Public Speaking Protocol for Overview and Scrutiny

Cllr Shona Johnstone has recently reported back to all County Councillors that the Overview and Scrutiny Management Group has recently concluded it's review of public participation in the Overview and Scrutiny process and published a document regarding Public Speaking at Overview and Scrutiny meetings.

There is a lot in this document that's good. It does tend (slightly) towards the overly bureaucratic - I have yet to attend an Overview and Scrutiny meeting where a member of the public raising their hand in the public gallery and being called by the Chair wouldn't have been a sufficient notification for public speaking but this document is at least a step in the right direction.

I would have preferred there was an opportunity for written statements as well; once again the County Council seems to be working to actively discourage people who have a job from engaging in the political process. I mean it's pretty rare that people care enough about these meetings to attend in person but to expect people to take a day off work as well is just a non-starter.

The published guidelines are available here (word document).

So the next step is over to you ... Do you care enough about what's being done in your name to turn up and speak at these meetings? If not what would we have to do to encourage you to participate?

Councillors' Allowances Rise Rejected As Process Was Flawed

A controversial decision to raise county councillors’ allowances by 25 per cent has been thrown out after it was found that the process was flawed.

 

Mistakes made by the Tory-run Cambridgeshire County Council have wasted over £5,000 of public money and means the whole process must go back to square one.

 

The decision is a victory for Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats who had voted against the increase and campaigned to overturn the decision.

 

It came after former Liberal Democrat councillor, Clare Blair, called the issue into the council’s Standards Committee today (Tuesday, November 1) claiming the process broke the rules of the council’s constitution and government legislation.

 

Committee members agreed after discovering that the council had made serious errors in the process of appointing members to the Independent Remuneration Panel which recommended the 25 per cent increase in members’ allowances and failing to advertise its report for public comment.

 

Cllr Blair, a former Cambridge City Executive Councillor who represented East Chesterton, spoke at the Standards Committee meeting calling the whole process into question.

 

Later she said: “This whole process was flawed. The Conservative administration made one mistake after another by rushing this matter through the council.

 

“This is has been a terrible waste of public money. Now the process must begin again. I hope ordinary residents will also consider joining the new Independent Panel and that the Conservatives will see that a 25 per cent increase at this time is totally inappropriate.”

 

In the meeting Lib Dem group leader Kilian Bourke said: "To retrospectively ratify this decision would almost certainly lead to a judicial review, which could end up costing the council as much as the 25 per cent pay rise itself.

 

Later he added: "I welcome the fact that the 25 per cent increase will now be overturned, although the Tories should not have voted it through in the first place. The increase was totally inappropriate at a time of wage freezes, redundancies and cuts to frontline services and the public have made their anger at this decision clear.

 

"I want to thank the 3,000 people who supported our campaign to have the increase reversed. I have no doubt that the weight of public opinion contributed to the decision to scrap the report."

Council May Face Massive Cash Cuts To Fund Academies

Cambridgeshire County Council may soon find itself forced to make cuts in this year’s budget to find the extra money needed to fund the schools that have become academies.

The government has realised that it is wildly over budget for its academy programme and is now consulting about how to plug the gap.

In a recent consultation document the government conceded that it is facing a shortfall of over £600 million over the two year period 2011-2013. This has arisen because it is paying academies more money than they need and consequently more schools have decided to become academies than expected.

Lib Dem shadow cabinet member for Education, Cllr Peter Downes said:

“This amounts to a bribe to persuade schools to convert to academies and leave the Local Authority so that Mr Gove can demonstrate the 'success' of his academy policy. This will fragment our education system, which is already under financial pressure.

“Mr Gove's policy, clearly supported by the Tories in Cambridgeshire, is divisive, unfair and unsustainable.”

In Cambridgeshire four primary schools have become academies and two more are expected to convert by October 1st. 17 secondary schools have left the Local Authority already and five more are on the way.

The Council has already lost £1.71 million from this year’s budget and now stands to lose a further £3 to £4 million, depending on exactly when schools convert.

Cllr Fiona Whelan, Lib Dem shadow cabinet member for Adults’ and Children’s Social Care said:

“It is impossible to defend or justify transferring money out of services to the most vulnerable adults and children just so that a few relatively privileged schools can get a cash boost.”

Council officers expect to hear the government’s decision early in September.

County Council Liberal Democrats Name Their New Team

Liberal Democrats have named their new front line team on Cambridgeshire County Council for the next year.

Group Leader, Councillor Kilian Bourke, who officially took over from Cllr Fiona Whelan on Friday (June 17) is supported by Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, who takes over as Deputy Leader from Cllr Peter Downes.

Cllr Graham Wilson has been elected Group Chairman, Cllr Michael Williamson, Group Secretary and Cllr Peter Downes, Group Treasurer.

Cllr Susan van de Ven will lead the Transport portfolio for the next year; Cllr Kevin Wilkins has been elected spokesman for Planning, Enterprise and Environment and Cllr Sarah Whitebread will head up Localism, Climate Change and Social Justice. 

Social Care for Children and Adults will be led by Cllr Fiona Whelan, Cllr Geoff Heathcock will lead on Health and Cllr Peter Downes will continue as Education spokesman.

Cllrs John Batchelor and Kevin Wilkins will continue on Cambridgeshire Police Authority and Cllrs Nigel Bell, Geoff Heathcock and Sue Gymer will be joined by Fiona Whelan on Cambridgeshire Fire Authority.

Cllr Tim Stone has been elected chairman of the Audit Committee.

Cllr Bourke said: “I am delighted to be given the opportunity to lead such a strong team of councillors. We have a wealth of knowledge, expertise and political experience among our front line."

“We will continue to be an effective opposition doing our best for our ward residents and people across the county.”

Illuminated bollards on King's Hedges Road

Many of the illuminated "keep left" bollards on King's Hedges Road are not lighting up. A resident came to me saying that despite reporting it to the County they hadn't been fixed.

We are now on the case and will try to get the County to fix them.

There seem to be a number of problems: not least that the County don't seem to have half of them in their system which makes getting repairs ordered tricky.

These bollards are important in highlighting the locations of the junctions off King's Hedges Road. As many residents have told us, King's Hedges Road is one of our local hot spots for speeding.

County wide library petition

The various Friends groups of libraries across Cambridgeshire have set up a County-wide petition.

The petition reads:

We the undersigned call upon Cambridgeshire County Council to reject proposals to close libraries or to replace the existing professional service with a reduced service run by volunteers.

We believe that libraries are a vital part of the community.

Every community that has a library values this service, whether it is in the City, like Arbury Court library in our ward, or in the villages.

I hope you can join me in signing the petition.

Councillors at Work (Audio Recordings @ Full Council)

The Oral Questions segment of Full Council is recorded and I've attached the recording from the December 2010 meeting. Unfortuantely it starts with a question asked by Councillor Sedgwick-Jell who failed to use the microphone provided and so both the question, and some of the comments, have not been recorded (although the answer has).

The recording is made by Democratic Services and is only used to allow them to put together the published minutes (available here as Appendix C on the County Council website) and is then destroyed.

This information will be recorded *anyway* - it's needed to put together the minutes - the question is; is it worth being published in some way?

EDIT: The MP3 Recording is available here.

Petition to save the City Centre Circular Bus

The Tories running the County Council have decided to ignore residents’ wishes and push ahead with a plan which will see dozens of subsidised bus services lost in the next four years.

A likely early casualty is the free Cambridge city centre “Circular” bus, which the rural Conservatives regard as a luxury. This service was introduced alongside the pedestrianisation scheme, so that people who cannot walk long distances would still have access to it. Losing it would be disastrous for the pedestrian area.

Cambridge LibDems have launched a petition to try and save this service from the axe. You can sign the petition online.

Snow and ice clearance

A quick post to draw attention to two parts of the City Council website.

Firstly information on what County and City are doing to respond to the weather, and also information on what residents can do is available on the Snow and Ice advice page.

Information on any any City Council service disruption will also be posted on the City website.

We are also using the @camcitco Twitter account to provide some update. The County Council's twitter account also provides updates.

I will copy here the advice on clearing Snow and Ice from the City Council and the national Snow Code:

Tips for clearing snow and ice

The government has issued a snow code about safely removing snow and ice from outside your property, pathways and public spaces. The snow code advises you to:

start early - it is much easier to clear fresh, loose snow compared to ice that has been compacted by people walking on it

not use hot water - it melts the snow, but replaces it with black ice, increasing the risk of injury

use ordinary table salt, ash or sand to prevent ice forming but avoid spreading it on plants or grass

be a good neighbour and help anyone that may not be able to clear snow and ice from their own pathways

If shovelling snow:

think about where you will put the snow so you don’t block paths or drainage channels use a shovel with the widest blade available

make a line down the middle of your path first, so you have a safe surface to walk on - then you can shovel the snow from the centre to the sides

use the sun to your advantage by removing the top layer of snow so sun melts any ice underneath - but you will need to cover any ice with salt to stop refreezing overnight

be careful around steps and steep gradients

You can read more about the snow code on the Directgov website or telephone our customer service centre on 01223 458282.

Orchard Park to Riverside Cycle Scheme

I have been emailed with details of the possible Orchard Park to Riverside Cycle Scheme. This involves changes to the cycle route on Arbury Road from King's Hedges Road.

The changes would be on the stretch outside St Laurence's school, and on the stretch outside the front of The Manor.

The County are consulting on the proposals and would like comments by post, email or phone before Friday 10 December 2010. The results will go to the transport Area Joint Committee on 24 January 2011.

More details and a PDF of the leaflet and explanatory notes are available from the County Council's project website.

Help save Arbury Court and Milton Road Libraries

As you may be aware the County Council have announced a review of the Library service. They seemed to be surprised at the outcry this provoked and have started holding some public meetings on the plans. The next one in Cambridge is 9th September, from 7pm to 9pm at the Central Library.

The County Council report makes it clear that they are considering closing local libraries, and it is vital to show the support and need for both Arbury Court and Milton Road libraries.

There is a recently set up Friends of Arbury Court Library who are keen to get new volunteers, and have organised a petition to save the library. They also have a Facebook group. Please sign the petition and join the group.

When the Friends have a web site and a settled contact address we'll advertise it here, but if you dislike Facebook the Focus team will put you in touch with the organisers.

Milton Road library has a well established friends group who are campaigning to save their library. They can be contacted via email, and have a web presence at Chesterton Community Association.

Andy Pellew and you City Councillors will be campaigning to keep both libraries open and providing a vital service to the local community.

Sad news: Janet Jones

I have just been informed of the sad news of the death of former King's Hedges Labour County Councillor Janet Jones after a long illness.

Cllr Geoff Heathcock writes:

Janet was a True stalwart of local democracy and a campaigner of some power especially on the welfare of Social Services over a very long period of time. She will truly be an act that won't beeasily followed.

She was elected as a Councillor for Arbury in 1970, and served Arbury on the County Council from 1973 to 1985, when she moved to King's Hedges. She was King's Hedges County Councillor for 20 years from 1985 to 2005. In addition she was also chair of governors at the Manor School.

The thoughts of the team are with the bereaved.

Question at Council: Fixmystreet.com

COUNTY COUNCIL – 30 March 2010
Minute 76, Oral Questions
Question to the Cabinet Member for Highways and Access, Councillor M McGuire, from Councillor Shepherd.

Councillor Shepherd asked the Cabinet Member for Highways and Access, Councillor M McGuire, whether the Council could respond to highways problems reported by the public via the national website FixMyStreet. Responding, the Cabinet Member for Highways and Access noted that the Council operated its own webpages enabling the public to report highways problems. He agreed to send a written response relating to FixMyStreet.

Response from the Cabinet Member for Highways and Access, Councillor M McGuire

Currently the FixMyStreet website does not integrate with our own webpages, therefore to update FixMyStreet is a manual process requiring the Highways Team to do this (or a member of the public when they have received a response). Customers can report highway problems on either our own website or FixMyStreet (FixMyStreet then emails the Council with the submitted request).

However, with both systems we currently do not inform the customer once the problem has been fixed, or if it cannot be fixed.

In terms of the Council's website, a project is underway to address this, which will allow customers to report problems, be notified of progress and view what has already been reported. A further phase of development, dependent on funding availability and technical compatibility, will be to integrate this solution with FixMyStreet, so that website can also be updated.

County Council Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) Bid Fails

The Fund would have provided £500 million to improve transport systems across the County (to put that in persepective that's about 100 years worth of transport grant from Central Government). Using this money many things would have been possible not least of which would have been the speedy re-opening of Chesterton Railway Station.

Central government seems to have finally rejected the Conservative-run County Council's poorly thought through bid for funding at the end of February. The Conservatives' prolonged dithering, as well as their refusal to negotiate with District Councils, has caused their proposals to fail. As a direct result travellers across Cambridgeshire will be condemned to years of increasing congestion.

Given the current state of the Guided Bus project you really do have to wonder if the Conservative Leadership in Shirehall can delivery on any major transport initiative.

Tories Won't Face Residents

For the second time one of the Conservative County Councillor's responsible for decisions that affect King's Hedges has refused to attend meetings open to the public in Cambridge.

The County Cabinet member for transport, Tory Matt Bradney and aleading officer have turned down the opportunity to answer questionsat the city's North Area Committee on March 19.

In part this is because they would have been challenged by residents on the decision not to allowthe bus to stop on Histon Road and Milton Road so that "it canprovide a fast reliable service with only limited stops" forpassengers living along the A14 corridor.

The only option for residents is to ask Councillor's to take questions to the closed County meetings.

This follows Tory Martin Curtis' refusal to answer questions on cuts to provision for vulnerable children in Cambridge.