This morning a Cambridgeshire county council committee has given the go-ahead to its officers to press ahead to the next stage of the council’s Total Transport pilot project in the north of East Cambridgeshire, including Sutton, Little Downham, Mepal, Coveney, Witcham, Wardy Hill, and Pymoor.

There will now be consultation on the scheme, and officers will draw up further plans ready for a decision in May.

The district council has just announced that Easter, May and August Bank Holiday waste collections will be a day later than advertised in the leaflets distributed by the council at the end of last year.

Amey – the waste facility at Waterbeach –  had agreed that the council could collect domestic rubbish on all bank holidays. The site does not have planning permission to accept waste on bank holidays, but Amey used to write to county council planners, who would allow a variation each time to enable the waste to be collected and taken there on bank holidays.

Unfortunately, the council says that recent case law has ruled that this is not an acceptable solution, so the county council planners will no longer allow bank holiday waste collection operations.

In all cases collections will take place a day later than previously stated in bank holiday weeks. The new collection dates will be publicised through full page advertisements in the local newspapers on or around 17 March. They will also be on the Council’s web site and emailed to all parish councils.

Are you as fed up as I am with areas of poor mobile signal or internet connectivity? As a local resident I’m often frustrated by patchy or non-existent access to mobile data – particularly in the centre of Ely which is notorious for this.  Now we can all help to make a difference.

Cambridge Ahead business group is asking local residents to help improve mobile, WiFi and broadband connectivity within a 20 mile radius of Cambridge – which includes almost all of East Cambridgeshire.  By joining this crowdsourcing initiative you can become a #CambsNotspotter and help identify ‘notspots’ – areas of no or low connectivity.

The project will show where mobile phone signals, Wi-Fi and broadband access are poor, then encourage providers to take action to improve them. As a #CambsNotspotter, you can:

1. Participate! Download the ‘OpenSignal’ App from Google Play / App Store and get involved in identifying where there is limited mobile coverage
2. Log in! Make use of free WiFi in public buildings and open spaces in and around Cambridge by selecting ‘CambWifi’ and ‘the_cloud’ WiFi networks on your device
3. Check your strength!  Run an independent broadband speed test for your household or small business broadband at www.thinkbroadband.com/CambsNotspotter

Find out more here.

Cambridgeshire County Council has just published its Draft Transport Strategy for East Cambridgeshire. There are a number of consultation sessions about it happening in the next few weeks, including next Thursday (10 March) at The Glebe in Sutton from 3pm to 7pm, and Tuesday 22 March at the Cathedral centre in Ely at the same times.

If you’re interested in our roads, trains, buses, cycle paths, pavements and footpaths, and have views about what should happen next to make travelling round East Cambridgeshire easier, better and safer, you might want to come along and find out more, or download the document from http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/TSEC

Local residents who rent garages from Sanctuary Housing may have been shocked by a rather large increase in their bills for this year.  Following an email from a resident, I’ve spoken to Sanctuary about this – and their response is that a decision has been taken by Sanctuary corporately to raise the rents across the whole of their garage stock nation-wide to market levels. This decision seems to have been communicated very badly, if at all, to their tenants.

I’ve asked whether this rise means that Sanctuary’s target of market level rents has now been achieved, or whether there would be further significantly steep increases in future. I’ve been assured that the rise to market rents has been made in one jump, and that future rent increases should be more temperate.

Early warning of a road closure in Sutton in a couple of months’ time: Red Lion Lane will be closed for one day only on Monday 16 May to enable duct installation for BT Openreach.

Works will take place from 9:00am to 5:00pm, and traffic will be diverted via the High Street, Lawn Lane and Link Lane.

Sutton Parish Council’s application for funding for a pedestrian crossing at Bellairs has been approved by the county council.  The bid was one of seven in East Cambridgeshire to make it through the process.

Excellent news for Sutton, but disappointment for Mepal, Coveney and Little Downham Parish Councils, whose schemes – for a one-way system in Mepal’s High Street, speed limits in Main Street and The Green in Coveney, and parking in Pymoor’s Main Street respectively – were unsuccessful.

24 bids totalling £219,962 were submitted across East Cambridgeshire, of which £59,597 would have been part-funded by the applicants.  The county council’s Highways & Community Infrastructure Committee met on Tuesday and approved only seven of the bids, totalling £82,534.  £50,990 of these costs will be funded by the county council and the remainder by the applicants.

Over the spring and summer, the County Council will be carrying out its annual programme of surface dressing works (a list for East Cambridgeshire is below).  This process seals the road surface to protect it from frost damage and also increases its skid resistance making it safer for drivers.

As part of the preparation for this, council officers have reviewed the road markings and road studs at each of the sites where work is to be done.

In some cases these do not comply with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 and The Traffic Signs Manual.  This can mean
too many markings or incorrect markings. Sometimes the markings have not caught up with changes to things like speed limits. And in some cases the regulations themselves have changed.

This means that after the surface dressing process has been completed, some road markings and studs will not be replaced, and in some places there will be additional ones.

This spring and summer’s programme will include:

• Bottisham: Beachwood Avenue
• Burwell: Hythe Close
• Coveney: Jerusalem Drove
• Dullingham: Upend Road
• Ely: Buckingham Drive, Canterbury Avenue, Chapel Street, Church Lane, Lansdowne Close, Longfields, Mayfield Close, Norfolk Road, The Chase, Yorke Way
• Haddenham: High Street
• Kirtling: Lidgate Road, Upend Road
• Littleport: Croft Park Road, Parsons Lane, Victoria Street
• Mepal: Brangehill Lane
• Pymoor: Pymoor Common
• Stetchworth: Parkside
• Sutton: Garden Close, Lawn Lane, Church Lane
• Wilburton: Haddenham Road, West End
• Woodditton: Court Barns, Duchess Drive

Consultation on the preliminary draft of East Cambridgeshire District Council’s Local Plan has begun today, and will end on Thursday 24 March. The document is now online, and residents of East Cambridgeshire are invited to comment on the draft.

This is an important document as it will shape the future of the district for the next twenty years and more, including

• Which places should grow
• Which sites should be developed for jobs and housing
• Which green spaces should be protected
• How community-led development can be supported
• What new development should be like.

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) has today published its final recommendations for new electoral arrangements for Cambridgeshire County Council.

Sutton will be joined together with half of Littleport, the Downham villages, Haddenham, Wilburton, Stretham, and Little Thetford, sharing two county councillors between them.

There will be 61 county councillors in Cambridgeshire in the future: eight fewer than at present. This will mean a huge increase in the workload for county councillors, with each councillor representing, on average, 23 per cent more residents in future than they do at present.

The one thing to be grateful for from this mess is that Sutton is not to be split in half as some respondents proposed.