District councillor for Sutton, Mepal, Witcham, and Wentworth (East Cambridgeshire District Council) and county councillor for Coveney, Little Downham, Mepal, Pymoor, Sutton, Wardy Hill, Way Head, Witcham, and Witchford (Cambridgeshire County Council)
A reminder of the consultation being held by the Environment Agency on when to close the Welney Wash Road for flood barrier installation.
The consultation began in March (just before lockdown) and has been extended to the end of September. The Environment Agency says:
“We are asking for your views on when to close the road to build a concrete foundation slab across the Welney Wash Road. This work will allow us to install the demountable flood barrier in, if needed, to help protect the communities from any water spilling from the Ouse Washes.
Please be mindful this barrier (see below schematic) will be installed across the Welney Wash Road only when the Ouse Washes flood and the water level at Welney reaches a predetermined level. When the Ouse Washes flood the Welney Wash Road is and will remain impassable to traffic. This is a flood barrier that will protect against any water spilling from the washes and becoming a flood threat to the village.
We appreciate that closing the Welney Wash Road will have considerable impact to the local community. We want to reduce that impact as much as possible by working with you to identify the most appropriate time of year to close the road for the construction works. There are times of the year when we are unable to carry out this work, due to bird overwintering and breeding on the Washes (November to March).
We expect that the total construction time will be 14 weeks. Out of these 14 weeks, we will need to close the road for 6-8 weeks.”
The test and trace system is to ‘go local’ as the Government appears to have finally admitted that its ‘world beating’ national system simply isn’t up to the job.
On Monday this week, the Government’s Department of Health & Social Care announced the NHS Test and Trace programme will now provide local authorities across England with a dedicated team of contact tracers to ensure that as many people as possible are being reached.
Last week’s figures showed that thousands of people are still not being reached by the test and trace programme and the head of outsourcing company Serco, which employs over 10,000 of the tracers, admitted up to a fifth of contacts may be untraceable.
National call centres were struggling to reach contacts, with only 56 per cent of close contacts handled online or by call centres being reached and told to self-isolate to stop the spread of the virus.
In stark contrast, a local contact tracing system set up in Blackburn with Darwen Council had reached 90 per cent of the people the Government’s national system was failing to contact in an area with one of the worst COVID-19 infection rates.
It was clear from the beginning that this initiative should have been locally led and delivered, yet the Government ignored local councils which said this. As a result, we saw yet another multi-million pound contract awarded to the private sector, which once again couldn’t deliver what was needed.
Councils now need some of that Government funding to support this activity as they help clear up this mess. And it seems there will be 6,000 fewer tracers overall.
We need an inquiry now so that all levels of government can learn from the mistakes that have been made, and ensure they work together as effectively as possible to prevent further spread of the virus.
Cambridgeshire County Council has now submitted its planning application for a community heating scheme for the East Cambridgeshire village of Swaffham Prior.
The application (20/01016/CCA) is for ‘Creation of an Energy Centre to serve the village of Swaffham Prior via a heat supply network. Centre will include a small visitors, education and exhibition space within an existing agricultural building. Erection of solar photovoltaic PV Panels, a borehole ground source heat collector with associated pumps and machinery, landscaping and associated works.’
This is a hugely exciting project which hopes to take the village off oil and onto a more sustainable energy supply, and county council officers and the village community have put in a huge amount of work to bring it to this stage.
There’s still a long way to go to make this a reality, but as a member of the County Council’s Environment & Sustainability Committee (and its Green Projects Investment Internal Advisory Group) I’ll be taking a close interest and wishing the scheme well.
The following planning application in the Sutton division has been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.
20/00965/FUL Mepal Site north-west of 11 Bridge Road Mepal CB6 2AR Temporary change of use for siting of a mobile home.
Further information can be found on the district council’s planning pages. If you would like to respond formally to the council about any planning application, comments should be addressed to the district council and not to me. Comments may be made
online using the council’s public access web page (the link above);
I’ve been asked on a number of occasions about the origins of the Mepal Outdoor Centre, which local residents are currently trying to save from council plans to turn it into a crematorium.
An excellent short history of the site can be found in this letter to the Wisbech Standard from March 2017. The writer, Brian Chadwick, is a retired teacher from Doddington. He says:
“The use of the gravel pit near Chatteris started in the 1960s when evening class boat builders (Harold Edgely, Charlie Fox, Cliff Goakes) at March FE Centre wanted somewhere to sail their dinghies.
A few years later the county council then took over and expanded the facility under the wardenship of Brian Calvert.
In 1981/2 the county council withdrew support due to budget cuts, but Fenland, South Cambridge and East Cambs district councils took it over and appointed a new manager called Jim McCann who managed to generate and attract enough money to build most of the present facilities.
When he left David Savage took over and expanded the land based activities including the high ropes. As a teacher at the Hereward and Neale-Wade schools I took pupils there at the end of each summer term for 35 years.
Along with other schools, not just local ones, many thousands of young people have experienced the activities on offer. The centre also offered courses for adults and disabled people. Unlike the recent management of the site the centre was open at weekends during the season.
Sadly during the last four years the range of activities reduced including the fact that sailing was not offered and all the sailing boats sold off.
I absolutely disagree that Mepal had a “bad reputation” (as per the article in last week’s edition) otherwise why would there have been a great number of repeat bookings from schools and other organisations over the years.
I hope that East Cambs District Council can find an organisation that will continue the outdoor activities available at Mepal.”
If, like Brian, you hope that the Council will change course and decide to continue the use of this facility as an outdoor centre, you can sign the petition at https://www.ecld.org.uk/moc
The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.
20/00552/ARN Coveney Lane Farm 7 School Lane Coveney Change of use of agricultural building to three dwellings.
17/00733/C19EH Little Downham Works adjacent to 7 Cannon Street Little Downham To temporarily allow extended construction working hours in excess of those permitted under Condition 10 of decision notice 17/00733/FUM dated 13.04.2018 until 30 September 2020 at the latest.
20/00933/FUL Little Downham Head Fen Country Retreat Seventh Drove Little Downham Change of use of land from grassland to use for camping and caravanning (together with the stationing of temporary WC and washing facilities).
Further information can be found on the district council’s planning pages. If you would like to respond formally to the council about any planning application, comments should be addressed to the district council and not to me. Comments may be made
online using the council’s public access web page (the link above);
The Outdoor Centre at Mepal, which Conservative councillors now want to turn into a crematorium, has lain disused and neglected for several years now. What happened to lead to this, and why?
Background
Mepal Outdoor Centre, a site owned by East Cambridgeshire District Council, operated under a trust structure from the 1980s to 2016, catering for community users and school groups. In December 2016, an arson attack at the site led the trustees to the conclusion they could no longer manage the facility, and they handed back the keys to the Council.
The Council said that the Centre was ‘very tired, but it is believed that a viable business can be developed with appropriate investment and a robust business model’.
Under offer
So in summer 2017, a working party of three councillors—including me—was set up to consider applications to take on the site for community and leisure use. We took a very broad approach, inviting proposals which involved leasing the site from the council as well as outright purchase options. When the first round of advertising didn’t result in a sufficient variety of applications, we made the decision to advertise again.
We shortlisted the applications down to three, all very different. We interviewed the shortlisted applicants in 2018, and settled (unanimously) on one of them. The Full Council agreed to go ahead with this applicant subject to a satisfactory conclusion of negotiations.
Time went on, the deal wasn’t sealed, and it became increasingly clear that it wasn’t going to be. We were not (and still are not) allowed to reveal the name of the successful bidder. And since the failure of those negotiations with the applicant we chose in 2018, nothing happened. Or so we thought.
Secret plans
Liberal Democrat councillors continued to ask for updates from the Council, to find out what the ruling Conservative Group’s plan was. Most recently, we asked the question at the Council’s Finance & Assets Committee meeting on 23 June, and were told that ‘it hadn’t been a priority’.
What we didn’t know when we were given that answer was that it simply wasn’t true. For at least six months work had been going on secretly to bring plans together to put a crematorium on the site.
On 14 July, we received a notice that there would be a special meeting of the Council on 31 July, behind closed doors. On 15 July, we wrote to the Chief Executive of the Council asking for as much information as possible to be discussed in public, holding back only the material that was strictly necessary to be confidential. Our request was refused.
Papers arrive
On Saturday 25 July the papers arrived for the confidential meeting, with all the preparatory work laid out to turn the site into a crematorium. We were still not allowed to talk about any of it, and on Tuesday 28 July Cllr Mark Inskip and I, as councillors for the area in which the Mepal Outdoor Centre is located, issued a public statement.
We said how angry and frustrated we were that we were unable to be open and transparent with our residents about what was being done, as we believed we should, because of the Council’s unreasonable demand for silence.
That evening the local press published the news that Mepal Outdoor Centre would become a crematorium.
The decision is made
The Council met as planned on Friday 31 July, and Cllr Mark Inskip has given an account of our battle to get the Council to act openly and be honest with the public about what was happening. We were defeated by sheer weight of numbers, with Conservative councillors forcing the plan through.
There will now be a planning application, which will be heard in public. But it will be decided by those councillors who so enthusiastically gave their support for the crematorium proposal. There will be a meeting of the Council’s Finance & Assets Committee—but only after a lot more money has been spent on developing the scheme further, and again we don’t know whether the Committee will meet in public or not.
Questions remain
So why was no attempt made to reopen bidding after the successful offer in 2018 collapsed? Why did the Council not think more radically—perhaps rather than selling or leasing the site to a single outfit, turn it into more of an outdoor leisure village, with voluntary and commercial organisations all doing their thing on parts of the site?
And why a crematorium? The Council’s current Local Plan doesn’t say there is a need for one. The replacement Local Plan that should have been adopted before Conservative councillors withdrew it in February 2019 doesn’t mention it either. Nor does the Council’s Corporate Plan 2020-2023 which councillors approved only two weeks ago. Nor does the previous version agreed last year.
There is no evidence given in any of the Council’s strategic documents that East Cambridgeshire actually needs a new crematorium. Still less is there any evidence that the Mepal site, just thirteen minutes from a rival crematorium, is the best place for it even if the need were proven.
And the financial and other information behind this decision is still secret.
If, like us, you think this decision is wrong, please sign the petition at https://www.ecld.org.uk/moc – thank you!
Lorna Dupré and Mark Inskip, district councillors for Mepal, at Mepal Outdoor Centre
On Friday 31 July, the ruling Conservative Group on East Cambridgeshire District Council forced through plans to build a crematorium on the site at Mepal Outdoor Centre. Although the centre is currently unused, many people have eagerly been anticipating it reopening.
The centre provided highly valued outdoor and residential activities for young people. The Council have failed to adequately explain the case for building a crematorium on this site, as opposed to elsewhere in the district, and has not justified the need for more such facilities, with several crematoria in the surrounding area.
“We the undersigned call upon East Cambridgeshire District Council to reverse the decision to use the Mepal Outdoor Centre site for a crematorium; to evidence the need for an additional crematorium and if proven to investigate alternative more suitable locations; and to engage with residents of the district and others interested in helping to build a successful future for Mepal Outdoor Centre as a leisure and learning centre.”
We tried. We tried everything we could think of to persuade the Council to come clean on what it was going to be deciding tonight.
We proposed that the meeting be adjourned to another day so that the information that really needed to be confidential could be kept confidential, and the rest made public. When that failed, we proposed to adjourn the meeting for an hour for the same reason.
We voted against excluding the press and public. After the press and public were excluded, we proposed that the whole matter be referred to the Council’s Finance & Assets Committee. We proposed amendments to refer parts of the paper to the Committee.
But at every turn we were defeated and secrecy prevailed until the decision was taken.
The Council has now confirmed what has been rumoured for weeks – that the Outdoor Centre at Mepal will become a crematorium, just thirteen minutes’ drive away from its nearest competitor at March.
No convincing argument has been made for the need for this facility. It’s not mentioned in the Council’s Local Plan. It’s not mentioned in the replacement Local Plan that the Council’s ruling group decided to abandon in February last year. It’s not even mentioned in the Council’s Corporate Plan that it agreed two weeks ago, just as it wasn’t mentioned in the Council’s Corporate Plan last year either.
And no real effort has been made to restore it to leisure use in the last two years, which is what I believe the majority of local residents would like to see.
It’s not over yet.
But a decision has been taken in secret tonight to move this proposal forward, with myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues voting against it. And the further it moves forward without being stopped, the more time and money is spent on it.
