Houses are going up at their fastest rate for 10 years, the BBC reports.  Great news – let’s hope for more of the same to tackle this country’s long-term housing shortage.

Very pleased to hear the announcement in the Autumn Statement today that employers will no longer have to pay employers’ national insurance contributions on behalf of any employee under the age of 21. Here in East Cambridgeshire that’s 1,700 young people – a real boost for the businesses that employ them, and hopefully an encouragement to get more young people into work.

The Financial Times reports today that the Government is set to drop its proposal for tolling on the A14 after the proposed widening is put in place.  If so, that is truly excellent news, as it will give hauliers no incentive to avoid the A14 and thunder through villages such as Sutton and Haddenham.

However, it does make one wonder: if the Government is in a position to forgo the estimated £300 million in income from tolling, the £1 million East Cambridgeshire district council is giving the Government from our taxes towards the A14 project does rather pale into insignificance.  Even more so in view of the overall cost of the scheme, estimated at £1.5 billion.  But that £1 million, small change to a national government in a context like this, will make a huge dent in a small district council’s finances – something for which local council tax payers here in Sutton and across East Cambridgeshire will be paying for years to come.

Great to receive the postcard along with the article in Pepperpot this month, about the Ely Museum project to develop an exhibition about the silver disc brooch of Ædwen dug up in Sutton in 1694.  This promises to be a wonderful opportunity for people in the village to get involved in celebrating a beautiful object from our community’s history.

A planning application (reference number 13/00333/FUL if you want to look it up) is waiting for consideration by East Cambridgeshire District Council for the old butchers’ shop in the High Street. The application is for ‘Change of use from A1 (previous Butchers Shop) to Deli with hot food retail, and installation of extraction, to include ancillary seating. Mixed usage, mainly Deli with some hot food retail – A5, A1 & A3’.

This application would allow the building to be used as a shop (A1), café (A3) – or, controversially, as a hot food takeaway (A5).  (A list of ‘use classes’ can be found here).

There is huge support for the plans outlined by the applicants to operate a deli and café in the High Street. However, the planning application as it stands would allow the applicants to change their minds and open a fish and chip shop instead, or a kebab house, or a takeaway pizza outlet, or sell the building on to anyone else to do any of those things, without any further applications being required. That would leave the building wide open to exactly the kind of use that residents have been vocal in opposing ever since the butchers ceased operation.

The parish council has, as always in the case of planning applications, been asked for its view.  It has – rightly in my view – taken the approach that while the A1 and A3 use classes would be very welcome, planning permission for A5 use would leave the village at risk of a standard takeaway-only business opening in the middle of our high street, with no further planning application being required.

As has already been said, a planning application can’t be made specific to one applicant – planning permission for a hot food takeaway would be applicable to the current applicants, or to anyone else they sold the building to. It seems to me therefore that the Parish Council is doing exactly the right thing – supporting strongly the parts of the application that would enable a deli and café to open in the high street as residents wish, but opposing the parts of the application that would leave the field open for it to become yet another takeaway.

The leaflet from the council announcing the new recycling service is now arriving on residents’ doormats.

You can find out whether you’ll be getting wheelie bins from this list – find your street and if your specific address doesn’t appear below ‘view the collection calendar’ you should be getting the new bins.

If you’re not getting the new bins, your alternative collection arrangements are described here.

If you’re going to be getting wheelie bins, you can find out when they’ll arrive from this list.

The Pupil Premium provides schools with extra money to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Nick Clegg has announced that the Pupil Premium will be increased to £1,300 per eligible primary school pupil in 2014/15, up from £900 per child this year. That’s likely to be an extra £866,000 for primary schools in our constituency of North East Cambridgeshire – funding is £1,948,500 this year, and is likely to rise to £2,814,500 next year.  That’s the biggest rise in the Pupil Premium since it was introduced by the coalition government.

Schools will be able to spend this money in ways that they feel help their pupils best. Evidence shows some schools use it to hire extra staff, organise reading and maths classes for children who need an extra hand, or provide appropriate IT facilities.

Crime rates in Cambridgeshire have dropped by 10 per cent in the past year, according to figures released today by the Office for National Statistics.

Crime has fallen in every region in the UK and is down by 7 per cent nationally since this time last year, hitting the lowest level since 1981.

Crime has been lower every single year under the coalition government than it was in every single year that Labour was in power – falling by over 10 per cent nationally since the present government was formed in 2010.

Many of our roads in Cambridgeshire are in a very poor state of repair. So it’s good to see this proposal going to the County Council on 16 July. The task of repairing and maintaining our roads and pavements is massive, and well beyond the current budget allocated to it – let alone the additional demands of the A14 upgrade, Ely viaduct and Northstowe. A strategy to deal with the problem is vital if it’s not to continue to spiral beyond the capacity of the council to put right.

Everyone’s still talking about the success of Feast Week, and in particular the very moving Lancaster fly-past on Sunday afternoon. Village Day was just as brilliant as Gault Day, and as one of the team serving burgers and hot dogs on Sunday afternoon I can attest that we certainly did a roaring trade. Well done, everyone – looking forward to Feast Week 2014 already!