Cambridgeshire County Council today set its budget for the 2023/24 financial year. This is what I said about the services for which the committee I chair—Environment & Green Investment—is responsible.
This has been a challenging budget year, with the apocalyptically ill-advised Truss-Kwarteng budget plunging the nation even further into the economic mire.
Inflation is now running at over ten per cent. Supply chains and labour markets have been ravaged by Brexit, as well as by Covid and the war in Ukraine. Britain’s economy is predicted to see the worst performance of all G7 countries, even Russia which is at war and being sanctioned by the world.
Once again the Government has kicked the ball of fair funding for councils into the long grass. It has told us it has increased our spending power by over nine per cent—less than inflation, and half of that increase made up by assuming we will set the maximum permitted council tax increase.
I want to express my thanks to my Environment & Green Investment Committee colleagues and the council’s officers in the directorate for all the hard work they have done this year. I would like to think my Vice Chair Cllr Gay, Cllr Ferguson as the Independent spokes on the committee, and Cllr Corney and previously Cllr Goldsack as the opposition spokes.
Together with our commercial partners, we have continued to decarbonise schools in Cambridgeshire, including at Ramsey, Harston & Newton, and Comberton, with more schemes on the way.
We have seen the Swaffham Prior community heat scheme come to fruition, with the first homes connected. Solar car ports at Babraham Park & Ride are now under construction, and the smart energy grid at St Ives is expected to be energised this summer. North Angle Solar Park is due to complete shortly afterwards. These have been challenging projects in the prevailing economic conditions and I am grateful to the officer team for all they have done to bring these schemes to their present state. Our capital programme includes proposals in the coming years for work at Trumpington, Stanground, Woodston, and Fordham.
We continue to work with partners on flood and water management issues which are so important to local residents, and I was delighted to attend the first Cambridgeshire conference for the growing number of local Community Flood Groups, into which we have put resource over the course of this year.
The Just Transition Fund, which the Conservative opposition wish to axe, has been there to support this work, and money remains in this fund to enable this to continue.
Our Natural & Historic Environment and Biodiversity & Green Spaces teams are doing fantastic work. We now have an interim tree strategy, and will be working towards a final strategy once we have confirmed the level of existing tree cover so that we can set an appropriate target. I was pleased to carry out two tree-related visits last week—one to the Tiny Forest at Fenstanton and Hilton Primary School, planted by the pupils, and the other to unveil a plaque to mark the planting of a tree at Duxford Community Centre to commemorate the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Our County Planning, Minerals & Waste service has been kept busy responding to the large number of development consent orders submitted in Cambridgeshire, and grappling with the effects of numerous significant changes in waste regulation and enforcement on the PFI contract we have been bequeathed and which was designed for a former era. We will be investing in Household Recycling Centre provision at March and Milton.
The budget before us today enables all this work to continue and develop. This Joint Administration puts the climate challenge and our environment at the heart of what we do, and I am proud to support this budget.
