last scheduled and the other the proposed discussion on planting on Midsummer Common and Jesus Green which was mentioned in the Environmental Improvements report. It may be these two events are being combined, but if that’s the case it wasn’t made clear.

Clearly had this been the case though he ought to have explained and apologised when the Environmental Improvements section was reached and the officer revealed that a meeting was planned for the 1st of July. His rant was entirely unjustifiable (this just the latest outburst I have witnessed from Cllr Cantrill, one previous one being in response to a question from Cllr Howell about openness and transparency in Love Cambridge, and another occured during a debate with the Leader of the opposition at a full council meeting Cantrill denied ownership of a fancy 4.0L Jaguar sports car which was parked on his drive. Cllr Cantrill also refused to answer a public question I asked at a full council meeting on why council officers in a department he had democratic responsibility for were threatening graduate students with court action for non-payment of council tax for which they weren’t eligible.)

I had not expected the tree planting meeting to be scheduled so soon after I was asking my question, but there are still a few days for Cllr Cantrill to comply with his commitment to publicise the meeting.

Cambridge City Council has a webpage dedicated to Jesus Green Consultations yet the meeting on the 1st of July doesn’t feature on that.

Cllr Cantrill and his fellow Liberal Democrats have been elected on a platform of openness and transparency. On the 6th of May 2010 Cllr Cantrill was re-elected having stood, along with the other Lib Dems on a manifesto stating:

… our fair deal for Cambridge means honouring our commitment to transparent and accessible local politics and maximising direct local input into local choices.

I think that with just a few months of his re-election Cllr Cantrill has substantially breached that election promise by not openly publicising the date of the meeting well in advance and by keeping it restricted to selective invitees. Cllr Cantill and his fellow LibDems appear to be trying to maintain their support for residents’ associations - which in practice in Cambridge means special treatment and access for a largely LibDem supporting elite. They have been doing this for many years, and Cllr Cantrill and others have been re-elected on the basis of their record of this kind of behaviour - so perhaps they do believe they can claim an electoral mandate for it. At the last full council meeting the Lib Dem Leader, responding to a question from the leader of the opposition, claimed that by voting Lib Dem the people of Cambridge had given them the authority to make decisions in secret (in closed LibDem group meetings) rather than public council meetings - an even more blatant disregard for the published manifesto on which they asked the people of Cambridge to vote for them.

My Comments on What Happens Next

I think an opportunity is being missed if the meeting is not open to the public. This will exclude any possible input from many in the city who have an interest and expertise in tree matters, for example those involved in managing the university’s trees. It will also exclude almost all of those who use Midsummer Common and Jesus Green and many residents who are not members of residents, or “friends” associations will be disenfranchised too. Despite Cambridge having a very healthy news media - with the Cambridge News the new Cambridge First, various student publications including the excellent Cambridge Tab website, as well as many local sites taking an interest in civic matters holding this meeting in secret will prevent them from covering the discussion.

In terms of the tree planting I have written previously on my views. Important factors to me include:

• Maintaining the open space in the middle of Midsummer Common and not significantly encroaching on it with new tree planting.
• Getting on with new planting, especially on Midsummer Common by the river - and starting with new planting and not with felling.
• Planting a new substantial avenue of trees with a long lifespan; (There are various options for locations and maybe not all one species).
• Having a long term plan - and retaining funds for use in the future eg. to replace the cherry tree avenue on Jesus Green when the time comes.
• I think the horse chestnut avenue on Victoria Avenue could be managed by planting replacement trees in the gaps.
• The very old trees on the riverside which come to life each year ought be retained despite having a rather pillar like shape

See also My comments on the Jesus Green trees and my comments on the Midsummer Common proposals for more of my views on what there is potential to do.

I believe any proposals will have to be considered both by the West Central Area committee, and according to the City Council’s protocol on tree works.

Related Articles

• Rare Outbreak of Common Sense as Cambridge City Council Shelves “Tree-Chess” Plans Friday, May 1, 2009
• A Democratic Decision to Fell Trees on Midsummer Common
• Friends of Midsummer Common 2010 AGM
• Jesus Green Association AGM 2009
• No Councillors or Council Officers Turn Up for Public Meeting on Tree Strategy
• Tree Felling Starts on Midsummer Common

Screenshot of Cambridge City Council’s upgraded online planning web pages.

Cambridge City Council has just launched a new online planning system.

Key Points

• Plans, drawings and documentation for planning applications can now be viewed on the council’s public website. Previously viewing plans almost always required visiting the Guildhall in-person.
• The City Council is going to be able to close its planning reception as a result of launching the extended online service.
• £33,000 worth of new monitors are being provided for the use of members of the public who want to visit the council offices to browse this improved section of the council website. [Update 25/6/2010: While this was implied by the public information, the £33K is infact buying about 60 new monitors for council officers to use with the new system as well as the two for the public more]
• Presumably objections and letters of support are also to be made available online, though this has not started to happen yet.
• Only residents associations and not the wider public were consulted in relation to the expanded online service.
• The council is not setting the planning information free. It has gone to extreme lengths to try and keep control of the data and is currently forbidding others from representing the data and producing things like lists, or maps, of new planning applications.
• Direct links to applications, or documents, don’t work; seriously reducing the utility of the new system. eg. a residents association newsletter or website can’t carry a direct link to either an application’s summery page or the comment form. This is a loss of functionality when compared with the previous system. [Update 25/6/2010: This has been fixed with respect to applications and comments]

A a briefing on the new “public access” planning system is being taken around each of Cambridge City Council’s Area committees in the next few weeks.

Under the old system those wishing to look at the details of a planning application and comments which had been made on it had to go into the Guildhall and ask to see the file. This was a physical real file filled with an assortment of papers, including print outs of plans, print outs of emails and the odd handwritten or even typewritten letter. The idea of the new system appears to be that it will allow access to documents online, enabling the council stop operating a planning reception where people can go and view the files in person. Individuals will also to be able to register an account and obtain email alerts about new planning applications - previously this service was only offered to councillors, residents associations and others with a special relationship with the council.

I think what the council is now doing amounts to a fantastic step forward. I have noticed many councillors, particularly at area committees making planning decisions obviously without having been into the council offices to review the all the relevant documents. Hopefully that problem will be vastly reduced in the future as access to applications and representations will be so much easier. If this increased online publication does turn out to be the step change which it appears it could be councillors who don’t regularly visit the council offices will now have the opportunity to better informed about the applications in-front of them and be better aware of the detail of what objectors and supporters of a particular application have been saying. While I have on a number of occasions been in to the city council to view planning applications it is very time consuming; placing the application files online will make commenting on planning applications much more accessible and may well result in engaging a much broader group of people and enabling more people to have their say in the process.

Council officers Nova Roberts, the Head of Customer Service, and Paul Boucher, Business & Information Services Manager in the Environment and Planning department, are looking: to receive feedback and comments at the area committee briefing sessions. It will be up to area committee chairs as to if those comments can come from the public or just from councillors and it is unclear what, if any, prospect there is for the council’s contractor Idox Group to act on any suggestions made at this late stage (after the launch of the new system).

Prior to the launch the council only talked to residents associations, and not to the wider public, about the new system. I suspect this decision to exclude the majority of those with an interest in the city from having input into the specification as meant the council has not benefited as much as it could have done from the vast pool of knowledge and talent available in Cambridge. Consulting with a wider group would also I believe have prompted the council to think twice about its decision to adopt such a restrictive approach to allowing re-use, linking, and re-presentation of the information.

The old system appeared to have the functionality to enable the uploading of files but it generally wasn’t used. Officers have started uploading documents into the new upgraded system, however I have not yet seen any comments (objections or letters of support) published. Currently, as was the case with the old system, the number of comments is noted, but the content is not available. Until the comments are online then continuing easy public access to the raw paper files containing them is absolutely essential.

Wrong Mindset in City Council

One major problem with the council’s approach is that they’ve not sought to set the information they’re holding free. The council don’t appear keen on others doing anything with what they see as “their” planning application data. The council’s terms and conditions strictly forbid people from re-presenting the information in the system; so it appears that for example residents associations will have to risk legal action from the council if they republish notices of local planning applications on their own websites, things like my map of tree works may be under threat too.

They’ve not even made it possible for people to include straightforward links to applications or documents. I hit this problem earlier today when I decided to tweet a link to a plan showing the view from Jesus Green of a (now withdrawn) proposed extension to the Christ’s College Boathouse only to be rapidly told by many others that they could not access the document. I then had to direct them to the I agree button to submit to the city council’s extensive terms and conditions so that they would be able to view the drawings of what had been proposed.

Cambridge City Council currently bans cameras from its planning reception; that attitude has persisted as it moves online.

The council’s planning offices have posters on the walls forbidding the use of digital cameras to take copies of plans (though official copies could be purchased so the motivation is unclear). This results in ludicrous situations such as campaigners copying plans out by hand. I have previously published photos of plans on my website when discussing planning applications and such images have also appeared in the local media as their use can clearly be justified on journalistic grounds.

I think that details of planning applications are public information and they ought be as accessible as possible for those wishing to debate and comment on them.

Historical Data

The loss of older historical data with the move to the upgraded system has been raised with me as a matter of concern; the previous system had very valuable data from decades ago - already clearly digitised and available online - but apparently dumped during the import into this new system. To cease to make this material available is the modern equivalent of tossing the city’s civic records on a bonfire.

Land Searches

I would like to know if the new public access system is reliable and comprehensive enough to allow people to conduct their own searches as are required for mortgages or if the council intends to keep charging people for professional searches. The previous system carried a disclaimer stating it was: “not a substitute for carrying out a formal land search or other legal enquiries”, but surely as technology improves there it will be less acceptable for councils to charge for access to information which ought be easily accessible on the web and Cambridge City Council ought be leading the way.

Activism

In this, as with other areas where I’m trying to get Cambridge City Council to operate in a more open and transparent manner, I am not just campaigning but have taken some direct action.

I have published a live copy of the list of the current month’s planning applications on my website. Links from my page by-pass the City Council’s I agree button meaning they’re of use to everyone not just those who’ve visited the city council’s planning pages earlier during the same browsing session.

I have also made the monthly application list available as an RSS Feed. The council had not even specified an RSS feed of new applications for their new system, never mind a geoRSS feed which would be better. Ideally of course such feeds would be available for any of the existing advanced search options as well as for other critera such as “near my home”.

I have also written a parser for PlanningAlerts.com, the output of which can be seen at:

• http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/planningalerts/cambridge.xml and
• http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/planningalerts/cambridge.xml?day=5&month=5&year=2010

Currently incorporation into Planning Alerts is less useful than it would be if the council showed something other than an error message to those following links to pages and documents within the new planning system. Unless those following the links have recently clicked on the council’s “I agree” button they would see the error and not be offered any easy route to finding the intended documents. Planningalerts.com frees up the data and makes it much easier for both individuals and website operators to reuse it.

Nonsense bureaucracy

A lot of nonsense bureaucracy has been newly exposed and can rapidly be seen by those browsing through the new system. For example an application from another part of the council to the planning department for new noticeboards on the Guildhall prompted one council officer to write back to another requesting they pay a fee (suggesting a cheque from Cambridge City Council to Cambridge City Council) and requesting plans to a particular specification be provided.

Costs

Costs related to this project are included in a report to the Environment Scrutiny Committee on the 22nd of June:

As well as the monitors there will be additional costs associated with specialised large format printers for the council’s Regent Street “Customer Access Centre”. The facilities are intended for members of the public to go in there in person and use the council’s website and print plans from it. (Just imagine the reaction you’d get if you walked into a company’s offices and asked if they had computers they’d let you use to browse their website from their office. They’d rightly think you were nuts.)

I hope those who already charge crazy amounts for creating central government websites don’t hear of this as they might start adding tens of thousands onto their bills for equipment for the public to view their websites on too!

I think it is scandalous private contractors sell these systems repeatedly to different parts of the public sector across the country. Where there is clear potential for software to be reused within the public sector it we ought pay for it once and require it be released under an open source licence. When councils find ways of improving it the upgrades should be freely distributed and made available for use by all councils.

No doubt there are other costs which have appeared in other year’s accounts and some of the costs mentioned above, such as the servers, may not be entirely related to the expanded online service.

Questions Which Need Answers

I hope members of the Environment Scrutiny Committee, as well as councillors at area committees, will ask challenging questions on the functionality of the new system. My suggestions are:

• Will records of actions taken by chairs of committees making planning decisions (and agreement of opposition spokespeople), which are currently kept in planning files be uploaded to the new system?
• How quickly will documents be uploaded onto the system? Will all representations be uploaded on the day they are received?
• Under what circumstances will representations relating to a planning application not be made public via the new system? (Some comments are currently marked “Comment not available for publication”)
• Will details of S.106 agreements be posted on the system? Will this be correlated with details of how the funds raised have been spent?
• Will the agendas of meetings considering planning items link to the detailed information. ie. Do the “ModernGov” and “PublicAccess” systems interact effectively and automatically?
• Why, when a user meets a “Document Unavailable” error due to not having accepted the councils terms and conditions eg. after following an external link to a specific application or document are they not offered the opportunity to click the “I agree” button at that point?
• Why is the council being so restrictive and controlling in relation to re-use and representing the information? Why is the council opposed for example to planning applications being viewed in Google Maps; or for lists of planning applications being provided on third party sites? Could the council release its information, including the detailed geographical location data, in a free and open format?
• What is the plan relating to the inclusion of more historical data?
• What is currently preventing formal legal land searches being offered free of charge over the web?
• How many people does the council anticipate will visit the council’s offices to view the planning section of the council’s website?

The Akeman Street - Stretten Avenue junction. There are bare patches and broken curbs, but £17,750 appears a huge amount to spruce it up.

At Cambridge City Council’s North Area Committee on the 10th of June 2010 councillors approved the spending of an astonishing £17,750 on plants, and a few new curbs, for Akeman Street in Cambridge. The money is to be spent on the Akeman Street - Stretten Avenue junction. This latest approval of funds is just a small part of the total being poured into Akeman Street; it follows councillors’ approval of £4,750 in November 2009 for new plants outside the shops in the middle of Akeman Street and while debating what to do with the remainder of their “Environmental Improvement” funds councillors at the June 2010 North Area Committee they pencilled in the possibility of spending a further £20,000 on planting around Akeman Street’s junctions with Darwin Drive though spending this latter sum was not formally approved at the meeting.

As yet there is no sign of any planting by the shops and councillors have not been updated on what has happened to the money they allocated in November 09.

Summary of Akeman Street Spending

• £4,750 - Planting outside shops.
• £17,750 - Planting and curbs at Akeman Street / Stretten Avenue Junction.
• £20,000 - Planting at Akeman Street / Darwin Drive junctions and round trees.
• TOTAL AKEMAN STREET PLANTING: £42,500

I have looked at the areas which are being considered for replanting; and while I’ve not taken a tape measure out I estimate that councillors are looking at throwing about a thousand pounds per square meter at the works on Akeman Street.

I wonder if any of these councillors would spend their own money as profligately as they appear to be willing to spend mine and other taxpayers’. No restrictions on spending appear to have reached our Liberal Democrat councillors in the North of Cambridge; there are no public sector cuts in evidence here.

While debating the “Environmental Improvements” Cllr Boyce appeared to joke that a “community call to action” might be cheaper; his fellow Liberal Democrats all laughed at his suggestion which was clearly not being put forward in all seriousness. Clearly the council (why not the County?) have to repair the curbs, but the planting could done in conjunction with local residents - some of whom I know would love the council to positively engage with their guerrilla efforts to improve the area’s planting and will be astonished to learn of the sums of public money being deployed inefficiently.

Broken curbs at the Stretten Avenue - Akeman Street junction have been made safe but need repairing. Throughout the city bricks have been used where concrete would have been cheaper and more durable.

No detailed proposals for any of the planting works have been put to the councillors in a public meeting. At the June 2010 council officers’ estimate for the cost planting on the junction had risen from £8,000 to the £17,750 approved. No councillor questioned the reason for this enormous jump.

Councillors were unclear as to if their approval of the work was subject to consultation or not. They certainly didn’t direct officers as to who should be consulted in any such exercise.

The planting decision was made unanimously by all the North Area’s city councillors, all of whom were present at the meeting.

The Akeman Street / Stretten Avenue Junction

This junction is in a poor state and has been discussed many times at the North Area committee over the couple of years I have been observing.

County Cllr Moss-Eccardt, who was absent from the June 2010 meeting which approved the spending has previously called the design of the junction a failure. Pedestrians are supposed to be directed away from the junction, however people ignore where the pavements go and many walk in the road, or more recently as the planting has got more sparse, people have been walking across the mud in the planting area.

Councillors have many times debated the height of the shrubs, and appear to have agreed that the high shrubs obstructing vision are to an extent desirable as a traffic slowing measure.

The current spending of £17,750 is, according to the meeting papers and the decision I observed, just for repairs to the curbs and some new plants; it is not seeking to address the underlying problems with the layout of this junction. Perhaps had Cllr Moss-Eccardt turned up he would have been able to persuade his colleagues to get better value for the astronomical sum they committed to spend.

Background

• Environmental Improvement Programme report to the June 2010 North Area Committee
• My article on Councillor’s approval of the initial £4,750 worth of plants in November 2009

Further Images

Pedestrians take the path of least resistance - in this case through the planter; many walk on the road. The pavement runs to the left.

Akeman Street planter full of colour and interest. 20mins pruning would make it very smart in my view.

Another impressive Akeman Street planter; in need of no more than a bit of a trim.

In November 2009 Councillors approved spending £4,750 of public money on this bare patch outside the Akeman Street Shops. (Photo taken 11 June 2010)

Caution: The North Area Committee Chair Liberal Democrat Ian Nimmo-Smith chastised me during the committee’s proceedings saying: “you don’t understand what goes on at meetings”. I thought I would report that here so those reading can take his view into account.

Tellers report the result of a vote on an ambiguous SNP amendment on Trident which was supported by just 27 MPs.

On the 8th of June 2010 MPs were discussing the coalition’s programme for government in the House of Commons. An archaic tradition, which does nothing for making Parliament more accessible and easy to follow, means that they do this in the form of a debate on how MPs ought phrase a letter of thanks to the Queen for attending Parliament and reading out the government’s proposals. Scottish National Party MP Angus Robertson proposed adding a section to the note of thanks to the Queen saying:

… but respectfully request that your Government includes as part of its Strategic Defence and Security Review a full examination of the Trident nuclear missile system and any possible replacement.

My view is that the hereditary monarch ought have no role in government, and if MPs are to debate the government’s plans with respect to the defence of the country they ought do so directly and not via this absurd charade. The lunacy of the parliamentary process isn’t the only source of confusion. What’s much worse is that Mr Robertson’s amendment wasn’t, at least in my view, particularly clearly written. What it appeared to be doing was asking for the consideration of abandoning the UK’s nuclear deterrent entirely as an option in the upcoming defence review; given the pro unilateral nuclear disarmament policy of the SNP who were behind the motion I’m sure that was its intent. However as written the motion could be read as calling for a full examination of “any possible replacement” ie. expressing support for investigating alternative nuclear deterrent options other than renewal of the existing Trident system. I can understand that some of those in favour of getting rid of any form of UK nuclear deterrent may not have wanted to support a motion to which the latter interpretation could be applied.

I hope the people of Moray are following the performance of their MP Angus Robertson in Parliament as I don’t think someone who is unable to draft an unambiguous amendment ought have any role in formulating legislation.

Despite a number of Liberal Democrat MPs, including Cambridge’s Julian Huppert, having stood for election on a platform of discontinuing the UK’s nuclear deterrent in any form they did not vote for this SNP amendment. This may have been due to the ambiguous wording or it may have been that they’ve put power, the unity of the coalition, and their party allegiances, ahead of the principles on which they stood for election. During the election campaign Mr Huppert cited the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent as the key area where he disagrees with Lib Dem party policy. Around two hundred and eighty MPs, just under half, including Mr Huppert, didn’t vote at all in the division. Under the current system there is no way of knowing if those who abstained made a positive decision to do so or if they were just absent. Abstaining MPs could easily shout “I abstain” into the nearest microphone when votes are called and if they insisted their “interventions” were recorded in Hansard their positions would be clear and the transparency of Parliament would take another step forward.

The vast majority of Liberal Democrats (51/57) voted with the Conservatives against the amendment. All but 15 Labour MPs didn’t vote at all.

I could not spot Mr Huppert in the chamber prior to or after the vote and he also did not vote in division which immediately followed despite that subsequent vote being a very well attended division (the house was pretty full and 592 MPs took part), this suggests Huppert may have, intentionally or not, been absent. As the later vote (while literally again about sending a thank you note to the queen) is generally seen as a vote of support or not of the coalition’s programme for government Huppert’s failure to participate was again notable.

I can understand members of the Government voting no; both on the grounds of avoiding being asked by Parliament to do something ambiguous and on the grounds of voting against the clear intent of the motion. The Liberal-Conservative coalition’s programme for government states:

We will maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and have agreed that the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money. Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives.

The Liberal Democrat use of “Alternatives” appears to me to be designed to allow it to be read by different people in different ways. They are free to suggest to some it means: “alternative nuclear deterrents”, and to others “alternatives to a nuclear deterrent”. This is the way Liberal Democrats operate and it is not in my view a honest and upstanding way to behave.

My own view is that the coalition policy of maintaining Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent is the right one. I think the strategic defence review ought consider all ways in which that can safely and effectively be achieved and with a view to keeping costs as low as possible.

Photo of room prior to Cambridge City Council Licensing Committee meeting. Photography and audio recording is banned during meetings.

Cambridge City Council is about to launch a consultation on its licensing policy. The police, licensees, premises supervisors, the Campaign for Real Ale, the general public and others will be asked for their views. This morning I went to the guildhall and observed the council’s licensing committee discuss and approve the consultation plans.

Key Points

• The consultation will be run between 14th June and 5th September 2010.
• I suggested the council publish responses they receive online as they get them. Councillors liked the idea but officers said it was beyond their capabilities.
• Under the City Council’s current licensing policy applications for licences to sell alcohol, even in Cumulative Impact Zones, are approved automatically if there are no objections.

I used the opportunity the council gives members of the public to address its meetings to say:

I think it is particularly worth me making a public statement here today as the public speaking slot appears to have been dropped from the agenda. I think its valuable and would like to see it kept. It’s not obvious that public speaking is permitted at this committee, because at the analogous full planning committee meetings where they’re setting policy public speaking is not permitted.

Cllr Smith, the meeting’s chair, nodded in agreement and scribbled a note (presumably reminding her to check that future agendas include a public speaking item). Public speaking at planning and licensing committees discussing individual cases is strictly regulated; but I see no reason why when considering other items of business the council’s usual public speaking rules shouldn’t apply.

I would like to make some suggestions on making consultation you are about to run more open and transparent. I’d like to see you:

• Publish responses online in real time. This would enable debate and let people respond to and build on previous responses.
• Ask the police to respond early, as soon as possible, so others can respond to the position they take.

If this doesn’t happen then consultees will be being asked to comment on the basis of an out of date police position which is being appended to the draft policy for consultation.
There is a risk that the police might respond late in the consultation process; and clearly any representation they make will be important and the committee will rightly give signifiant weight to it; but if its not proactively published then other consultees will not be able to respond to what it says.

It is good to see area committees are to be used as part of the consultation process, I would like to suggest you include the North Area Committee; I’m mentioning that as it has been excluded from some items which have been taken to other areas in the past. I would also like to suggest the licensing consultation is taken to area committee meetings where the police are present.

While I was making my public statement I took the opportunity to make some other comments on what the committee was doing:

• There is a section in the proposed Licensing policy on the city council’s green space licence. I asked if it was expanding that to address the question of if council’s licence could/should/ought be held corporately rather than by individuals and make clear what the council’s licensing policy position would be on that.
• The minutes of the Strawberry Fair licence decision are being reported to the committee; but there’s no mention of the appeal in progress. I suggested the full facts were not being reported to councillors, or the public saying: “You’re being given half a story, we’re being given half a story”. (The day’s Cambridge News carried a story suggesting the council might be trying to persuade the police to drop their appeal).

While I was commenting on Strawberry fair Cllr Boyce shook his head vigoursly. Cllr Smith the chair of licensing noted that the decision was made by a sub-committee but said: “it would be useful to know what is going on”. Cllr Boyce said that the appeal was not a matter for the full licensing committee. The Lib Dems generally defer to Cllr Boyce, who chair’s the council’s Civic Affairs Committee when he makes such pronouncements and did so again on this occasion. Councillors and the public are generally not kept well informed about the progress appeals against council planning and licensing decisions.

Cllr Smith then responded to some of the other items I had raised. She said she agreed with me that the consultation should go to all four area committees, and to meetings when the police are present if possible. Cllr Smith also said she liked the idea of posting consultation responses online in real time, but again tempered her remarks by adding another: “if possible”.

The City Council’s licensing officer Christine Allison was asked by Cllr Smith to respond to the points I had raised. The officer initially appeared unable to do so; instead making a rather irrelevant and abrupt statement of: “The consultation will run for twelve weeks and will follow the Government’s code of practice on consultations”. Cllr Smith made a face suggesting confusion and bafflement. The officer tried again, this time telling the committee: “the consultation will go out to everyone, including the police, for twelve weeks”. Perhaps what she was trying to get across was that it would be inappropriate in her view for the councillors to ask the police to respond as soon as possible, but she didn’t make that clear.

The licensing officer then turned to the Cumulative Impact Zones; noting that they would be likely to be the key area of public interest in any police response. She said that the police could, at any time, have requested a change to the CIZs; and reported that no requests for changes had been received. The officer went on to suggest that the consultation was likely to prompt the police to review their figures and perhaps ask for a change. The officer told the committee that in that case there would be a further, separate, consultation on the CIZ changes. Later in the meeting the officer suggested that as CIZs are an integral part of the licensing policy a further consultation on updating that would also have to be run if the CIZs were changed (a huge amount of inefficient bureaucracy, which does nothing to aid the transparency and accessibility of the process.)

Still apparently unable to grasp the suggestion of putting responses online as they were received the officer Christine Allison firmly told the committee that the council would: “look at all the responses at the end of the twelve weeks” implying I thought that she was unwilling to do anything with them before that time.

The officer then reported the dates on which the consultation would be taken to the area committees. She gave this as a list of dates without specifying which committee would be on which date. Using the council’s published calendar I have expanded these to:

• 17th June East Area Committee
• 24th June West Central Area Committee
• 8th July South Area Committee
• 15th July North Area Committee

The licensing officer then told the committee that generally in the past when she had made such presentations to the area committees the police had been there. Cllr Boyce told her that as the police were attending the North Area committee on Thursday 10th June and attended every other committee they would not be there on the 15th of July. Cllr Smith repeated her view that it would be good for the consultation to be taken to meetings at which the police were to be present; but the officer appeared unwilling to adapt to the councillors’ desires.

Apparently frustrated by my, and the councillor’s scrutiny of her plans for running the consultation officer Christine Allison then appeared to make an argument that the consultation wasn’t really needed anyway. She said that: “nothing substantive has changed” in the licensing policy and all that was being done was updating it in response to changes in legislation. She appeared to be missing the point that while nothing substantial had changed in her draft - the public and consultees might raise issues and suggestions which would prompt changes. If there really was no point in running the consultation (other than the legal requirement to do so) then why councillors’, the police, and the public’s time at the expensive area committees’ is to be spent on it ought to have been questioned.

Cllr Stuart addressed the committee commenting on my idea of asking the police to respond in a timely manner to enable their response to be debated as part of the consultation. She expressed doubts as to if the police would be able or willing to do that, but said that wasn’t a reason for the council not to ask. Cllr Stuart didn’t appear to have high hopes for a useful contribution coming from the police saying that “police consultation responses tend to be written by their lawyers and not by police”, but said that making their views known had the potential to: “launch debate off”.

While making her remarks Cllr Stuart had suggested the police would be unlikely to be willing to participate in a debate. Green Councillor Adam Pogonowski explained that my suggestion had not been for the police to debate, but simply to post responses online as they came in, enabling others to respond to them. Cllr Colin Rosenstiel also took the opportunity to restate the idea saying:

It’s about informing people, the suggestion is to post online what we’ve got when we’ve got it.

Labour’s Cllr Benstead said that while my proposal would be an aggressive move to more openness it was getting too close to the start date of the upcoming consultation to start it. He said he didn’t want: “Consultation by blog”, and mooted the idea of a “consultation on the consultation process for the future.”

Cllr Smith addressed the meeting again, saying that the Government Code of Practice was all well and good, but didn’t go far enough. She said that often central Government, even when her party is in Government, doesn’t do consultation as well as it could. She said there were lots of possibilities to do consultations more effectively online. She said that “consultation by blog” with people actively debating on the council’s website would no doubt be beyond the resources of the council which would be unable to moderate such activity. She pointed out though that publishing responses from bodies like the police on the council’s website when they were received so that others can discuss and respond to them (wherever those discussions take place - on blogs or elsewhere) was likely to be achievable. She suggested that if the licensing committee proves this is useful it is something which could be suggested to the rest of the council. Catching herself, Cllr Smith added:

Uploading documents might sound simple to some of us, but it may be outside of the council’s IT capabilities.

Cllr Smith then asked if any committee members disagreed with asking council officers to look to see if it would be possible to publish consultation responses online as they were received. No members of the committee indicated any disagreement and Cllr Smith turned to the officers to say:

We would like it done, if possible.

Councillors then turned to other matters relating to the consultation. Cllr Benstead asked if councillors were able to respond themselves - suggesting that they had not been allowed to in the past. The licensing officer told the committee councillors would be invited to respond to the consultation as they were “included as interested parties”.

Cllr Benstead appeared concerned by the officers’ suggestion that the new licensing policy was being rushed through. He pointed out that the deadline of an October 2010 full council to get the policy in place for January 2011 wasn’t in fact a hard deadline as if required a special full council could be arranged later in the year. Cllr Benstead said that such an option should be considered if interesting items are raised by the consultation. Cllr Benstead stressed how important getting the policy right was, and ensuring it was defensible.

Despite licensing officer Christine Allison having repeatedly said: “the timetable is tight” she assured Cllr Benstead and the committee that the process is “not being rushed in any way”.

In response to Cllr Benstead’s comment about getting the policy right, and ensuring it was defensible the officer said that in previous years a “legal barrister” had reviewed the final draft of the policy and this was something which could be done again this year. Cllr Smith asked the officer if there was such a thing as an “illegal barrister”.

Still hostile to the idea of publishing consultation responses as they were received the officer again returned to that point before she finished speaking, this time claiming there would be “Data Protection Issues”.

Cllr Pogonowski had been waiting to speak since the committee had agreed to ask the officers to place the consultation responses online “if possible”; he expressed astonishment that there would be any question about if something so straightforward would be possible; saying even paper responses could easily be scanned.

Cllr Smith replied in an exasperated tone, perhaps expressing a hint of dismay at the quality of staff the council recruits saying:

Yes, but we need people able to do that

Cllr Pogonowski then turned to the licensing objectives and asked if a possible outcome of the consultation would be to add new ones; such as one protecting local pubs. This was met by a chorus of “No” from other committee members; he was told that “Councillor presentations on the 17th will make that clear”. Cllr Boyce suggested that Cllr Pogonowski ought read the licensing act. I presume that Cllr Boyce was trying to say that Section 4(2) of the Licensing Act 2003 defines the Licensing objectives and the council isn’t free to add to them.

Cllr Colin Rosenstiel who had declared an interest as a member of the Campaign for Real Ale at the beginning of the meeting asked if the campaign would be one of the consultees. The officer confirmed they were already on the list. Cllr Rosenstiel suggested that they might put in a response proposing changes to the policy which would support local pubs.

Cllr Colin Rosenstiel suggested that two addresses cited in the policy were wrong. He claimed the address for the County Council’s Child Protection and Review Unit, which was given as “18-20 Signet Court, Swann’s Lane” was wrong as despite the council’s street sign there containing an apostrophe it shouldn’t be there. I think Cllr Rosenstiel may have been suggesting the “s” after the apostrophe ought go too. There was also a debate on if it should be “Lane” or “Road”, a web search indicates both are in use. The officers reported that the address had been given to them by the unit themselves, but as they were consultees and it was in the document on which they were to be asked to comment they could be expected to submit a consultation response if it was in-fact an error. (Cambridge Lib Dems use a Swann Lane postal address which might explain why they were aware of such a nuance )

Rosenstiel also spotted that a wrong postcode was given for the Cam Conservators (who it appears have to be sent copies of certain applications - presumably riverside ones?). Rosensteil said that as the office at Baits Bite Lock is out of the city it wouldn’t have a “CB4″ postcode, an suggested it might be “CB24″. The Conservator’s website confirms Rosensteil was correct when he pointed out this mistake.

Cllr Smith steered the meeting back to substantive matters by asking if section 1.5 of proposed new policy applies within a Cumulative Impact Zone. Section 1.5 states:

There is no provision for a licensing authority itself to make representations, and in the absence of any relevant representations in respect of an application, the authority is obliged to issue the licence on the terms sought.

Officers confirmed that this was the case. And despite the presumption against giving out new alcohol licenses within the zones if no objections were raised then the application would automatically be approved. Cllr Benstead cited the “Sea Tree” chip shop on Mill Road as an example of such an unopposed licence application within a CIZ.

Cllr Shah re-asked Cllr Smith’s question querying if even on Mill Road an unopposed application would be granted automatically. Officers confirmed it would be.

Cllr Benstead then drew attention to another element of the policy, section 5.10 which reads:

This special policy creates a rebuttable presumption that applications within the areas set out in paragraph 5.8 for new premises licences or club premises certificates or variations that are likely to add to the existing cumulative impact will normally be refused, if relevant representations are received about the cumulative impact on the licensing objectives, unless the applicant can demonstrate why the operation of the premises involved will not add to the cumulative impact already being experienced.

He pointed out the need for “relevant representations about the cumulative impact”; and suggested that ward councillors ought be sure they objected to licence applications they disapproved of taking care to cite “cumulative impact” so that the council’s policy could be enacted, and defended, by those involved in licensing.

Cllr Saunders, a newly elected Liberal Democrat, spoke to say he had an interest in protecting young people and he sought clarification on if an objection to a licence citing the cumulative impact on young people was considered an objection citing cumulative impact. Cllr Boyce replied telling him that “cumulative impact” applies to all the licensing objectives.

I think it is worth noting that while councillors had the draft policy infront of them, they did not have the consultation document itsself to review. It may be the consultation takes the form of simply the council publishing the draft and asking for comments, however the fact they are to follow the Government code of practice suggests perhaps that specific questions relating to the decisions to be made and possible alternatives may be included. It would have been useful for councillors to have seen the letters to be sent out to consultees so they could see what exactly they were being asked to do.

When the recommendations were considered at the end of the meeting councillors didn’t formally amend them to request the publication of the police, or other, representations online as they were received but simply reiterated that the committee would like to see this done, if possible. Licensing officer Christine Allison responded: “I really don’t think we can”; and councillors appeared to accept this. I think we need to elect stronger, councillors and encourage more capable people to work for government at all levels in the UK.

Cllr McGovern was absent, and the Lib Dem alternate Cllr Pitt was not present to replace him. Cllrs Hart and Znajek were present but said nothing; Cllrs Saunders and Shah made no substantive contributions. Cllr Smith did try her best to bring committee members to life both during this and the other item on their agenda, but none appeared willing to do anything other than simply accept, without amendment, the recommendations officers had put in front of them.

Another licensing related area where there is a lack of ease of access to information is finding out when licence applications have been made. Cambridge City Council don’t list applications on their website, instead under a heading of “How will I know if an application has been made?” the council’s website states:

The applicant has to fix a notice to the premises for 28 consecutive days and advertise the application in the local press Public Notices section.

One problem, and something which makes it harder to participate in the process, is that even when you know of a licence application; you then have to visit the council offices during working hours to view the details of application; even details of which of the council’s various reception desks you have to go to are not published. I think there is a massive opportunity to make more information available online. I may submit a consultation response suggesting such a move.

It was reported by officers that in future the legal requirement to hold these consultations might be dropped; clearly there is a lot of wasteful bureaucracy it would be easy to cut, but a lot is in the hands of the City Council. They could have asked the police to submit their views early, prior to the formal consultation period; and the use of Area Committees and the time and expense of sending licensing officers to all those is clearly in their discretion.

Cambridge’s Locally Based Housing Offices Are to be Cut by the Lib Dems

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Lewis Herbert the leader of the Labour opposition group on Cambridge City Council put the following oral question to the Executive Councillor for Housing Cllr Smart:

What recommendations will she be bringing forward as the Council’s response to the national Government proposal to reform Housing Revenue Account funding and devolve real powers to the City Council to manage and develop council housing for Cambridge Residents?

Cllr Smart responded to say the honest and straightforward answer was: “I’m not sure yet”. She said the answer was probably a “Yes, but…” but it was not yet known if the “yes” or the “but” was to be in the largest letters.

Cllr Smart said she needed to hear from tenant representatives on the housing management board and from the community services scrutiny committee and claimed to be surprised the Labour group were asking her for a decision before she’s had a chance to listen to them as if the situation had been reversed they’d be complaining that the decision had been taken without consultation.

Cllr Herbert joked: “We’ll have it both ways” and accepted the Executive councillor’s position that she is still making her mind up. He used his follow up question to ask: “If she does decide to support this opportunity; will she fund building new council housing?”

Cllr Smart replied : “If the sums add up - yes.”

She went on to say there’s one sentence in the expanded coalition agreement which says they will review the unfair housing revenue account. Cllr Smart suggested the use of the word “unfair” indicates they’re not intending to continue with the status quo. She said it was quite important to know if the deal will be as previous govt offered or if if would be tweaked at all as it is all finely balanced. She said how much grant (as a percentage) was on offer and how the national housing debts would be parcelled out to councils - including perhaps to councils like Cambridge which is currently debt free - were critical.

Cllr Smart said she thought the new government were probably waiting to see what consultations will bring up before deciding.

When pushed for a clear position on building new council houses Cllr Smart said: “I would prefer to” saying that she would like more council houses for those on the “needs list”. She finished her remarks by saying: “We won’t do it if we have to mortgage the mace”.

See the other oral questions asked at the May 2010 full council meeting.

Cambridge Guildhall

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Labour Councillor Lucy Walker put the following oral question to the Leader of Cambridge City Council Liberal Democrat Sian Reid:

What services will you be seeking to protect in response to the Coalition Government’s proposed stringent cuts to the Department for Communities and Local Government

Cllr Reid response didn’t really address the question in her response; she started by saying the council had lots of pressures and particularly the heavy burden of concessionary fares funding. She said that the council was involved in a wide range of shared services and joint working, and drew attention to a note she had circulated detailing existing joint working. This document was commended by many councillors during the debate on a motion about a unitary authority for the Cambridge area.

Cllr Reid’s note has not been included in the online papers for the meeting. I have been lobbying for some time for all documents tabled at meetings to be posted online along with the rest of the meeting papers, but the Liberal Democrats don’t appear keen on this idea which would increase openness and transparency; in fact they’ve previously argued that distributing documents at meetings amounts to making them public irrespective of if there were any press or public present or if the papers were distributed to them. In this case copies were available in the public gallery and I have made the document available online (351 Kb PDF) , but as an image based PDF it is harder to work with than it would be if the council had released the digital document.

Cllr Walker used her follow-up to push for an answer to her original question and suggest that as the cut to the Department for Communities and Local Government had been the biggest cut to any department surely that was not good news for local government.

Cllr Reid replied curtly and without substance saying that given the state of the country there was no good news for any department, but expressed her view that the cuts could be absorbed by removing “unnecessary organisation” and “unnecessary procedures” rather than cutting services. No examples of unnecessary activities ripe for cutting were offered by Cllr Reid.

See the other oral questions asked at the May 2010 full council meeting.

Cambridge punter wearing rubber gloves and a lifejacket earlier this year.

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Tim Ward, the Liberal Democrat councillor for Arbury put the following question to the Executive Councillor for Community Development and Health, Cllr Bick. (Cllr Bick has also been given city wide responsibility for policing by the council.)

What can the council do about aggressive touting for punt hire?

Cllr Bick started his response by saying, rather redundantly in my view, that Cambridge is famous for punting, that people enjoy it, and it contributes to tourism. He also said that as the street system doesn’t parallel the river people have to draw attention to punting on streets away from the river. He said the council has to consider the acceptability and manner in which it [punt touting] is conducted.

Cllr Bick appeared be reciting a briefing he had been given by offers as he reported the city council has various “powers and resources” two of which are statutory:

1. The City Council and Police can pursue anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) where activity causes harassment alarm or distress.
2. The City Council has a by-law intended to deal with punt touts causing annoyance or obstruction in a public place. (Cllr Bick reported that this provision had been in place since 2005 and that one prosecution had taken place under it - in 2007).

Cllr Bick then spoke about “a third power” where there is a contractual relationship and the council can include terms which bind operators. He explained that this was relevant to the La Mimosa punt station which is owned by the council. (According to a report to the Feb 2008 Strategy and Resources scrutiny committee the city council also owns the river frontages used by punt operators at Granta Place, Silver Street and Newnham Road. Cllr Bick’s response suggests that there is no element of the lease/contract at those sites which regulates touting).

Cllr Bick told the meeting that PCSOs were trained by the city council in the by-laws and there was a member of council staff dedicated to dealing with punt touts patrolling the streets.

Cllr Ward used his follow up opportunity to say he was not sure about how much of a problem punt touting would be this year, and suggested evidence collection is the problem.

Cllr Bick replied to say that providing training for touts and operators on what’s acceptable and what isn’t is something the council’s enforcement team is anxious to do in the near future. He also reported that the council was looking for powers to enforce by-laws with fixed penalty notices, and complained that this had not implemented despite assurances by the previous Government that it would be. He said that such powers would improve the activities of enforcemenet team.

I was shocked to hear Cllr Bick, who was elected as a Liberal Democrat, argue that the fixed penalties could, and should, be used when the evidence which would be needed to take people to court, wasn’t present.

Cllr Bick then told councillors there was a possibility to: “put punt touting on same footing as street trading” but noted: “it is rather difficult to separate that from things like political campaining and leafleting - and other things people do on the street”. Cllr Bick said the idea of street trading style regulation was: “something to look at”.

My thoughts

I am puzzled by the fact the council are seeking powers to issue fixed penalty notices with respect to their bylaw as the police already have the powers to issue Fixed Penalties for causing harassment alarm or distress under section five of the public order act. Perhaps the council think the police are failing to fulfil their role - in which case councillors should direct them to where they think they are lacking when they next set the policing priorities for the city centre. The primary role of the police is to keep the peace and quiet and where punt touts disrupt that the police should act. Where the behaviour of punt touts is falling below the threshold at which the police ought to get involved, then I don’t think FPNs are appropriate either.

ASBOs can be sought - not for punt touting specifically - but for “conduct which caused or was likely to cause alarm, harassment, or distress … and where an ASBO is seen as necessary to protect relevant persons from further anti-social acts”. Violating an ASBO can incur up to five years imprisonment. My view is that such excessive criminalisation is not generally the right approach to the aggressive punt touting problem the city faces. If people are behaving criminally and genuinely aggressively then police action may on rare occasion be justified, but overall I think regulation and licensing is the best option. Punters operating from La Mimosa are heavily restricted in how they can operate as a result of their contract with the council for using the landing stage there. If all punters could be bound by such rules as a condition of their punt licence from the Cam Conservators that would appear to me to be a more reasonable approach. I have seen this discussed at meetings of the Cam Conservators though and their position is that they can’t refuse to licence a boat unless its unsafe. However the Conservator’s current position appears to be inconsistent with the fact they publish a code of practice for punt operators which states:

Subsequent failure to comply with the Code could be grounds on which the Conservators would refuse to register vessels in the future.

Surely that code of practice could be extended to cover the behaviour of punt touts, there is a problem though with the fact that the Conservators licence boats and not individuals.

I would support making the Cam Conservators a democratically accountable public body, subject to the freedom of information act (or dismantling it and distributing its responsibilities to the relevant councils and the Environment Agency). As with many other areas I think that here more openness and transparency would be very useful; the City Council, Conservators and Police could publish, perhaps jointly, their current policies and practices with respect to punt touting.

Neither Cllr Ward, or other councillors (Nimmo-Smith and Walker) who also are Cam Conservators declared their positions as Conservators when this question was being asked at the full council meeting.

See also

• Regulating Punting in Cambridge in Summer 2009
• Punting Enforcement Officer
• Punt Operation in the City of Cambridge Report prepared for Cambridge City Council Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee on 8th February 2008. Includes copy of bylaw as appendix.
• Cambridge News article on the first and only prosecution of a punt tout under the City Council bylaw. The tout, who was accused of obstructing the pavement, claimed he was victimised because of his size.

I have written articles on the other oral questions asked at the May 2010 full council meeting.

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Lewis Herbert the leader of the Labour opposition group on Cambridge City Council put the following oral question to the Leader of Cambridge City Council Liberal Democrat Sian Reid:

What progress has the Council made in its campaign launched at the February Council meeting to oppose cuts in university funding, and what responses have been received including from local MPs?

Cllr Reid responded to say that following the full council motion in February the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, had announced extra funding increasing university intake for one year by 20,000 then falling back. She also told the council that following the election the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition government announced that as part of their £6 billion cuts they would reduce those 20,000 planned extra places to 10,000.

In terms of the wider position Cllr Reid cited point 31 of the expanded coalition agreement she said that it expressed enthusiasm for higher education, and action to offer more college and university places. She said all were awaiting the results of Lord Browne’s “commission” into higher education funding. Cllr Reid said the outcome of that would be vigorously debated and: “the people of Cambridge will express their own views”.

Cllr Reid said: “We will make a case for what’s right for Cambridge and what’s right for the wider world”.

Lewis Herbert used his follow up question to ask: “Will the new Lib Dem MP be voting against the new cuts in higher education funding?” He was referring to the element of the motion from the February meeting in which the council had instructed the Leader and Chief Executive to write to local MPs and specifically asked: “Did she get a reply from her colleague?”.

Cllr Reid tried to dodge this question, by first saying: “I meet the new MP fairly regularly - I don’t have to write letters and receive replies”.

When pushed to report what Julian Huppert’s views were Cllr Reid admitted: “I have not asked him”.

Cllr Reid did note, slightly tangentially, that Julian Huppert has a track record opposing tuition fees.

Councillors later debated a motion on higher education funding which I will write about separately.

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Cherry Hinton councillor Robert Dryden (Labour) put the following oral question to the Leader of Cambridge City Council Sian Reid (Liberal Democrat):

Has there been any progress with the investigation of restructuring the administration at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre on how it operates this facility to the benefit of the local community

Cllr Reid, who is new to the role of council leader, started by saying that her previous experience not had not equipped her to answer the question so she had researched the position prior to the meeting. She told the council that the SLM contract includes management of Cherry Hinton Village Centre and reported that in her opinion there is a case for re-examining this when the contact ends in 2013. (SLM is the company the council uses to run the city’s swimming pools and some other facilities. The council illegally in my view refused to let me view the contract during the open period for the council’s accounts but has released a redacted version of the contract in response to a FOI request).

Cllr Reid announced something which as far as I know is new. She told the council that: “elected members can attend quarterly meetings with SLM to review their performance”. While this is a welcome step, persuading the council to publish the dates of these meetings and what is discussed at them or even open them to interested members of the public - for example representatives of users of the swimming pools - would be further steps towards openness and transparency. Knowing when the meetings are is crucial so people can encourage their councillors to attend and speak at them.

Cllr Reid reported that Cllr Smith, the ex. Executive Councillor for Community Services, had picked up an issue with particular group (which she didn’t name) about their use of the Cherry Hinton Village Centre.

Cllr Dryden spoke following Cllr Reid’s answer to say that there are other groups with problems too. He said the “Friends with Disabilities” group, which meets on the first Tuesday of every month, has 60 members and is funded by the City Council couldn’t book the centre as SLM make more money booking to another group for the whole day than to them for their half day.

Cllr Dryden complained that in general the people of Cherry Hinton were getting out-priced by other groups who were taking “their” slots.

Council Leader Sian Reid was rather brusque, but possibly genuine, with her response saying that Cllr Dryden’s comments were: “something to be taken very seriously”; however she didn’t make any categoric commitments or promises to take action.

Cllr Pit reports the amount of waste the city sends to landfill has decreased and that compostable material is being extracted from Black Bin waste.

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith put the following oral question to the Executive Councillor for Environmental and Waste Services, Cllr Pitt:

What progress is the city making towards reducing the amount of domestic waste that is not recycled but goes to landfill.

Cllr Pitt responded to say the amount of waste from the city going to landfill had fallen last year despite an increase in number of households. He gave the credit for this decrease to householders who he said had made more efforts to reduce the amount of waste going into their black bins. Cllr Pitt said that moving to two weekly collections and the provision of a larger container for recyling (the blue bins) had contributed too as had the adding the ability to recycle tetrapack cartons and batteries.

The executive councillor rattled off a lot of figures including “70Kg” and “12%”; which he said he would submit to council officers as a table for inclusion in the minutes. Cllr Pitt made a point of asking for his answer specifically, and the answers to oral questions generally, to be minuted but both the Mayor and Chief Executive stayed silent and didn’t respond with any assurance this would be done.

Cllr Pitt also said the council was promoting: “waste prevention”, and said that a plant to “reclaim” black bin waste was being commissioned at the moment. He said that compostable material was already being extracted from black bin waste but at the moment - during the commissioning - it was still being landfilled but he hoped that would change in the near future.

Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith, who earlier in the meeting had been elected Deputy Mayor, so was speaking from the dias wearing a gold medal on a blue ribbon round his neck, thanked Cllr Pitt for his answer and asked if the executive councillor agreed that the percentage of domestic waste going to landfill should be given less prominence than the absolute amounts.

Councillor Pitt agreed, and to point out the problem with the percentage statistic being taken alone - he noted, in an example he pre-emptively described as absurd, that if he went out to buy paper to put in his blue bin that would increase the percentage of his waste which was being recycled.

As there has been a case of compost even from Green bins ending up being contaminated in such a way that affected people’s ability to use it on their gardens I wonder what is to happen to the compost derived from the black bins which surely inevitably will be even less “clean”. If it’s not going to be used as compost but left to rot somewhere else - what’s the real difference between doing that and letting it rot in the landfill - other than it being avoiding landfill tax? Is this a scheme which only makes any sense at all due to an oddity of the tax system? One possible benefit is capturing methane being released during composting more efficiently than is possible in a landfill and generating energy from waste. [Update: I've added some more material relevant to these points in the comments]

More Q&A

See the other oral questions asked at the May 2010 full council meeting.

A rather empty Midsummer Common - Calm before the storm?

At Cambridge City Council’s annual meeting on the 27th of May 2010 Cllr Sarah Brown put the following oral question to the Executive Councillor for Arts and Recreation Cllr Cantrill:

Could the Executive Councillor provide the council with an update on the event that may take place on 5th June instead of the cancelled Strawberry Fair and the status of discussions regarding ensuring that Strawberry Fair is held from 2011 onwards.

Cllr Cantrill, who was formally appointed as the new Executive Councillor responsible for Arts and Recreation earlier in the meeting, responded to say: “It is highly regrettable that the police took the steps that they have which led to the sad position that organisers have cancelled”.

He suggested the council thought there might be more than one unofficial event and activity might not be limited to the 5th of June by saying: “There is speculation that there may be unofficial events on or around the 5th of June”. Cllr Cantrill said that the while the city council has a role in making such events safe the police take the lead role. He reported that the council have “supported police and stakeholders with health and safety, litter clearing, and securing access to Midsummer Common”. If he was referring to previous years or the current year I don’t know.

Cllr Cantrill told the full council that no estimate of the costs of council’s action were available.

Turning to the future of Strawberry Fair Cllr Cantrill reported: “there have been discussions to ensure the fair will take place in 2011 or beyond - and Strawberry Fair continues to be a colourful and refreshing festival”.

Cllr Sarah Brown was then offered her opportunity to ask a supplementary question, but despite the poor quality of Cllr Cantrill’s response she declined and said nothing.

My Comments on Cllr Cantrill’s Answer

Just two days after Cllr Cantrill’s answer at the full council the Cambridge News reported: “Police held a meeting this week with city leaders to reassure them the force had planned for ‘any eventuality’”. I think it was astonishing that Cllr Cantrill failed to mention this meeting in his response. Councillors would be better informed of the position by reading the Cambridge News than listening to the executive councillor responsible answering a question on the subject in the council chamber.

Another key omission from the Cllr Cantrill’s response was any clear position on if the council are actively discouraging any gathering on the 5th of June, or are happy to see some kind of protest event take place.

Despite being asked specifically about the future of the fair Cllr Cantrill made no reference to the upcoming appeal against the City Council’s licensing committee’s decision to give the fair a licence. I asked a public question at Cambridge City Council’s Community Services Scrutiny Committee on the 25th of March 2010 which prompted an assurance that the council would be defending the licensing committee’s decision at the appeal in front of the Magistrates. An reassurance this position was unchanged and, letting councillors and the public know if the council yet knows when the appeal is to be held would in my view have been useful additions to Cllr Cantrill’s answer.

Cllr Cantrill also omitted any mention of the council’s role in prompting the fair to require its own licence for the 2010 event, a subject which is covered in my previous article on the fair.

Councillors, police, press and others have been using the term “Raspberry Fair” to refer to the anticipated unofficial event(s).

At full meetings of Cambridge City Council there is a section where councillors are able to ask oral questions of the Executive councillors. Questions are submitted in advance and are randomly ordered by officers prior to the meeting. As many questions as it is possible to get through in the half hour allocated are taken. Councillors first ask their question as it is written - by saying, for example, “Number one madam Mayor” then following the reply they are able to take up to two minutes asking a follow up question which is also answered by the Executive councillor.

Executive councillors appear to be given around a day’s notice of the questions and are able to prepare their responses in advance of the meeting. At the full council on the 27th of May 2010 the question draw was won by the new Liberal Democrat councillor for Petersfield Sarah Brown so she got the opportunity to ask the first question. The questions were as follows:

1. Cllr Sarah Brown to the Executive Councillor for Arts and Recreation (Cllr Cantrill):
   Could the Executive Councillor provide the council with an update on the event that may take place on 5th June instead of the cancelled Strawberry Fair and the status of discussions regarding ensuring that Strawberry Fair is held from 2011 onwards?
2. Cllr Nimmo-Smith to the Executive Councillor for Environmental and Waste Services (Cllr Pitt):
   What progress is the city making towards reducing the amount of domestic waste that is not recycled but goes to landfill?
3. Cllr Dryden to the Leader (Cllr Reid):
   Has there been any progress with the investigation of restructuring the administration at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre on how it operates this facility to the benefit of the local community?
4. Cllr Herbert to the Leader(Cllr Reid):
   What progress has the Council made in its campaign launched at the February Council meeting to oppose cuts in university funding, and what responses have been received including from local MPs?
5. Cllr Ward to the Executive Councillor for Community Development and Health (Cllr Cantrill):
   What can the council do about aggressive touting for punt hire?
6. Cllr Walker to the Leader (Cllr Reid):
   What services will you be seeking to protect in response to the Coalition Government’s proposed stringent cuts to the Department for Communities and Local Government?
7. Cllr Herbert to the Executive Councillor for Housing (Cllr Smart):
   What recommendations will she be bringing forward as the Council’s response to the national Government proposal to reform Housing Revenue Account funding and devolve real powers to the City Council to manage and develop council housing for Cambridge Residents?

All questions were responded to within the time allocated, and there were no questions submitted which the relevant executive councillor didn’t tackle. Each question will shortly be linked to my article reporting, and discussing, the answer.

Many councillors, including surprisingly all but one of the newly elected councillors, had no questions at all they wanted to put to the Executive. That makes me wonder why they bothered getting themselves elected - perhaps they were after the free lunch - which was on offer during a break in the meeting.

Minuting the Q&A at Full Council

Despite the Q&A resulting in the executive councillor’s views on questions of importance to the city and its residents being revealed the section has never been formally minuted. I have been campaigning for the Q&A to be formally recorded and published for some time. The initial response was that the Q&A wasn’t a formal part of the meeting but this rather ludicrous position has now been dropped and I have since obtained assurances both from both council officers and previous Mayors that it will be minuted, however as yet no action has been taken. Opposition councillors are in favour of publication, and have obtained assurances in full council, that minutes will be produced. At the last full council meeting in April 2010 Cllr Howell complained that despite the repeated promises, and in the case of the February 2010 meeting unpublished draft minutes being produced that the section was still not minuted. Officers failed to record either Cllr Howell’s complaint about the minutes or the assurance from the Chief Executive, prompted by his complaint, that officers would start minuting the oral Q&A from July. (I have submitted a FOI request for draft minutes of the Q&A from the February 2010 meeting [Update the Chief Exec is considering if it is in the public interest to release them])

The Mayor, who chairs full council meetings, sometimes - but not always - asks Executive Councillors to provide written answers to oral questions which are not reached during the meeting. Sometimes these direct responses to the councillor asking the question are given, at other times the responses are sent via council officers and circulated more widely. By making a Freedom of Information request I was able to obtain two written answers to Oral Questions Tabled but not Answered at the April 2009 Full Council.

I have suggested that rather than burying the Q&A deep in the minutes of a long council meeting they could be pulled out and made more easily accessible on the council’s website as they are by their nature short, accessible insights into what councillors are doing.

I have previously reported the oral Q&A in full myself for example in February 2009 and in September 2008. On many further occasions I have written about individual questions and answers.

At 17.41 on Wednesday the 26th of May 2010 Cambridge’s newly elected Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert made his maiden speech to the House of Commons:

Thank you for giving me this chance to speak so early in this Parliament, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is great to see you in the Chair. There has been a long succession of maiden speeches from across the House, from the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) on mental health issues, through to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) and the most recent speech, by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock). Let me say first what an honour it is to be elected to this House to follow David Howarth, who served as an excellent MP for Cambridge for five years. Everywhere I went during the election campaign, people were full of praise for David and his achievements, from specific items of casework to saving Brookfields hospital and his campaign against the closure of the young people’s psychiatric service. His national work has also been acclaimed, such as his fight against the “Abolition of Parliament Bill”. Now that I am here, I am delighted to find that he is remembered clearly by many in all parts of the House, and also by many of the Clerks, who appreciated his interest and expertise in procedure. David is a true scholar, a fine lawyer and a great representative, and he will be missed on these Benches.

Cambridge has a long and distinguished electoral history. Since 1295, our representatives have included such notable political reformers as Oliver Cromwell-although I do not endorse his aims or his methods. If one includes the parallel Cambridge University constituency, which operated from 1603 to 1950, the list also includes many great scientists, including Sir George Gabriel Stokes and Sir Isaac Newton, who was arguably the first scientist to make money, although in his case it was as Master of the Mint. In the light of recent discussions, I should also say that the representatives of the university constituencies were elected using the single transferable vote, so there is plenty of historic precedent for using it for elections to this House.

Cambridge is a distinguished city and a special city. It became significant under the Romans, as an important causeway past the swampland of the fens-now all coloured blue. Like Rome, Cambridge is built on seven hills, although anyone who knows it well will be hard pressed to name them all, or indeed to find them.Cambridge is a city of values-of people who think beyond the immediate. It is a liberal city, with residents who understand the value of civil liberties and human rights. Cambridge is an environmental city, keen to live sustainably and without polluting the planet. It is also an international city, with residents who appreciate diversity and welcome those from other countries, andhave a deep interest in foreign affairs and what their country is doing in their name. Cambridge cares about fairness and social justice.For it is not a uniformly wealthy city. Some areas are wealthy, especially around the picturesque historic centre where tourists gather, but many, including the division that I had the honour to represent for eight years on Cambridgeshire county council and the ward where I now live, are less well-off. We must ensure that inequality is reduced, both in Cambridge and across the country.

Cambridge is best known as a university town, and it has three of them. There is the eponymous university-801 years old, although one should never inquire too carefully about such ages-and Anglia Ruskin university is an excellent university in its own right. It is financed by a certain Lord Ashcroft, and that is a very good use of his money. We also have a branch of the Open university as well.There is more to Cambridge as an education city than just these universities. We are proud to have two marvellous sixth form colleges, and excellent further education at Cambridge regional college-I hope that the Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), and the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice) will forgive me for trespassing by a few metres across our borders. We also have countless good schools, although some need rather more investment, possibly through a pupil premium, to ensure that all children can have the fair start that they deserve. Cambridge is a city of students, especially around the central areas. As a former student there myself, and more recently as a lecturer and a director of studies, I have seen at first hand the problems that they face as a result of ever increasing debts. I have seen how that debt changes their social interactions-Cambridge students are more segregated than they used to be-and how it affects their career choices for the worse. Cambridge is also a city of science. It has its historic figures such as Newton, Darwin, Watson and Crick, while its more contemporary greats are still pushing back the frontiers of knowledge at a great pace.

As one of the few scientists in this House, I hope to bring my expertise to bear on many of the issues facing us.I suspect that my own research field will not come up too often. I work-or, rather, I worked-on four-stranded DNA structures called G-quadruplexes. I studied how these structures form within cells, how they control which genes are turned on and off, and how they can be targets for new anti-cancer drugs. I do not think that will come up, but it is an understanding of how science works that I bring to this House.I can speak on wider issues of science policy, such as the funding process for both applied and blue-skies research, and on the operation of the DNA database. I can also speak on how science should affect the broader reaches of policy: for instance, I can speak about making decisions on low-carbon energy sources, following the ideas of my scientific colleague Professor David MacKay, who is now chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. However, I also believe that science, and more specifically the scientific method, has much to contribute to more diverse fields such as home affairs and justice. For instance, the Cambridge criminologist Professor Larry Sherman has performed elegant trials studying how to deploy police most efficiently to minimise criminal activity. He has shown that alternatives to short-term jail, such as restorative justice, are more effective at reducing future crime, cost less, and are preferred by victims. Scientists are obviously not unique in being able to apply such approaches, but we do come with a commitment to making evidence-based policy decisions.

Cambridge is also a city of technology and innovation. It is an economic powerhouse for the region, with many high-tech companies forming an ever growing cluster. Companies such as ARM, Solexa and Cambridge Display Technology are changing our lives, and driving the economy. There is much still to learn about how to stimulate and nurture such clusters and such companies, and I hope that we can develop a set of policies that facilitate such growth. But economic growth is not all that we should care about. We know that economic growth can lead to environmental damage, but the issue is broader than just that trade-off.

We are too fixated on gross domestic product, and make too much of whether it has gone up or down by 0.2%. It does not measure the things we ought to care about- education, health, or well-being. If there is an oil spill off the coast that we then clear up, more or less well, GDP has increased, but I am not sure that any of us would be delighted with that outcome.We need to focus more broadly on personal issues such as well-being and happiness. We need to develop rigorous metrics to measure this well-being throughout society, and then ensure that we bear them in mind when developing policy. We already know a lot about well-being. It does not change much with income, above a figure of around £7,000 a year. It changes with the quality of our environment, with the number of friends and the other social bonds that we have, with the activities that we get involved in, with family, and with community. I shall end by summing up my aims for Cambridge and for the country. I want to make Cambridge a city where people want and can afford to live and work. I want it to be a city at ease with its environment, a tolerant, open and more equal city. And I want to expand those same aims across the country.It has been said before that decisions are made by those who show up. It is a great honour that the people of Cambridge have asked me to show up here on their behalf, and I will try to represent them to the best of my ability.

Hansard Source

At the time of writing to find the text requires stepping through seventeen Hansard webpages, and to identify the video requires stepping though about eight hours of video so I thought it would be worth making the speech more easily accessible here.

My Comments

I think this is an excellent speech, it’s great to see Mr Huppert making it so soon - on the second proper sitting day of the new Parliament. I thought Huppert showed a good understanding of his role with his sentiment:

For Cambridge and for the country.

I’m happy that we’ve got an MP putting the city of Cambridge first and not someone solely focused on either national or party issues.

While Huppert mentioned the negative effects of high levels of student debt - as a result of tuition fees - he did not dare criticise his Government’s failure to take on the Liberal Democrat policy of scrapping fees.

Another serious omission in my view was any comment on defence. There was no mention of Afghanistan or Iraq or of potential future threats of North Korea, Iran or of India and Pakistan.

While Huppert, and Green Tony Juniper had both talked during the campaign about this idea of not using GDP but adopting a new metric to measure the performance of the country I was surprised to see it make the maiden speech. I disagree with the inference that the measure of GDP really influences what people do. It is just a statistic, and an important one, though more important how much we are selling abroad, and if the country is trading its way out of its current economic position is much more critical to maintaining the country’s wealth and standard of living. While I would not object the Government monitoring a new, parallel “well-being” metric, particularly if its component parts were broken down geographically and by sector so that action could be taken based on it, I don’t think we should be refactoring the national economy and say creating artificial incentives to improve well-being in the same way as we are creating artificial incentives to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The nation’s wealth really matters if we want to trade with the rest of the world.

The idea that “well-being” doesn’t significantly change with income above about £7,000 another concept which I find very worrying. As a Cambridge University academic one might be able lead a reasonable lifestyle in Cambridge on £7,000 a year but others trying to live on that level of income would find it very difficult to afford a decent place to live in the city.

Huppert pointing out that he is now one of the few scientists in the commons is also important and I am pleased he has made that point. I think it does show up a serious problem; I think the fact that so many constituencies send lawyers to represent them in Parliament reflects badly on what we see as the role of our representatives. Successful, growing countries like China have many more scientists, in Government.

I am surprised that Huppert has distanced himself from the aims of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was aiming to establish a democracy, his aims were laudable. He found that the time wasn’t right and he didn’t have enough support to achieve what he was seeking. During the election campaign Mr Huppert said he was a committed republican, however a few days before making his maiden speech he had ditched these principles and taken the oath to the Queen.

Unlike the MPs who were listening to Huppert in the chamber I thought his joke that Sir Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, was the first scientist to make money was pretty good and worthy of a laugh.

See also

Huppert’s other activity so far in Parliament includes submitting an EDM on the Digital Economy Bill:

That this House believes that sections nine to 18 of the Digital Economy Act 2010 should not have been rushed through in the dying days of the last Parliament; further believes that these sections have large repercussions for consumers, civil liberties, freedom of information and access to the internet; and calls on the Government to introduce early legislation to repeal those provisions.

While using the Information Commissioner’s Office website this evening I noticed that the ICO’s logo had been changed. The ICO have published a document on their website revealing they have spent £38,399.83 on the new “corporate image”. I am astonished at this shocking waste of public money, which has been spent while we are getting into ever deeper debt as a nation. I think it was utterly barmy to be borrowing money to fund hair-brained schemes like this.
£28,520 of the money was spent on:

Corporate identity design – research, concepts, proposals, design and production of manual

The new ICO logo, like the old one, essentially comprises the three letters “ICO”. Personally I cannot see any need for the change as the old logo was established and clearly identified the organisation. All I can see the new logo doing is confusing recipients of correspondence from the ICO. Requests for renewal of data protection registration already had the feel of a bit of a scam as they demanded their £35 / year tax from organisations I expect the new, unfamiliar, logo as well as being very expensive may worry people receiving demands in the future - especially as Data protection registration has been target for scammers in the past.

I think the ICO has been getting its priorities wrong. The ICO have repeatedly over recent years been going to government and insisting that it requires more money to provide an acceptable standard of service. In 2009 the ICO was given an extra £500,000 intended to enable it to deal with backlogs which were leading to some complaints about Freedom of Information requests taking over a year to get addressed, this came on top of additional funding above its baseline amounting to £1.3 million paid to the ICO between 2005 and 2008.*

It appears the new logo was first brought into use during April 2010 and the ICO’s website states that the changeover to the new image is still ongoing. During April 2010 a notice appeared on the ICO website stating:

The ICO has a brand new look to reflect our new mission, vision and values. Simple and colourful, it puts information at the heart of the design. To save cost and minimise waste, we’re making a gradual change from the old design to the new one, so you’ll see both designs around for a few months. We hope you like our new look.