Happy Christmas

Seasons Greetings from the King's Hedges Liberal Democrat team. We hope you have a great day!

Tories Block Liberal Democrat Move To Freeze Allowances

Lib Dem attempts to freeze councillors' allowances for the next 18 months have been blocked by Conservative Councillors.

A proposal put to a meeting of Cambridgeshire County Council by Lib Dem Peter Downes called for there to be no rises before April 2013 at the earliest.

But Conservative Councillors, who controversially voted themselves a 25 per cent pay rise last month, voted the Lib Dem proposal down

“We need to reassure the public that councillors won’t vote themselves a pay rise at a time when services are being cut and staff are being made redundant,” said Cllr Downes.

Lib Dem Leader Kilian Bourke said: "The Conservatives made a mistake in voting the increase through and it is a relief that it was scrapped, but another review will have to take place soon.  We wanted to commit in advance to not accepting any increase until 2013 at the earliest.

"Councillors should not be giving themselves pay rises at a time of wage freezes and redundancies."

A report about raising allowances will be coming to a council meeting in early 2012.

Liberal Democrats' Move To Attract New Councillors To Be Discussed Publicly

A move by Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats to attract councillors from a wide range of backgrounds is to be discussed publicly with a view to forming a county council policy.

The group has been invited by the Tory-led administration to produce a report increasing the diversity of elected members by holding a quarter of council meetings out of office hours and organising training in the evenings.

Cambridgeshire County Council Cabinet Member for Resources and Performance, Steve Count agreed the idea was a positive one and promised that the report and its recommendations would be presented to a public forum.

Cllr Ian Manning, who proposed a motion setting out the idea, said “I'm pleased that the Conservatives have agreed our idea is a positive one and have invited us to form the policy.

“It is particularly important that the report and recommendations are presented to a public forum – meaning it will be transparent and open.”

Cllr Sue Gymer seconded the motion explaining her reasons for wanting training out of hours.

"After the allowances debate, I thought long and hard about what would make it easier to get working mums like myself to become councillors. I voted against because it was the wrong amount at the wrong time. In addition a small pay rise would make no difference to me personally but being able to get training outside of working hours would make it a lot easier to mix my council duties with my employment.

“I am pleased to see that a report would be coming back to a public meeting like Cabinet or council.

Christmas Bin Collections and City Council opening hours

The Christmas holidays always bring some disruption to bin collections owing to the cluster of bank holidays. This year is no exception and collections usually scheduled between Boxing Day and January 6th are all moved back one day.

This means if your bins are due to be collected on Thursdays, then they won't be collected on the 29th December and 5th January, but will instead be collected on Friday 30th and and Friday 6th January.

Collections should be back to normal on the week starting Monday 9th January.

On the subject of bins and Christmas, after the holidays real Christmas trees can be recycled by either taking them to Cherry Hinton Hall, or (more likely from this side of Cambridge) by cutting them up and placing in Green bins.

More details can be found on the Christmas Opening pages of the City Council website.

Cambridge City Council have also published details of opening hours for the Service Centre, City Homes and King's Hedges Learner pool (among others). These can all be found on that page.

Hopefully we won't have the same problems with snow as we had last year, but if we do then keep an eye on the City Council webpage for service updates.

If you have any problems or comments on the services, please let the team know.

Planning application on Abbots Close

It has been a while since we've had a planning application in King's Hedges ward, but this week we have been notified of one.

It is for a "Ground floor extensions to provide additional bedroom and shower room" to 7 Abbots Close. The case reference number is 11/1441/FUL and you can get more details from the City Council online planning service.

For more information on the application, including how to comment, check the Development Control pages of the City Council website.

In case of any difficulty contact the team.

Lib Dems Call For Evening Meetings To Attract New Councillors

In a bid to attract a diverse range of people to stand for election to Cambridgeshire County Council, the Liberal Democrats are calling for some meetings to be held in the evenings.

They want to see a shift away from meetings being held exclusively in the daytime which are often difficult to attend for those in full-time work. And they believe holding some in the early evening would give more people the chance to stand for election as councillors.

A motion calling for support for the idea will be proposed to Cambridgeshire County Council members on December 7 by Councillor Ian Manning, who represents East Chesterton in Cambridge.

It calls for two of the full council meetings and 25 per cent of each of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings to be held outside standard working hours which are defined as 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

And it says councillors should be given the opportunity to take part in training outside standard working hours.

Cllr Manning said: “At the moment, it can be extremely difficult for anyone with a full-time job or other daytime responsibilities to commit to attending meetings during the day. I have to take unpaid leave on occasion from my job to do so.

“This means that we can only attract those people who don’t have to work full-time or have commitments that are extremely flexible. By switching some meetings to the evening I think we will be able to attract a wider range of people and our councillors will be a better reflection of society generally.”

Cllr Sue Gymer, who represents Cottenham, Histon and Impington said: “Many of our present councillors run their own businesses or have part-time jobs or flexible commitments allowing them to work round council business. But this is not the norm for the majority of working people. How can working people be expected to participate if the first step is to take the day off work?

 “We want to encourage people from all ages and all backgrounds who have an interest in representing their communities to stand for election and that is not going to happen unless we hold our meetings at a time when they are able to attend.”

Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat Leader, Kilian Bourke said: "We fully accept the importance of attracting a wider range of people to stand to be councillors, but felt that the Conservative proposal to give councillors a 25 per cent pay rise was totally inappropriate at this time.

“We feel that the same could be achieved by shifting some of our daytime meetings to the evenings.  That is why we are putting forward this proposal and I hope the Conservatives will support it."

Drop in session at Arbury Community Centre

Second Saturday of the month means it is time for our monthly drop in session.

Do you have a local issue you'd like to discuss with your local Councillor? Maybe you have a view on a local problem, changes to the library services, or what you'd like to see your Council (either City or Council) doing in King's Hedges?

This Saturday (December 12th) from 10am until midday you can come and talk to us at the Arbury Community Centre.

No need for an appointment, just turn up!

Minor Highways issues within Kings Hedges

As you might have picked up from the minutes of the Cambridge Area Environment and Traffic Management Committee (no? It's a riveting read) Cambridgeshire Highways used to have a list of all the open highways issues in each division (split into unfunded and those with an identified means of funding) which would come to the AJC meeting, be discussed (usually added to) and then would be back in the hands of officers who would get done what they could, identifying new streams of funding if possible, and then report back to the next meeting of the AJC.

As you can see it's a fairly simple process but doesn't actually add a lot of value as a) most of the work is done by officers and (in my view more significantly) b) it encourages Councillors to get things added to the list that won't ever get done. Basically anything that doesn't have an obvious source of funding, isn't a legal requirement, or isn't part of some bigger project is just not going to happen.

The list, after a few years of b), is now pretty long and some of the the reasons why some of the items are sitting on the list have been lost in the mist of time.

Clearly it's time for a change and so the County Officers are now proposing that they spend some time in each Division with local members and prepare a list of highways issues relevant to that division.

In light of that I've been looking at the highways list we already have for Kings Hedges and the new items that people have already suggested (note that in some cases it is a problem that needs a solution rather than a solution!) and come up with the following list;

• 20mph speed limit on Northfield Avenue (outside KH Primary School), 
• Coach parking on Woodhead Drive, 
• Car parking on Lovell Road, 
• Arbury Road cycle path (specifically doing something around the Milton Road junction), 
• Verge parking on Milton Road, 
• Pavement parking across the division,
• Traffic improvements on Arbury Road outside the Manor,
• Verge parking on Hawkins Road, and 
• Cycle route on KH road (specifically around CRC junction)

That's just off the top of my head. What else do you think should be on this list?

St Kilda Road/ Campkin Road Potholes

This is just a quick blog post to let you know what we (your local Councillors) can do when things are brought to our attention. In this specific case a local wheelchair-bound resident had noticed significant potholes in the route they took to the local shops (Tesco on Campkin Road).

They raised this issue with the County Council (Highways) and were told that the specific road they were concerned about was not actually a part of the highway and that they, the County, had no idea who owned it but that the resident should try Tesco - this of course wasn't obvious immediately and a lot of frustrating back-and-forth went on before they managed to get to this point.

It was at this stage, feeling incredibly frustrated, the resident contacted me and I started looking into it.

The first thing to note is that the road in question is directly behind the row of shops on Campkin Road. It is where the shops have their "loading bays". When you look at the road itself it is pretty clear that it is not part of the highway, it's generally in a very poor condition and just doesn't (despite what you may think about the way Cambridgeshire County Council looks after their highways) look like a properly maintained road.

If you'd like to see the area in question it's available on Google Streetview here, and it's the un-named road in the centre of the map here.

The road itself is off St. Kilda Avenue and from what I know of the area a lot of the shops are owned by Cambridge City Council so I made them my first point of call (rather than Tesco). It actually took quite a number of contacts to identify the person at Cambridge City Council and get an answer to the question of who owned the land.

As you can see from the attached map (which is excellent by the way, produced by the City Council) the land in question was owned by the City Council.

Once it was clear that the potholes were the responsibility of the City Council it was just a matter of asking the correct officer, in this case the Area Housing Manager, to have the area inspected and see what the Council can do.

Within 24 hours of me contacting him the officer had had the area inspected and had concluded that a three square meter area of the road will be resurfaced. Excellent news all round.

Of course it shouldn't have taken this long to get to this stage, but at least it is now well on it's way to being resolved.

So what's the point of this blog post? Well basically it's to let people know that contacting your local Councillors *can* get problems solved. We are here to help you, we know it's not always 100% clear who you should be talking to (City, County, Police, etc) and we can help get to the bottom of local problems whoever they are with.

If you have an issue you'd like us to look into you can contact us via the links on the left.

And, just in case you were wondering, here is the before picture;

Bus Consultation: One Week To Go!

We're into the final week of the County Councils bus consultation which will officially end at 4pm on Friday the 9th December. The consultation is still accessible through the website;

http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/around/buses/busconsultation.htm

Following on from the Conservative-controlled Councils disastrous decision to cut 100% of bus subsidies without any consultation this review was forced onto them as the only way of avoiding a Judicial Review.

Once the consultation has closed the results will be published and then Cabinet will propose what to do next. It's unlikely the entire cuts will be reversed, but hopefully some of the key subsidised routes across the County which are relied on by the most vulnerable in society will be saved.