The County Council is conducting an inquiry into procedural mistakes made with the Cambridge Library Enterprise Centre decision (now rescinded). The Chair of the Council’s Audit & Accounts Committee, Cllr Mike Shellens, has called for submissions from the public as well as from councillors. If you would like to contribute, please email your submission to [email protected]. […]

Police priorities for the south of Cambridge will be set next Monday at the South Area meeting, which will take place at Homerton College, starting at 7.30pm. Following the election of a new chair, there will be an Open Forum, when anyone can speak or ask a question. After a report on Cherry Hinton High […]

Queen Edith’s Labour councillor Sue Birtles resigned her city council seat last Tuesday. We do not know the reasons for her standing down after little more than two years as a councillor. If councillors resign in the spring, their successors can be elected in May at the same time as the annual council election. The timing […]

Last night, the new Mayor of Cambridge, Cllr Gerri Bird, and the vice-chair of Cambridgeshire County Council, Cllr Sebastian Kindersley, came to cut the tape across the new doors to the library garden and to help us launch the new community room. We heard from the Friends of Rock Road Library Treasurer James Berry about […]

With the other Lib Dem councillors in the ward, I hold a monthly advice surgery. Normally we have our surgeries in Wulfstan Way on a Saturday morning, either at St James’s Church when they have a coffee morning on, or at the Coffee House down the road. For details, see here: http://amandataylor.focusteam.org/surgeries/ We find it […]

The Liberal Democrats in Queen Edith’s hold a regular advice surgery once a month. It’s my turn this Saturday, and I shall be at St James’s Church in Wulfstan Way between 10.30 and 11.30am. Our surgery craftily coincides with the church’s own coffee morning / bring & buy sale on too, so you can have […]

Today was a day of change at Cambridgeshire County Council. The old Conservative Leader Nick Clarke was formally voted out of office, finishing off the job done in the elections on 2nd May. A new Tory Leader, Martin Curtis, was elected – but only on the second round of voting, and only as Leader of […]

The first time I ever attended a council meeting (1970s, Labour-run Leeds Town Hall), the radio and papers took a keen interest in municipal goings-on, to the extent that they would even visit councillors at home to interview them. When I became a councillor myself in Cambridge in the 1990s, the press had their own […]

Last night, Cambridge City Council roundly defeated the Labour Party motion to cap shared housing in Cambridge. The motion followed speeches from members of the public who had come to the Guildhall to address their concerns about the motions to councillors. They expressed their disquiet at the potential shortage of accommodation which might ensure if […]

The latest motion to appear from the Cambridge Labour Group alarms me greatly. They are raising concerns about shared houses, and call for a report on limiting the number of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). Labour wants to widen the HMO term to include homes with lodgers as well as shared houses of young single people (though whether […]