It’s the zombie plan from East Cambs District Council that simply will not die. Just when you think you’ve knocked it on the head once and for all, it staggers to its feet yet again and shambles towards you with its eyes on your brains.

Nearly a year ago, I reported that proposals were being submitted by the district council to the Local Government Boundary Commission for England which would split Sutton in half. Those proposals were not accepted then, but the district council is now submitting them again, and there’s no time to lose.

The district council is desperate to split Sutton across the middle between two different county councillors. Please email the Commission [this link will open an email window] before the end of Monday (20 June) to tell them you don’t want Sutton to be cut in half.  Sutton has a strong community identity as one village – let’s keep it that way.

(1) A little bit of history
(skip this bit if you wish, and go straight to 2):

• The Local Government Boundary Commission for England is currently reviewing the electoral area boundaries for Cambridgeshire County Council, with the aim of cutting the number of councillors in Cambridgeshire from 69 to 61. Eight of these would be in East Cambridgeshire. They have, to be fair, made a pig’s ear of it so far.
• Our county council area is currently Sutton, plus Little Downham and Pymoor, Mepal, Witcham, Coveney and Wardy Hill with Way Head, with one county councillor to serve the whole area.
• The Boundary Commission’s latest proposal was a complete mess, which would have seen Sutton joined in a two-councillor area with the above villages, half of Littleport, a bit of Ely, Chettisham, Witchford, Haddenham, Wilburton, Stretham and Little Thetford. It was rightly condemned on all sides.
• Recognising how unpopular its plans were, the Commission has reopened consultation, including inviting alternative proposals for achieving an eight-councillor scheme for East Cambridgeshire’s county councillors.
• The district council has submitted a proposal [this link will open a PDF document in a new window] for nine county councillors, not the eight the Commission asked for. And its proposal includes splitting Sutton along The Brook, the High Street, and The America. The north of the village would have one county councillor, and the south of the village another. Apart from Ely and Soham, which would have to be split in any case as they are too large to have just one county councillor each, Sutton is the only village in East Cambridgeshire to be cut up under the district council’s proposals. I voted against this at the full council meeting, but was defeated.

Sutton Parish Council has told the Commission it does not want the village to be cut in half. This is not surprising – a small parish doesn’t need two county councillors (as well as potentially three district councillors in future) reporting to its parish council meetings. Nor would it want the headache of having to check which side of the road a resident lives on before forwarding his or her query to the county councillor.

But the district council has ignored the parish council. It even refused my request that it should mention the parish council’s opposition in its boundary proposal to the Commission.

(2) There is an alternative

Instead of the district council’s proposal, I’m backing a submission to the Commission from county councillor Maurice Leeke. This proposal keeps the whole of Sutton together in one county council area, with the villages it is already connected with – and just adds on Witchford and Wentworth.  Overall this proposal gives the Commission the eight county councillors for East Cambridgeshire that the Commission wants; it doesn’t split any parishes at all; and it respects Sutton’s community identity and keeps it together.  It gives us one county councillor to represent the whole village.

Much better.

(3) What can you do?

If, like me, you think Sutton has a strong community identity and should be kept together in one electoral area as the parish council wishes, with one county councillor to represent the whole village, then it would be very helpful if you could email the Commission this weekend, before this Monday’s deadline, and tell them so.  Please give them your name, postal address, email address and a telephone number.

If you want to make a more complex submission, or put forward your own alternative proposals, you can do so using the mapping tool and the spreadsheet of elector numbers on the Commission’s Cambridgeshire review page.