Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to take urgent action to tackle the growing backlog of court cases, as new official statistics reveal the scale of the problem.

The figures, published today by the Ministry of Justice, show that the number of outstanding criminal cases in the Crown Court has risen from 33,248 at the end of 2018 to 50,918 at the end of September – a 53 per cent increase in less than two years.

Separate Ministry of Justice statistics, also published today, show that the average length of care proceedings in the Family courts has risen to over 40 weeks for the first time since 2013. In July to September this year, just 29 per cent of these cases were disposed of within the 26 week limit set by the Children and Families Act 2014 – down from 62 per cent in 2016 and 49 per cent in 2018.

Responding to the figures, Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse MP said:

“Justice delayed is justice denied. Too many victims of crime and their families are being left far too long without justice. And too many parents and children are left in limbo for months as cases drag on through the family courts.

“Some of this is an inevitable consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t explain the huge backlogs that had already built up last year, before Covid hit.

“The Conservatives have underfunded the whole of our justice system for much too long, and have been far too slow to introduce Nightingale Courts to increase capacity during this pandemic. Ministers must not use Covid as an excuse for this backlog, or to undermine the fundamental right to trial by jury.

“The Government must take urgent action to tackle the backlog of court cases. More Nightingale Courts are welcome, but ultimately these delays can only be prevented with proper funding for our whole justice system – from Legal Aid right through to judges’ time.”

Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to intervene and save pubs from going bust after new statistics revealed that one in four pubs (28 per cent) have ‘no or low confidence’ that they will survive the next three months.

Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats Daisy Cooper MP said:   “Pubs are a hugely important part of our social and cultural fabric, and are community hubs often run by families for the love of the trade.   

“With so many pubs worried that they wont be able to survive the next few months of the pandemic, alarm bells should be ringing across government. 

“The Chancellor must take radical action: he must increase grants so they cover fixed costs during restrictions, guarantee that furlough will be extended for as long as pubs can’t operate properly, and provide an income for landlords so they can eat and provide for their families.

“Failure to act will leave a gaping hole in communities across the UK.”

• Fewer than one in five pubs (19 per cent) have ‘high confidence’ that they will survive the next three months—by contrast, for businesses generally the figure is 60 per cent.
• 28 per cent of pubs have ‘no or low confidence’ that they will survive the next three months—much higher than the comparable figure of five per cent for all businesses generally.
• 24 per cent of pubs have less than one month’s cash reserves, with ten per cent holding no reserves—much lower than the comparable figure of nine per cent for all businesses generally.

Watch out for a new phishing scam which pretends to be a communication from the Subway sandwich chain.

These malicious emails claim to be an order confirmation and, as with any phishing or smishing communication, there is a link that the sender tries to convince you to click. In this case the link will download malware known as ‘TrickBot’, which is designed to steal personal information from infected computers, and can also install other viruses and ransomware.

Please DO NOT click on the link.

These emails appear particularly convincing because they use their recipients’ names and appear to come from the chain’s Subcard loyalty scheme. Unfortunately this is because the Subway system that manages email campaigns was compromised and e-mail addresses and names accessed.

Whilst this particular scam targets subscribers to e-mail news and offers from Subway, it is likely to be only a matter of time before the scam is used on a more widespread basis with other fast food outlets’ names and branding used to trick the recipient.

Please remember to never click on any links or attachments in e-mails you’re not expecting or where you don’t know the sender.

If you receive any suspicious email please forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk

There’s a lot of deliberate misinformation already flying around the internet about why Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat councillors chose to abstain on a Conservative motion to downgrade the A1123 from Soham to Wyton to a B road.

In short:

1. We don’t oppose the proposal, we just want to see evidence and analysis to enable an informed view.
2. The Council will lose over £250,000 a year in maintenance funds for this road (professional estimate) if it is downgraded, with no corresponding reduction in maintenance need (professional opinion), and that huge financial cost to the Council needs to be properly justified.
3. There is a sensible council process for regrading roads, which Conservative councillors have completely ignored, and which includes the need to analyse the implications for other roads in the network.

To put the record straight, here’s what I said in today’s debate.

“I’m wearing my Alice in Wonderland earrings today, as I usually do when I’m attending a council meeting at which something even more absurd than usual is about to be decided. They’re particularly apt today, because it’s in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that the Queen of Hearts makes her famously preposterous demand. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

And that’s where this motion is today, really. It puts forward an answer to a problem that it hasn’t properly considered. It completely ignores the council’s policy on such matters, and its requirement for evidence, facts, and reasoned argument. And jumps feet-first into an unproven conclusion, with no consideration of its effects on other roads and other communities.

Cllr Hunt has referred to the officers’ briefing on this motion. Well, downgrading the A1123 will, on officers’ calculations, cost the council some quarter of a million pounds a year in lost maintenance funding. But it is highly unlikely to reduce either the cost of maintaining the road or the amount of traffic on it.

To take just two examples, the B1381 through Sutton, and the B1050 through Willingham, both of which intersect the A1123, also experience unacceptable volumes of HCV traffic, despite their classification as B roads.

The amendment that has just been rejected would at least have taken a wider view of the issue. Because it is an issue. A significant issue. Not just for Cllr Hunt and the residents he represents. But also for the residents of Sutton, Willingham, Godmanchester, Cottenham, and many other towns and villages who have been campaigning for years against this blight on their communities—a blight this council has ignored for far too long, and is likely to continue to ignore so long as it remains under the present administration.

We will wait to see the evidence to justify what is being proposed: the strategic role of the road, the general level of traffic and proportion of goods vehicles it carries, wider traffic management and routing strategies in the vicinity, and the standard and classification of other nearby roads. We will wait to see the technical evaluation, and to hear whether this proposal complies with Government guidance. We will await a full financial analysis, and a study of the impact on other parts of the road network. And at that point we will be able to take a considered view on whether this quarter-million pound proposal can be justified (as it must be) to Government ministers.”

The decision to downgrade the A1123 will be one for the Council to take, but legally the Department of Transport has the power to intervene, and anyone affected can bring a challenge to the regrading. The Council would then have to defend its decision-making process to Ministers, and based on the lack of evidence presented to the Council we’re not sure it currently could.

Book clubs, walking groups, and other community projects will be able to apply for a £4 million fund designed to help reduce loneliness in the coming months.

The Local Connections Fund is designed to help local organisations bring people and communities together as the country starts the recovery from the pandemic.

The Fund will be split into two rounds of funding – each with its own application window, one in January 2021 and one in the summer 2021.

Funding will be available to small charities and community groups in England with an annual income of £50,000 or less, which are working to reduce loneliness by helping people feel more connected.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will provide the first round of funding, totalling £2 million, and this will open for applications on 5 January 2021.

Organisations should apply via The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. Grants from this round will be distributed and spent by the end of the financial year.

More information about the fund is available here.

The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.

20/01418/AGN
Little Downham
Agricultural storage building north west of 4 Third Drove Little Downham
Steel framed agricultural building.

20/01435/ARN
Little Downham
Agricultural Barn north east of The Cottage Four Balls Farm Hundred Foot Bank Pymoor
To convert existing agricultural building to residential.

20/01643/CCA
Sutton
Reservoir Short North Fen Drove Sutton
Construction of irrigation reservoirs by the extraction and export of sand and gravel; silt lagoons; mineral processing plant; weighbridge; temporary buildings and use of existing access onto the A142.

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);
• by email to plservices@eastcambs.gov.uk;
• or by post to the Planning Department, The Grange, Nutholt Lane, Ely, CB7 4EE.

Cambridgeshire County Council has launched a short survey of residents’ perceptions of the area, the Council, and different levels of Council Tax for the coming year.

The survey is being carried out by an independent research company, and is open until 20 December. You can complete it at https://melresearch.co.uk/cambridgeshirebudget2020

I’ve submitted a motion about youth services to be considered by Cambridgeshire County Council at its meeting on Tuesday 15 December.

You can read it on Page 5 of the agenda here.

The motion points out that 95 per cent of the Government’s youth services budget is spent on its own National Citizen Service (NCS) scheme. Only one in six eligible young people take part in this, and numbers fell by eight per cent last year. NCS offers just two to four weeks of voluntary activity for 16 and 17-year-olds, but received £1.26 billion in government funding from 2016 to 2020.

Meanwhile spending by councils on youth services nationally has reduced by 69 per cent since 2010/11, from £1.4 billion to £429 million, with the loss of more than 4,500 youth work jobs and the closure of 750 youth centres.

The Government has also not yet released £500 million in Youth Investment Funding which it promised fifteen months ago.

I’m asking the Council to back the Local Government Association, which represents all parties in councils across the country, in calling for the Government to switch funding from its National Citizen Service to supporting youth provision by local councils, and to release the money it promised in September 2019.

I’m very pleased that this motion will be seconded by of the three Independent councillors on the County Council, and hope it will be passed.

Teams of trained vaccinators will start to vaccinate patients against coronavirus at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Peterborough City Hospital from this week at the start of the biggest immunisation programme in history.

People aged 80 and over as well as care home workers will be first to receive the jab, along with NHS workers who are at higher risk.

A dedicated team has been working through the weekend to prepare for the launch of the programme, with the first vaccinations happening later this week.

Addenbrooke’s and Peterborough City Hospitals are among the fifty hospital hubs in the first wave, and more hospitals will start vaccinating over the coming weeks and months.

The NHS will start calling up people who fall into the priority groups to book appointments. Over the coming weeks they will be extending deliveries to local vaccination services, and hope that later this month the regulators will allow batches to be split, so that vaccination teams can go into care homes to vaccinate those who can’t go to other services.

The message from the NHS is:

1. They will contact you when it’s the right time to come forward, so please don’t contact the NHS to seek a vaccine before then;
2. Please act on your invitation when it comes, and make sure you attend your appointments when you arrange them;
3. And of course, please continue to abide by all the social distancing, wearing of face masks and hand hygiene guidance, which will still save lives.

You can find out more about the COVID-19 vaccination here: https://www.cambridgeshireandpeterboroughccg.nhs.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/covid-19-national-vaccination-programme/

The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.

20/01593/FUL
Coveney
Wolvey House Wentworth Road Coveney
Residential annex and garage.

20/01572/FUL
Little Downham
1A Pond Lane Little Downham CB6 2TW
Replace existing windows and doors with uPVC material.

20/01603/FUL
Little Downham
27 Main Street Pymoor CB6 2ED
First floor extension to rear.

20/01330/FUL
Mepal
Bedford House 14 Bridge Road Mepal
Proposed four bed, two storey dwelling to replace existing dwelling.

20/01611/FUL
Sutton
Meadlands Farm The Gault Sutton CB6 2BJ
Replacement dwelling.

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);
• by email to plservices@eastcambs.gov.uk;
• or by post to the Planning Department, The Grange, Nutholt Lane, Ely, CB7 4EE.