Susan van de Ven

Liberal Democrat Councillor for Bassingbourn, Litlington, Melbourn, Meldreth and Whaddon Learn more

“What is the point of Brexit if we are unable to be proud of being ‘English’!?”

by Susan van de Ven on 11 December, 2016

Every first Monday of the month I hold a drop-in advice surgery for anyone who has a query or piece of council business to untangle.

Not long ago, I had a first-time visitor who came with a set of seven prepared questions, typed out on an A4 sheet arranged with room for a response next to each query.

The visitor’s first six questions were ones I often get, but the seventh was new. Here they are:

1. Why do we have so many pot holes in South Cambridgeshire?

Answer: Because when times were good, the longstanding Conservative County Council political leadership placed a priority on keeping taxes down, without planning strategically for a well-maintained highway network. Roads and pavements are now deteriorating, and collapsing Council budgets can’t meet the demand of repairs.

Why are Council budgets collapsing? Conservative government policy is to do away with the annual revenue support grant that, together with Council Tax, the council has traditionally relied upon to provide basic public services. Council Tax can’t fill the enormous gap left by the withdrawal of government support grant, and councils can only raise Council Tax by a limited amount that is decided by central government. In 2016, things have been even worse than they needed to be: the Conservative and UKIP groups voted to freeze basic Council Tax rise. I explained that by not going with the permitted rise (1.99%) the loss was about £10 million – this would have cost the annual Band D property about £22 per year.

2. Why cannot some of the money generated from speed cameras be spent on repairing our roads (in places they are lethal!!) (See country roads around Chishill/Grange/Ickleton etc)

Answer: Speed cameras don’t generate income for the villages in the Melbourn area.

3. We seem to be a third world country.

Sigh.

4. ‘Freedom of Information’. How much of ratepayers money is spent on Council employees pension funds? Also what % of speeding fines, car parking charges are spent on maintaining our roads?

Answer: I couldn’t answer the question about pensions though I said I thought the Council was a good employer. I put the visitor in direct contact with the Chairman of the Audit and Accounts Committee, who responded straight away. As for the second part of the question: Some monies from things like parking fines on the public highway do get put back into the realm of transport, but in South Cambridgeshire parking fines are a rarity – it is not a priority for an equally strapped Police service – and this is an insignificant amount of money.

5. Are we likely to have our ‘B’ roads gritted this year? What about minor village roads?

The gritting network is being scaled back this year – fewer roads than last year will be gritted. Minor village roads will not be gritted.

6. How often, if at all, is foliage cut back to expose road signage? How often are signs cleaned and repaired? What must other visitors from overseas think?

Answer: Indeed the Council is falling behind with these tasks, and has recently set up a Highways Volunteering Scheme whereby local residents help out with these jobs free of charge. I explained that a team of volunteers in Meldreth is already busy doing these jobs.

My visitor was very patient as we worked through each question, though clearly he was unhappy with the state of public services.

He then came to the final question, which was typed out on the bottom of the page:

7. What is the point of Brexit if we unable to be proud of being ‘English’!?

Answer: I hadn’t thought about Brexit in quite this way before. The visitor had reached his own conclusion when he typed out the question before coming to the advice surgery. I appreciated his thorough and thoughtful preparation, and found that going through the questions one at a time gave me a fuller realization of how all this looks from the outside. It struck me that his questions were about basic things that we all notice every day.

The most distressing questions that have come my way in recent weeks include these:

1) A new wheelchair cushion is needed to protect against a bed sore that won’t heal, for a woman who is paralyzed and trying to navigate a collapsing NHS service that keeps mixing up her SG8 postcode with Hertfordshire services, even though she lives in Cambridgeshire.
2) Basic transport is being cut for a profoundly disabled woman who has been told she needs to pay for essential trips out of her pocket.
3) A young girl with a severe learning disability is not getting the help she needs, and her parents need to plan for her future.

Collapsing council budgets are bad enough. We can’t afford any further stress on our economy. But the UK economy will take – is already taking – a major hit on account of Brexit. Whether or not we can be proud of being English, we can’t afford to Brexit.

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