Here’s my annual report to parishes. There are a few differences of local detail which I will bring to individual parish meetings.

Most of my reporting this year has again necessarily been about declining public services & struggles to protect bare essentials. Ours is one of the most affluent parts of the country, but not without deprivation.

We have the ability to raise revenue to provide services yet are stuck in a quest to keep council tax down, exacerbating other severe pressures. This year council tax was again frozen, rejecting a 1.99% rise and saving a Band D household 42 P per week. This isn’t getting us very far in running essential services. Many vulnerable people are inadequately supported and deprivation gaps persist. The 2% social care precept rise is welcome but falls far short of what’s needed.

The council is shedding services that it isn’t legally required to provide. This year it stopped providing transport assistance to 16-18 year-olds, even though they are required to be in education or training. Sixth form colleges say that their intake from less affluent areas has reduced. Pot holes are measured in millimetres before the OK to fix them and we are developing new vocabulary to describe grades of wear and tear. Ruts are not pot holes! Pavement deterioration continues.

Council reserves are low and borrowing is high. This year the council reversed a decision to cut winter gritting; the roughly £600K required to do this was taken from reserves – the service cut had been made after last year’s council tax freeze. This necessitated re-acquiring gritting lorries and drivers within the space of one year.
The Council’s financial position has been hit hard by central government policy to withdraw Revenue Support Grant, which will be at zero in two years’ time. It is difficult to meet the rising costs of an aging population and other demographic changes without this support. There are questions about new responsibilities that may accompany the retention of Business Rates in 2020. The County Council will be required to help fund the new Mayoral layer of government, while giving up key strategic powers to the Mayor.

Unsurprisingly, the council is looking at new ways of generating revenue, including as a housing developer. It is unable to plug gaps in infrastructure brought about by unplanned speculative development – and yet has itself become a speculative developer.

New council division boundaries about to take effect don’t always make sense for community development. Division populations will be bigger and the number of elected representatives supporting them will shrink. Combining Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for efficiencies makes sense, but county and district responsibilities are not being efficiently combined, and this would have been the right time to make big changes there along the lines of unitary authorities.

A positive change is the County Council’s relatively new public health responsibility, which brings greater awareness of health and wellbeing in the general population, and of inequalities. This has positively influenced some decision making. However budgets there are being cut there too. The council has a role in scrutinizing health services, and this has provided understanding of staff recruitment and retention issues related to cost of living – this is playing out in other sectors too.

Community campaigns play an important role. The A10 cycle path has progressed mainly through Department for Transport grants. Any new asset brings new problems and the A10 Corridor Cycling Campaign is a useful forum for addressing these. Station platforms are being lengthened (at Shepreth and Foxton) for the twice-hourly services in 2018 that the Meldreth Shepreth and Foxton Rail User Group campaigned for. Young people continue to help as station garden volunteers, and the Rail User Group has helped secure continuation of the 50% student discount. The Rail User Group played a key role in preventing the closure of Barrington Rd pedestrian gate at Foxton Crossing. Stagecoach will resume an hourly 26 commercial service, with off-peak journeys to terminate at Trumpington Park & Ride; but will withdraw the 27 due to low ridership. Council subsidised buses have had another reprieve, but no long term rural public transport fix has been found.

As this is my final report for this council term, I’d like to say that I hope in future Cambridgeshire County Council will become more visionary and compassionate about what kind of society it wishes to foster, and then boldly proactive about securing the tools needed to bring this about.

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