The Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Panel is looking for a committed and energetic person from Cambridgeshire or Peterborough to help oversee and scrutinise the work of the Police and Crime Commissioner.

The Police and Crime Commissioner is required to consult with the Panel on his plans and budget for policing, the level of Council Tax, and the appointment of certain staff, including the Chief Constable.

The role of a panel member is an important and challenging one and offers the chance to review the strategy, decisions and actions of the Police and Crime Commissioner. The full panel comprises eleven Councillors from the county, city and district councils of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, plus two independent co-opted members.

The Panel is looking for an independent co-opted member to join who has a track record in community involvement, can represent a cross section of views and concerns of the public and has a keen interest in policing, crime prevention, victim support, and community partnerships.

The applicant should be willing and able to scrutinise reports, papers and budgets; attend five half-day public meetings with the Police and Crime Commissioner, plus occasional extraordinary meetings, briefings, planning meetings and conferences each year; and contribute to setting the work agenda of the Panel.

Meetings will take place throughout Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for which travel expenses will be provided. The term of appointment will be four years.  Expenses are paid up to a maximum of £920 per annum.

For full details and a copy of the application pack please contact Claire Osborne at claire.osborne@peterborough.gov.uk or telephone 01733 452273. The closing date for applications is 5pm Friday 2 September 2016.

Get creative with a canvas and see your own art exhibited at the prestigious King’s College, Cambridge. ‘Connections’, a charity art exhibition, is open to artists and non-artists – young and old. For more information head here.

This charity art exhibition is in aid of Cambridgeshire Timebanking Partnership. Timebanking is a way of giving and receiving to build supportive networks and strong communities. Each Timebank is different and reflects its members, who they are, the visions they have for their community, and what they choose to offer and receive.

Event: Connections Charity Art Exhibition

When:

• 11 November 2016, 6:00pm to 8:00pm – private viewing, invitation only.
• 12 November 2016, 10:00am to 5pm

Where: Chetwynd Room, Kings College, Kings Parade, Cambridge CB2 1ST

Contact: gerry.cano@chsgroup.org.uk

Phone:  01223 713759 or 07834 750676

The entry fee is £10.00 and includes a 10″x16″ canvas and hanging fee. All artwork will be exhibited anonymously and available for sale for £45.00. Maximum 3 entries per person. Download the entry form here.

Throughout the fundraiser the organisers will also be using social media to showcase artists who have given their time to the fundraiser and throughout the exhibition; contact details will be made available for further commissions.

The organisers are happy for residents to share this opportunity with friends and family, and you can also follow @TimebankCambs on Twitter.

If you are too busy to take part, but would like to donate to the raffle instead, please contact Gerry – details as above.

http://www.notoamayor.org.uk

Councils in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have signed up to the Government’s ‘devolution’ proposal – and are now consulting on it.

The ‘devolution deal’ includes £20m a year, plus a one-off £100m for housing and £70m specifically for housing in Cambridge.

The price of the deal, on which the Government has been totally insistent, is an extra tier of government – a ‘combined authority’ consisting of the leaders of all the local councils – and a political Mayor for the whole of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.

Some powers over things like housing, apprenticeships, transport and health will transfer from the Government to the Mayor; and some powers will be taken upwards from the county council. The Mayor will have a veto on all the decisions of the new combined authority.

The Mayor will receive a salary of somewhere between £65,000 and £80,000 a year. The former Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire Andrew Lansley is being tipped for the new post.

At a time of drastic public spending cutbacks, local Liberal Democrats say proposals for an expensive new Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough are not what is needed to help improve the lives of local residents.

The proposed funding for housing and transport is welcome, but  there is no reason for the government to force a Mayor on us as the price of it. I would rather see the Mayor’s lavish salary spent on more vital public services.

Only 18 per cent (fewer than one in five) of residents in East Cambridgeshire bothered to vote in the election for a Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough in May. Why do we need another of these unwanted expensive bureaucratic posts?

Liberal Democrats are fighting the plan to introduce a Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. If you agree that a Mayor’s salary and office isn’t a priority right now, please sign the petition online.

If you want to complete the council’s consultation, it is here until 23 August.

[Image courtesy of TaxRebate.org.uk]

In 2014/15 East Cambridgeshire District Council called for the public to nominate buildings and structures in the district to be included on a register of ‘buildings of local interest’.  About 200 nominations were received; these were assessed against set criteria by an independent panel of experts, and a draft register of 94 buildings has been drawn up.

The council is now asking for the public’s thoughts on the proposed register.  Do you agree with the buildings and structures that have been included?  Do you have any information about the history of a particular building or structure on the register?

You can view or download the draft register here and read more about the process here. In the Sutton division, the register includes

Little Downham

• Cast Iron Stink Pipe, rear of 78 Cannon Street
• Baptist Sunday School, corner of Main Street and Chapel Lane
• Old Methodist Chapel, Main Street
• Old Methodist Sunday School, Main Street
• Old Standpipe, Townsend

Mepal

• 17 Bridge Lane

Sutton

• The Grove, Sutton Gault
• The Anchor, Sutton Gault
• 6 High Street
• Methodist Chapel, High Street
• 83 High Street
• 85 High Street
• The Chequers, High Street
• Rose Cottage, Station Road
• Eastwood, Station Road
• 18 Sutton Park

Witcham

• White Horse Inn, Silver Street
• Witcham House, Headley’s Lane
• Grange Farm, Silver Street
• Barn to rear 21 High Street

The public consultation period will run from Monday 1 August 2016 until 5:00pm on Friday 16 September 2016.

What are the implications for owners?

The Buildings of Local Interest Register identifies buildings and structures so that they can be given protection through the planning process.  A building or structure on the Local Register does not have any additional statutory protection.  However, a local register entry would be a material consideration when determining planning applications to ensure that any change to the building did not harm its special interest.  Planning policy encourages the retention and protection of the special character of ‘local register’ buildings.  Any external alterations should respect the character of the building.  There will be a presumption against the demolition of a ‘Locally Registered’ building or structure.

You can send comments on the register by email to conservation@eastcambs.gov.uk (link sends e-mail) or by post to Conservation, ECDC, The Grange, Nutholt Lane, Ely CB7 4EE.

The news that all three minor injuries units in the Cambridgeshire Fens – Ely, Wisbech, and Doddington – could be closed to save cash is deeply shocking.

The proposal itself is bad enough. The units are popular, local, and see a large number of patients with a range of injuries.  But the manner in which the news has become public is appalling.

It’s only a matter of weeks since Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) published a summary of its Fit For the Future programme.  (The full document still doesn’t seem to be available to the public). With its bright, cheerful colours, and its LS Lowry-like imagery, it exudes optimism and positivity.

‘You are at the centre of this plan’, the jolly leaflet tells us.

But it’s taken a whistle-blower to break the news that what this palette of platitudes really means is the closure of three well-used local facilities in the north eastern part of Cambridgeshire.

Our local Clinical Commissioning Group, responsible for health care spending in our area, was less than a week ago announced to have been judged ‘inadequate‘ by NHS England for both leadership and finances. Our local health service is one of the worst funded in the country, and millions of pounds were lost on the Uniting Care contract for older people’s care which collapsed at the end of last year.

Nobody underestimates the scale of the effort required to address these problems.  But the furtive and less than candid approach we’ve seen today doesn’t do anyone any credit.

The public involvement undertaken to date by the CCG in the preparation of its Fit For the Future plan has been, to say the least, patchy. The plan’s Facebook page has only 67 ‘likes’, and its Twitter account only a little over 500 followers.

With the whistle well and truly blown, our Clinical Commissioning Group now needs to come clean with the 930,000 people in its area, and open an honest, genuine, and wide-reaching dialogue about its plans for health services in our area.

Anyone who drives into Cambridge in peak time might want to take a look at the latest consultation from the Cambridge City Deal, at www.gccitydeal.co.uk/congestion

The consultation is open until Monday 10 October, and asks for views on an ‘eight-point package of measures to tackle congestion’ in Cambridge.

Of particular interest to residents of surrounding districts will be proposals for Peak-time Congestion Control Points (PCCPs).  Cameras with automatic number plate recognition would be located at fixed points in the city, and drivers passing those points in peak hours would be subject to a fine.  The suggested locations are on Queens’ Road, Grange Road, East Road, Hills Road, Mill Road and Coldhams Lane.  Buses, taxis, bicycles and emergency vehicles would be exempt.

The proposals also include a Workplace Parking Levy – an annual fee charged to employers with staff parking spaces.  The level of the fee, and the number of parking spaces at which the fee would start to be levied, have not yet been suggested, but the consultation points to Nottingham as an example, where employers with more than 10 employee parking spaces pay an annual fee of £375 per space, and can choose to pass that cost on their employees.

The consultation page includes several ways to have your say, including an online or paper questionnaire, phone, email or through social media. There will also be a series of exhibitions in and immediately around Cambridge during September and October:

• Wednesday 7 September, 17:30-20:00, Waterbeach Primary School
• Thursday 8 September, 17:00-20:00, Histon Baptist Church
• Monday 12 September, 16:30-19:30, Bottisham Village College
• Monday 3 October, 17:00-20:00, Cherry Hinton C of E Primary School
• Tuesday 4 October, 11:00-14:30, The Concourse, Addenbrooke’s
• Tuesday 4 October, 16:30-19:30, Linton Village College
• Wednesday 5 October, 17:30-20:00, Comberton Sports & Arts

Personally, I’m somewhat surprised that people are not being asked their views about a straightforward peak hour congestion charge like the Dartford Tunnel Dart charge. Heavily fining people for using random roads (including, as someone has already pointed out to me, the road to and from the Arthur Rank Hospice) seems an odd alternative, likely to simply force traffic onto alternative and less suitable roads.

NHS England has rated the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group as ‘inadequate’.  The CCG is responsible for planning, organising and purchasing NHS funded healthcare for residents of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.  NHS England has criticised the CCG’s leadership and finance and told it to improve its performance and planning.

In response, a spokesman for the CCG said it is ‘fully committed to returning the CCG and the health system to a sustainable financial position’, and went on:

2015/16 was a very difficult year for the CCG as we have dealt with a number of significant financial and contractual issues. The CCG has made many changes… but there is still a lot more for us to do to address our underlying recurrent deficit.

[Source: BBC Cambridgeshire]