Ely Wildspace’s Bio Blitz takes off tomorrow evening at Ely Country Park.
The event takes place from 5pm tomorrow (Friday 3 July) to 5pm on Saturday. There are many family and children’s activities throughout the twenty four hours all of which are free of charge, including bird walks, moth trapping, wildlife crafts, and a dawn chorus walk. There will be an event base camp in the children’s play area at the Country Park.
Visit the website to see the full list of activities and make a booking.
Tonight I was at another meeting of the local villages’ Joint HCV Group.
The group had decided at its last meeting in February to delay meeting again until this evening, so that the new parish councils – including Sutton – were in place after the recent elections. The group will need to work with the new parish councils to achieve its aim of a multi-village traffic regulation order limiting heavy vehicles coming through our villages.
The group has agreed to send its hefty evidence document to the parish councils (including Earith, Bluntisham, Mepal, Hilton, Haddenham and Cottenham, as well as Sutton), and ask them to consider whether they want to be part of the campaign. We hope that by the end of July all the relevant parish councils will have included the issue on the agenda for a parish council meeting, and discussed whether or not they want to back the scheme.
Once we know whether or not we have the support of the parish councils it’s on to the next step in the campaign to persuade the county council to put a traffic order in place, and the police to support it.
Next Thursday sees the first meeting of East Cambridgeshire District Council following the recent elections. Among other things, it’s the meeting where committees are appointed. (The agenda and papers can be seen here.)
There are laws governing how committee places must be allocated between the different groups on the council, which preserve the rights of minority groups on local authorities. As I’m part of a group of only two councillors, and we must by law have a place on all committees, I’m going to have my work cut out for the next four years!
My name is being put forward for the following committees:
I will also be a substitute member for the Regulatory & Support Services, Planning and Licensing Committees.
There is no denying that Thursday 7 May was a traumatic night for the Liberal Democrats, nationally and locally.
In East Cambridgeshire, in circumstances completely beyond its control, a Liberal Democrat council group of ten was swept away in the blue tsunami that engulfed England, and has been reduced to a group of two. Along with the now lone non-party councillor, we form the only challenge to an overwhelmingly dominant Conservative group.
52 per cent of the crosses on council ballot papers in East Cambridgeshire went to the Conservatives – yet the vagaries of our broken electoral system have given them 92 per cent of the council seats. Voters whose 48 per cent of crosses went elsewhere are either under-represented, or not represented at all.
East Cambridgeshire District Council claims to operate a committee system for making decisions, but in reality it operates like a cabinet. Its leadership takes major decisions without reference to the council or its committees, and those who are not part of the inner circle are left to read of them in the columns of the local press.
Two years ago it abolished its scrutiny committee, reducing opportunities for minority group councillors to examine its decisions. And with the power to ‘call in’ council decisions for review requiring support from five councillors, opposition members will find this avenue now blocked to them too.
The next four years are likely to see East Cambridgeshire District Council operating at its most undemocratic in living memory. Never was the case for electoral reform stronger and clearer.
Sutton could find itself with two county councillors – but having to share them with Coveney, Little Downham, Haddenham, Mepal, Stretham, Little Thetford, Wentworth, Wilburton, Witcham and Witchford. The new county ‘division’ (area served by a county councillor) would be called Littleport West.
That’s the proposal from the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, which has opened a consultation on revisions to Cambridgeshire County Council. Overall, the number of county councillors in Cambridgeshire would be reduced from 69 to 61.
The Boundary Commission comments: “We acknowledge that this division covers a large geographic area owing to the sparsely populated nature of the parishes that make up the division. However, we consider that our proposed division will reflect community identities and not divide them between divisions.”
The consultation opens today, and closes on Monday 6 July, and local residents are invited to comment on the proposals. The Commission aims to publish final recommendations in September. Subject to parliamentary scrutiny, the new electoral arrangements should come into effect in time for the next county council elections in 2017.
The Commission’s report on its draft recommendations can be found here. Interactive maps of the proposals are available here where residents can also make comments or even draw alternative boundaries.
At last night’s district council meeting, councillors were told that any proposal to dual the A10 between the A142 at Witchford Road and the A142 at Angel Drove will not happen for at least another five years.
I told the council that this was worrying and that action is needed much more quickly. The A10 is already congested at this point, and this will only get worse after Ely’s traffic bottleneck is moved from the railway crossing to the A10 junctions. To let the problem reach crisis point before it is addressed is short sighted in the extreme.
If, like me, you vote by post at election time, you’ll probably have got your postal ballot papers for the parliamentary election yesterday. I’ve already been asked why we didn’t get our council election papers at the same time.
The answer is that the NE Cambs parliamentary election and Fenland DC elections are being run by Fenland District Council, who issue postal ballot papers for those elections. The SE Cambs parliamentary election and East Cambs DC elections are being run by East Cambs District Council who issue ballot papers for those elections. And the two councils are working to slightly different timetables. So those of us in Sutton, Littleport or Downham Villages – who are in NE Cambs constituency but in East Cambs District – will get our ballot papers separately from the two different councils.
The council ballot papers should arrive tomorrow.
Tomorrow (Monday 20 April) is the last day for electoral register applications from people who want to be able to vote in the general election and the council elections, and aren’t currently on the register. Any applications to register after that will be too late to vote in next month’s elections. You can register online here – you will need your National Insurance number to do so.
And 5pm on Tuesday 21 April is the deadline for applying for a fresh postal vote, if you don’t already have one.
East Cambs District Council has received an application for ‘non material’ amendments (reference number 13/00487/NMAA) to the planning application for the proposed data centre at the Elean Business Park (next to the machinery sales ground).
The application is described as ‘Re-configuration and change of orientation of the substation compound and buildings only. The data centre and landscaping remaining unamended’.
Let us hope that this means the data centre might be a step closer, as the land on which it is intended to build has remained derelict and neglected for a long time, plagued by dumped rubbish, occasional temporary residents, the dangerous removal of metal drain covers (presumably for their scrap value), and fly-grazing.
The council is adamant that the condition of the site is the responsibility of the owners – who don’t seem eager to act, pleading that ‘the site is difficult to secure’ – but doesn’t seem to have the resources to mount any sort of enforcement action.
As I reported last month, Cambridgeshire County Council signed a £100M ‘PFI’ contract with Balfour Beatty in 2011 to replace Cambridgeshire’s street lights. No effective consultation took place when the contract was being drawn up, leaving parish and district councils to pick up the pieces when work was about to start and the problems caused by the contract became all too apparent.
The botched contract paid no respect to features like the eighteen ‘heritage’ lamp columns between The Row and the church, originally installed by the district council.
The parish council was told that the lamp fittings on top of the heritage columns would be replaced with ordinary modern street lamp fittings unless they either paid for more appropriate replacement ‘heritage’ style lamps, or took over the running costs of the street lights themselves.
Sutton Parish Council originally decided to let Balfour Beatty install modern fittings, but has reconsidered in the light of more accurate information from Balfour Beatty about what this entailed, and will now be paying for replacement ‘heritage’ fittings. Like parish councils across Cambridgeshire, our parish council has found itself in a very difficult situation and has made the best decision it could in the circumstances.