East Chesterton Liberal Democrats

Officers are planning work to remove to 2 willow trees (one of which is now dead) and one Guelder Rose (shrub) that are implicated in subsidence damage to a nearby property.

The Council generally prefer to remove trees that don’t enhance the appearance of an area, as it avoids any liability it can occur from insurance claims, if those trees caused damage to a property.

The two willows are shown below as filled in circles:

the black circles show the approximate location of the two willows

If you have any concerns about these works please contact Cllr Manning or Kerr by the end of Thursday the 24th May.

The ward team have received feedback from residents, and combined that with their own ideas to submit a number of small changes to the plans for parking restrictions around the Shirely School. The suggestions for altered plans can be seen below.

Lib Dem suggested alterations to the scheme

The changes show / suggested are:

• Restriction outside 1/1A Nuffield Road changed to be “NO waiting 0830-0930 & 1500-1600 – representations from residents of Nuffield Road and Maitland Avenue
• Pippin Drive restrictions extended – the minibus has problems exiting from Pauline Burnett House currently so this will hopefully help that
• At the Laxton Way corner, is it possible to put up some mirrors so one can see around the bend?
• Given the driving habits of some motorists, should be going for a block 20mph limit for the whole area: i.e. once you turn off Green End Road?

Cllr Manning comments: “I’m thankful for the officer work and for the feedback the team have recieved. I’m still very concerned about displacement at Laxton Way in particular. I’ve asked officers what would be involved in a residents parking scheme for those residents who park on the street as they have more than one car. It may be that isn’t an option at this stage, but we should consider it.”

The Old Chesterton Residents’ Association, of which Cllr Manning has long been a member, is holding its annual meeting on the 30th May 2012, on the theme: “Your Vision for your Neighbourhood“.

Full details can be found on the OCRA website – all are welcome:

http://www.ocra-cb4.org.uk/calendar.asp?intent=details&eventID=120950

Cllr Manning says “The new localism act from the coalition provides an opposrtuinity to create ‘Community Asset Registers’ which can really help shape the way an area develops.

With the big change of the new station coming, it is vital that Chesterton takes as many steps as possible to protect its identity.”

Concern was rightly raised by residents over this report in the local press: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Body-found-at-city-nature-reserve-29042012.htm but the local ward team are happy to report that, after talking to Police, this is not a sign of a wider problem.

The death was of natural causes and was a result of someone who wasn’t dangerous sleeping rough.

Last night Cllrs Kerr and Manning attended North Area Committee: the regular City & County Council meeting to discuss issues affecting wards in the north of the City.

The planning parts of the meeting came first with nothing significant affecting East Chesterton. After procedural business, the meeting started with community development grants being awarded.

There were a large number from East Chesterton, showing what a thriving community scene we have here:

• Chesterton Garden Club for their annual show
• The VIE Residents’ Association with a small grant to run a mini VIE Olympics at the development. The money will go towards equipment & prizes for the event which will further the work of the association in bringing people of differeing background together. Note that Cllr Manning is chair of that association so had to remove himself from the room for the duration of the discussion – Janice Drohan from the association was present for any questions.
• Chesterton Parents group: to fund a music group and some indoor play activities. Music is a very important activity especially for young children so this was good to see.
• Chesterton Community Association: to support its work in the community.
• St Andrew’s Hall: to buy paint to enable volunteers to repaint the exterior of the hall.’

The meeting then moved onto substantive items for discussion.

Item 4 – Improving engagement with young people

There was a presentation from two local schools – Chesterton Community College talking about outreach into community and the problems faced by the Manor.

Sports centre at CCC went from £140,000 debt, to now being in profit.

The Principal of the Manor talked movingly about the problems faced by students
from his catchment area – students who work hard and need the support from
the school they sometimes don’t receive at home.

In particular he praised the pupil premium (a Liberal Democrat policy) as it has
provided £100,000 extra funding to the school. At the same time he felt top
down targets from Michael Gove were really hurting the perception of the
school.

Both schools were reaching out into the community regardless of their school
type which was heartening and inspiring to hear about.

Many councillors expressed an eagerness to take up the offers of meeting
pupils.

Cllr Kerr, young person’s champion said at the meeting “We should be going to them, not them coming to us.”.

Item 5 – Demographic pressures on primary schools in the North of Cambridge

A county council officer went through the background – that the County Council
has to provide a place for all children and since 2008 there has been a
significant increase in demand in school places. In 2010-2011 this spread to
the south of the city.

In East Chesterton the impact/decision is whether the Shirley is made from 2 to
3 form entry or a new school is opened on the site of the old school.

The officer was asked about why the increase wasn’t predicted – although a
valid question, the increase was originally thought to be a blip, but proved to
continue.

The full report can be read here: 20120517_NorthCambsPrimPlaces

Cllr Manning commented “Whatever choice is made in East Chesterton it will be the least worse of two not perfect options. The key thing we have to all put first is the welfare of our existing school children and the quality of their education.”

Item 6 – North Area Corridor Transport Plan

Questions were asked about how the list of schemes were arrived at: officers
gave a complex explanation about how there was a project methodology for
choosing which projects came onto the list.
It was pointed out that projects
presented were potential schemes from 2003 and/or had already been delivered which rather confused things.

There was some local concern about whether the proposed Chisholm trail
bridge was appropriate for the area and officers assured residents that environmental impact assessments / intital feasability studies would need to be carried out before any formal plans were put together.

Cllr Ian Manning has put forward the Chesterton News for the Cambridge Building Society community magazine awards. Last year’s winners can be seen here: http://www.cambridgebs.co.uk/news-community/community-magazine-awards.

“I’m proud to have been involved in this project from before it started to now where the third issue is about to launch.” said Cllr Manning “and I’m hopeful that the efforts of all of the people involved will be recognised in these awards.”

Further to an earlier meeting in February, Cllr Manning arranged County Council officers to meet with OCRA (The Old Chesterton Residents’ Association) and the Friends of Stourbridge Common, to give their opinions on the current use of the bridge.

If you have any thoughts on the Green Dragon bridge: how it could be improved, in terms of useage and reduction of conflicts between the different users, please contact Cllr Manning (details on the right).

Separately, Cllr Manning is chasing where the bridge is on the County’s scheduled maintenance list.

Today was the regular meeting of the scrutiny committee that Cllr Ian Manning attends as part of his council duties (each member attends at least one Scrutiny committee)

Public Speaking slot

The first item was a public speaking slot from Mr David Carrington who spoke about the SEND (Special Education Needs & Disability – ie the strategy to meet the needs of pupils with one or more probelms in those areas) strategy.

His contention was that there are reliable ways of identifying dyslexic children at an early age and these are not being used in all schools. Questions from the committee tried to pin down what Mr Carrington wanted changed, why schools weren’t adopting what he regarded as best practise already.

He identified Hampshire as having adopted the programme already and claimed a programme (“Lucid”) which cost £8 / child could screen children around 6 years old for dyslexia reliably.

The committee agreed that his proposals would be forwarded to cabinet and the committee could then follow up the response.

Item 8: SEND Strategy

On Tuesday the Government released new national proposals for SEND – these will have an impact on the strategy which the officers are still trying to evaluate. On several points officers stated that some imprecise statements in the strategy were due to this.

The action plan identifies 6 Children’s centres as SEND ‘hubs’ – committee questions discovered these are geographically dispersed and a list was requested. There were concerns about the distance parents might have to travel given the small number of these hubs.

Lib Dem Cllr Lucy Nesthinga asked specifically about whether sufficient resource exists to produce the better outcomes desired.

There was also discussion around the best use of Teaching Assistant time: it was pointed out that the best outcomes often come from strategies that are designed to make children more indepdent.

Overall -

SEND covers a massive range, from children with mild problems, to those that require 24*7 support for their whole lives.
Whilst children at the extreme end are easy to identify those with milder problems are much harder to reliably identify.
Concern was expressed about the relationship between Academies and Local Authorities and the influence the latter can have on the former.
As the actions in the trategy would not take place for at least another year, the next reporting would be in 18 months time.

Item 9 – The Business Case for the Fenland (new) County School

This was mostly a positive presentation about this school. Conservative Cllr Hoy who is the chair of the local town council planning committee, mentioned that there was very little objection to the plan locally.

Cllr Manning asked whether LGSS was being considered as a ICT provider, given the success of LGSS recently. The project director confirmed that this was an option being considered now.

Item 11 – Impact of funding cuts to the ESLAC (Educational Support services for Looked After Children)

This was an interesting item talking about the practical impact of cuts on a service. For example, individual teachers were now dealing with 69 children each, up from 31.

Cllr Manning questioned the IT system behind it, which officers reported is a customised bespoke system costing £30,000. As usual the danger was of IT systems that weren’t tied up or reporting that wasn’t done consistently across different schools.

It was agreed a task and finish group would be set up to look at how the IT was being used, to which Cllr Manning would be a member.

Items 11 & 12 – Procurement of new schools

Key questions here:

Who should develop a school? The County or the developer of the development which it will serve? [normally this would be the County, but often developers were now interested in doing this]
How to keep to the developer to it’s agreements?
How to keep within national and EU procurement rules to avoid legal challenge?

The first is a key point and promoted lively debate around the principles here – a classic open free market argument from some of the Conservatives, versus the current framework which has a time limited ‘preferred developers’ approach.

Lib Dem Cllr Sue Gymer took the committee back to more educational and involvement led issues: making sure potential parents and parish councils are involved in the decision making process.

She highlighted that the local authority should be very careful to ensure the location of the school is appropriate for the families who attend those schools – and that these would not necessarily be concerns for developers.

Officers highlighted that potential bidders would present to open meetings in the local area.

Committee agreed to produce a report to be circulated to members.

Item 13 – The MARU (Multi Agency Referral Unit)

As it sounds, a multi agency working framework to deal with difficult individuals, whose problems cut across traditional agency responsibilities.

This was a success story in one respect – that Peterborough had recently joined the partnership.

Cllr Manning again dug into the IT system underpinning and found problems of data sharing again, something he will follow up.

works on east road

Utility companies could be charged a daily fee for road closures while they carry out work across Cambridgeshire.

The idea has been put forward by Liberal Democrat Councillor Sarah Whitebread and would apply to companies laying new gas or water mains or carrying out similar work in the county.

Cllr Whitebread, who represents Cambridge’s Market Ward on Cambridgeshire County Council, claims the move could prevent lengthy closures such as the one which brought the city’s East Road to a virtual halt for weeks while new gas mains were laid.

She made her suggestion during Question Time at the county council meeting today (Tuesday, May 15) and it was agreed to look into such a scheme.

A similar idea, approved by the Department of Transport, will allow Transport for London to charge companies in the capital up to £2,500 a day for closing major roads. Companies will face lower charges if they carry out work outside of peak times.

“The county system at the moment has no incentive for speedy work, or to encourage work outside peak times” said Cllr Whitebread. “Given the frequency with which utilities companies need to carry out road works in Cambridge, I think a charging scheme of this type needs serious consideration.

“I also pushed the council to look at ways to encourage utility companies, when carrying out works, to keep roads open for cyclists. Often there is road space around the works that could be made available, but instead cyclists told to wait with cars or dismount and walk. In a city where so many people travel to school and work by bike, this clearly needs addressing.”

The county council’s Cabinet Member for Community Infrastructure, Tony Orgee, agreed to look into such a scheme.

The meeting started with the usual administrative announcements and changing of committee memberships.

Noteworthy on the Conservative side was Cllr Steve Tierney entering the Cabinet for the first time.

Lib Deb Cllr Lucy Nesthinga on allocating funding to cover Government changes to music funding

This motion was to recognise the value, as Cllr Peter Downes put it “the value of musical education to all of a child’s attainment overall”.

The Conservatives removed one paragraph in their amendment which commited the Council to allocating funds to cover any shortfall. Cllr Manning, who experienced music education as a child, noted this this meat the Conservatives were doing something that they normally accused the Liberal Democrats of – “removing the only part of the motion that actually asked the council to do anything.”.

The eventual amended motion, i.e. without a commitment to allocating funding, was passed unanimously.

Lib Dem Cllr Kevin Wilkins motion on the Local Enterprise Zone to try and make sure it will actually bring a net benefit to all of Cambridgeshire

The Liberal Democrats accepted a Conservative amendment, which, unsurprisingly removed a criticism of the previous Major and Thatcher enterprise zones.

The motion set a number of guidelines for accepting businesses into the zone:

• It will allow a business to generate more jobs
• The business can broaden what it does my being in the zone
• The business can work with other businesses in a same sector to mutal benefit

And preference will be given to business which:

• can show economic benefits other than tax cuts
• would stop business from relocating outside of the UK or EU

There was general consensus, until Labour Cllr Tarriq made a speech that seemed to be an excuse to attack the coalition Government and
Tory leader Cllr Clarke stood up and ranted against the “other side”.

The Conservatives once again repeated their idea that the Lib Dems don’t support fixing the A14 – rather as Tim Stone pointed out our solution wouldn’t have been rejected by the Government as the Tory plan was.

Further, Lib Dem Cllr Gymer pointing out that at Northstow meetings the lib dem position is “No Northstow” without an A14 upgrade

Overall all sides rounded on Labour for trying to stop business growth for different reasons.

Oral questions

There were a large number of oral questions, almost all of which came from Liberal Democrat members

On Broadband from Cllr Jenkins – pressing for fixing of existing bad broadband as well areas that don’t have it.
From Cllr Brookes-Gordon on Council’s not meeting their statutory powers be being unable to force road adoptions (from Cllr Manning’s written q). Conservative Cllr Orgee replied to say they are investigating what new powers the new localism act might provide.

Cllr Manning asked a question asking whether the proposed £1.5 million from the North Area Corridor transport plan was an appropriate funding mechanism for the proposed Chisholm trail bridge. Cllr Manning also asked whether alternative funding mechanisms had been looked at.

Cllr Bates replied that he thought it was, and did not identify other sources. Cllr Manning commented “I’m surprised other mechanisms haven’t been looked into for the funding of the bridge – it will be interesting to see how this information is received at Thursday’s North Area Committee”.