My colleague Cllr David Jenkins has written this excellent post about Tuesday’s full meeting of Cambridgeshire County Council, which was filmed by Antony Carpen.

A Lib Dem motion to the meeting has resulted in reinstatement of the gritting network as it stood before last year’s cuts. But a long-term solution to this and other critical council services requires an adequate revenue stream: reserves can’t be the permanent answer for obvious reasons – they run out.

All those (Conservatives and UKIP) who voted in February to freeze council tax, thereby necessitating reductions to the gritting budget, voted unanimously to find emergency funds to reinstate the pre-cuts gritting network. It’s good when elected representatives change their minds and make better decisions.

Hopefully though this was not a one-off unanimous recognition that we need to properly fund gritting services – and even with the reinstatement the service is limited. The next council meeting in February 2017 will see the same questions raised as last year: if council tax is frozen, there is less to spend on public services. That means things like gritting that people rightfully expect to be properly provided.

Probably the meeting will be full of the usual histrionics and playing to the gallery, because politics tends to be like that. But let’s hope the day’s decisions are based on rational thinking rather than playing to false economies.

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