I’m very pleased indeed that Sutton Parish Council has agreed to take the first step in seeking to have The Chequers public house in Sutton’s high street listed as an Asset of Community Value.  This is something I’ve been encouraging for some time.

Local groups – including parish councils – can nominate a building or piece of land that is important for the social well-being of the area for inclusion on the council’s ‘List of Assets of Community Value’.  If the district council accepts the building for inclusion on the list, the local community can then bid for it if it comes up for sale in the future.

Apart from the Anchor at Sutton Gault, which is a very different type of enterprise, The Chequers is the last pub in the village.  It’s really important for our community that it remains a pub, and this process does offer a significant measure of protection for it.

Sutton has lost too many of its amenities over the years, and we need to protect what we have.  I will be encouraging the district council to support the parish council’s application.

Savage cuts to winter gritting routes could leave villages stranded and many roads unsafe in snow or icy weather.

The new, reduced gritting routes have just been published.  And I’ve raised serious concerns about the effect of the cuts voted through in February this year by Conservative county councillors with the help of Independents and UKIP.

The cuts mean that only 30 per cent of the county’s roads will be gritted, compared with 44 per cent last year – a cut of one-third in the gritting service.  36 gritting lorries have been reduced to 26, with an additional one dedicated to the guided busway.  Villages left ungritted will include Mepal, Witcham, and Wardy Hill, along with the road from Little Downham to Pymoor via California and Pymoor Lane, and Church Lane and the eastern half of the high street in Sutton.

Many villages could find themselves totally cut off in the event of bad weather this winter, with no safe way to get out onto the A and B roads. The effect of these savage cuts will fall heavily on rural areas such as Sutton and the Downham Villages.

Much of this could have been avoided if Conservatives on the county council had been prepared to raise council tax by the 2 per cent the government allowed and indeed expected.  By refusing to raise an extra £2 a month at Band D from local households, Conservative councillors have let residents in for a winter of misery and a real risk of more serious injuries on our already dangerous roads.

Many residents are saying they would have been prepared to pay £2 a month to ensure that significant roads in and out of their villages continued to be gritted.

Across the county, school bus routes including to Impington and Bottisham village colleges, and accident blackspots such as Branch Bank in Littleport, have not been included in the new gritting routes, as there is not enough money left after the cuts to do so.

And for the second year running, East Cambridgeshire is already performing significantly worse than the average for England in terms of death and serious injury on local roads.

How healthy are we here in East Cambridgeshire? The latest annual report from Public Health England makes interesting reading.

We’re generally one of the less deprived areas of the country, which means that our health is therefore generally better, but 10 per cent of children still live in low income families.

The report measures 31 indicators of health. Last year it was 32 but one has been dropped for this year.

Last year we measured worse than the average for England in three of those indicators:

• the number of GCSEs achieved (5 A*-C including English and Maths)
• incidence of malignant melanoma (skin cancer)
• the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads.

This year, we’re much closer to the England average for GCSEs. The melanoma indicator has been replaced by an indicator about cancer diagnosed at an early stage, a new indicator that hasn’t been measured this year. But we’ve again measured worse than the average for England in three indicators:

• excess weight in adults
• hospital stays for self-harm
• and the familiar one, the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads.

Read the full report for more data, maps and observations on the health of our area.

So it appears that proposals to fine drivers using key roads in and out of Cambridge in peak hours may be for the scrap heap.

It’s excellent that the huge volume of objections appears to have forced the Cambridge area’s City Deal Board into a rethink. But such a plan shouldn’t have seen the light of day in the first place, especially without proper exploration of other ways to achieve the very necessary aim of reducing traffic congestion in Cambridge.

The decision two years ago to introduce parking charges for the park and rides into Cambridge resulted in a drop of 14 per cent in passenger numbers. That clearly needs to be mended. And we need an open and wide-ranging conversation including all who live or work in Cambridge, or visit the city for whatever purpose, about how to make travelling into the city more sustainable.

But the whole fiasco is also an object lesson in what happens under remote boards like City Deal, consisting of representatives selected by councils to make decisions at an extra remove from the public. And it’s an alarm bell about how decisions on all sorts of matters will be taken by the new ‘powerful Mayor’ of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough and his ‘combined authority’, which will be foisted on us by the Government and by Conservative and Labour councillors from May next year.

Over the next twelve months 80,000 people across Cambridgeshire will need to renew their concessionary bus pass.

Around half of these use online services. If you’re one of those 40,000 or so, and are comfortable renewing your bus pass online, doing so will free Contact Centre and library staff to help those who don’t have internet access.

Renewing online means you can use your own photograph, and even see what it looks like on a mock bus pass.

The county council has been emailing reminders inviting people to renew their concessionary bus pass. Nearly 70 per cent of recipients have gone on to renew online which has saved the council a lot of time and money already, but has also made it easier for people renewing.

So if you have internet access, and feel comfortable using it, do use the online form to renew your bus pass.