Richard Taylor

Cambridge City Councillors are to review the sections of the council’s constitution relating to people observing, speaking at, and reporting on council meetings at their Civic Affairs Committee meeting on the 17th of September 2014. Ministers gave councils a month to update their rules before a new law on recording local government meetings was introduced. […]

On the 18th of August 2014 I watched Cambridge City Councillors unanimously deny planning permission for an extension on the grounds it would be too big. The councillors making the decision appeared unaware that the applicant had already been given permission by the council for an even bigger extension and that he was actually seeking […]

Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Panel is due to meet, in Peterborough City Council’s council chamber, at 2pm on Thursday the 19th of June. These are some of my notes and comments in advance of the meeting, following the published agenda. The meeting date, and location, has changed since that agreed by the panel at its […]

The proposed make-up of one of Cambridge City Council’s scrutiny committees has been changed following one of my tweets. Cambridge City Council’s Civic Affairs Committee is due to meet at 6pm this evening. Earlier today I tweeted a number of observations on the published agenda and papers, including: What housing role will new Community Services […]

It appears an ex Cambridge City Councillor sending me a message in public saying: “suck my formaldehyde pickled balls” is news. Ex Cllr Brown’s astonishing invitation to me shows how unpleasant people can be to those entering discussion about how we run Cambridge and our wider society. I think this kind of exchange is something […]

At Cambridge’s North Area Committee on the 8th of May 2014 Councillors unanimously voted in favour of introducing a 20 MPH speed limit on Victoria Road in Cambridge. The road has been excluded from the North Area 20 MPH zone because it is classified as an “A” road and so it would be against the […]

Riverside resident Marueen Symons attended Cambridge’s East Area Committee on the 10th of April. In the presence of Cambridgeshire Police’s Inspector Poppet, and councillors from Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council Symons admitted to installing a concrete planter on the highway on Riverside to try and deter people parking in front of her house […]

In the last election held in Kings Hedges, the ward in which I live, over 76% of electors in the ward did not vote. In the last Cambridge City Council elections Kings Hedges was one of three wards in the city where neither the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or Labour put up a candidate who lived […]

At Cambridge City Council’s full council meeting on the 3rd of April 2014 the executive councillor for bins and dog poo, Cllr Swanson, revealed the existence of a secret experiment she has been running. The experiment, which she had not told any of her fellow councillors about, and the existence of which had been kept […]