Liberal Democrat Cambridge City Council has devolved some functions to local ‘area committees’, each covering a geographical quarter of the city. Queen Edith’s is part of the South Area, which also includes Cherry Hinton and Trumpington. The committee comprises the councillors for the three wards.

Last Thursday it met at Homerton College for the first time – a handy venue on the mainbus routes, but swelteringly hot last week. Fortunately chilled water and fans were close at hand.

For my sins, I have been elected to chair it for the coming municipal year, taking over from Trumpington councillor Andy Blackhurst who is chairing the Council’s Housing Management Board this year. Fortunately he is staying as vice-chair.

The first item of business was ‘Safer Neighbourhoods‘, a report by the local police on their activities and recommendations for priorities for the coming quarter. The meeting agreed to carry on with tackling anti-social behaviour in Paget and Foster Roads in Trumpington and in Tenby Close, Cherry Hinton. Following a request from Cllr Sheila Stuart, drug abuse in Hanover and Princess Courts (council flats in the northern part of Hills Road) were added.

We received a report about the Council’s revision of its Statement of Licensing Policy, which has to be renewed every three years, and a consultation on the same. The meeting did not give much detail about any changes, but was more a means of bringing the renewal to people’s attention. If you would like to see what is proposed, and comment, you can view the policy on the City Council’s website — any time up to 5th September.

More wonders of the web were presented by the Council’s planning officers in a Powerpoint presentation on a new virtual facility for viewing and tracking planning applications: Planning Public Access. You can view plans on line, comment on them, see what others have said about them,  and set up an email alert so you know when something changes. Use it at home, or if you prefer, at the Council’s Customer Service Centre on Rewgent Street, where planning officers are there to help form 10.30 till 3 p.m.

Community development grants were approved for  the following groups:

• Little Bunniers Mothers/ Carers Playgroup
• Trumpington Residents Association
• 2nd Cherry Hinton Guides
• Hanover and Princess Court Residents’ Association
• Trumpington Elderly Action Group
• Denis Wilson Court Social Club

There were two environmental improvement bids:

A topographical survey was agreed for the Wulfstan Way shopping parade, to take forward improvements (see my previous post on this).

The other bid was for road humps in Clarendon Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, to stop speeding, alleged to be coming from the Government offices and Cambridge University Press. I am sorry to report that police checks demonstrated that there is indeed speeding taking place, 15% of the vehicles driving not just over 30 mph but over 40 mph, though it’s not proven who is speeding. Two cats were killed in one of the streets last year.

The chair of the Brooklands Avenue residents’ association, spoke in support of traffic calming. E-mails expressing opposition to traffic calming had been sent to councillorsbyC.U.P. and one of the residents of the street.

The committee considered that while they viewed the speeding with concern, other measures than speed humps should be considere, possibly a 20mph limit, flashing lights warning people of the speed limit or chicanes. Officers will report back at the next meeting.

Two planning applications were approved: a retrospective application for a tall fence at 54 Kelsey Crescent and two new houses at 102 Glebe Road (with conditions for new landscaping on the boundaries with neighbouring properties and for a ban on deliveries to the site during construction during the school rush hour).

I have had several complaints about the drains problems in Hills Road. Whenever we have heavy rainfall, the northbound side of the road turns into a mini-canal. The cycleways are unuseable so you have to go in the road with the cars, and you get a shower as you are waiting to cross Long Road.

Late last year, the gulleys were jetted in various places on Hills Road but that hasn’t solved the problem. The gentleman I deal with at the County Council said he would try a new way of investigating to see where the break in the pipe is, possibly with a CCTV camera, but he told me it would cost extra money and couldn’t promise when it might be done.

Given the very high number of pedestrians and cyclists who use Hills Road, it seems to me it would be worth spending money on so we can actually use the pavements and cycle lanes. After all, there is little point spending millions on cycle lanes on the bridge if you get knocked over as you approach it because you suddenly have to leave the cycle lane where it turns into a stream.

Cambridge workers are being urged to take part in a Cycle Challenge. We are being pitted against The Other Place. We’ve beaten Oxford in the Boat Race and University Challenge already this year, so here’s the next trial of fortitude!

It works like this: you sign up at your place of work, then encourage your colleagues to do the same, then log your journeys (all of them, not just the commuting ones). The campaign aims to get more new cyclists doing short journeys of just 10 minutes (1 or 2 miles for most people).

The list of Cambridge organizations that has already signed up is impressive and I am pleased to say it includes the City and County Councils as well as both universities.

Read all about it here.

In Waitrose this morning, I encountered a dismayed City Council tree officer, who told me six newly planted trees on Hauxton Road had been chopped down overnight. What a waste of taxpayers’ money! This was County Council land, but there has been no consultation with the City, who planted the trees.

Any information on who is responsible would be gladly received.

Cambridge councillors at the Lib Dem party conference came home from Birmingham with an award for our work on improving transport from the Local Government Association Liberal Democrat Group. It is the ‘Improving Transport Award 2010′.

Although the County Council is the main transport authority, the City Council were praised for some of our innovative ideas, such as car parks charging recognizing low emissions vehicles and charging points for electric cars. The judges were particularly impressed by our toad-friendly cattle grids on the common … also good for bikes!

Credit where credit is due.

Thank you to the County Highways Department, who have filled in a dangerous hole on Hills Road in record time.

Over the weekend, an eagle-eyed resident alerted me to a nasty hole in the pavement on Hills Road near the Long Road junction. It looked like a missing manhole cover and we were concerned about feet going into it by mistake, either human or animal. I reported it to Mr Ben Cross at the County Council Highways Department, got a reply back first thing this morning and by this evening it had been fixed!

All the more impressive considering the Highways people are busy at the moment mending all the potholes that have appeared this winter. Don’t forget to let us know about any that you notice, and we will pass on the details.

Did you know that only one in four women and girls in the UK ever cycles? I was staggered by this statistic, which came out of research carried out by Sustrans last year. It resulted in a 9,000 petition to the Minister for Transport asking for safer cycle routes.

The Cambridge Cycling Campaign (of which I am a member) is working on encouraging more women and girls to take up cycling as an everyday way of getting about.

They are putting on two events:

On Wednesday 10th March they will be showing the film ‘Beauty and the Beast — why British girls don’t cycle’.

‘Ride for Joy’ is a big fashion cycling event on Saturday 20th March. That’s NOT an oxymoron. The idea is to wear your ordinary clothes, but still be as stylish as you please. We’ll be riding around the centre of town, meeting  at Lammas Land at 2 p.m. and fetching up at Parkers Piece for a speaker later. For the latest news, see the Cambridge Cycling Campaign website. b

Diana Manasseh, a pineapple grower from Ghana, was in Cambridge today telling us all about fair trade pineapple and mango farming and the tangible differences that the fair trade premium makes to the farmers and their families. It was fascinating to hear how the shopping choices we make in Cambridge affects the people who grow and harvest the crops.

Ghana is a poor country, and its challenges include a lack of basic amenities such as access to water and electricity, as well as health care and education. Fair trade offers producers a guaranteed price for their goods, and the money goes back into the community. Several of us listening were amazed at the sheer number of projects that have come about through the fair trade premium. I am probably missing some out, but for example, at Bomarts it has paid for: boreholes to provide clean drinking water, a toilet block, refurbished medical centres, a maternity wing at a clinic, school meals to encourage the children to stay at school longer (Cambridge’s newest restauranteur Jamie Oliver would surely approve!) and nursery equipment for the smaller children.

Bomart starts harvesting pineapples in March and mangos in May. Fair trade pineapples can be found on the shelves of four major supermarkets: Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons. My pineapples will taste all the sweeter now that I’ve glimpsed something of the lives of the people who grow them.

Diana’s a Fair Trade Certification Officer at Bomarts Farms and is here on a tour. It’s her first trip to the UK, and she said she was enjoying it, though it is her first experience of snow. She was speaking today at Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Trumpington Street Cambridge, at the invitation of the Cambridge Fairtrade Steering Group.

There was also an exhibition on 30 years of Traidcraft – I didn’t realize it had been around that long. When I first came across fair trade as a university student in 1980, there was only WDM tea and Campaign coffee, which you had to be . . . errr . . . committed to drink, if you know what I mean.

Nowadays the Traidcraft catalogue is a veritable cornucopia of goods, from tea and coffee (VERY nice, I start the day with two cups of their Indian Ocean) to chocolate, wine, cards and giftwrap, clothes, even holidays! And that’s just one fair trade supplier. I use www.ethicalsuperstore.com to find more sorts of product. My current problem is that although I have lots of fair trade clothes, they are nearly all summery and it’s too cold to wear them without something warmer on top. A shopping trip must be in order . . .

Diana is repeating her talk tomorrow night at King’s College, and on Thursday at Bourn Village Hall.

I and other councillors have been receiving many more calls about potholes recently, partly because of the colder weather but also because of years of inadequate maintenanfce by the County Council.

One of the things people get justifiably annoyed about is that potholes and other problems such as pavement holes sometimes get mended superficially, but not well enough, so that they need repairing again shortly afterwards.

I have just heard from an officer at Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways Department that we shall have a super-team in Queen Edith’s for a week to carry out thorough repairs to the potholes in the ward. For all those of you on Wulfstan Way, your potholes are near the top of the list! The bad news is that ‘our’ week won’t be till the middle of March, but I am promised any dangerous potholes (and they are all dangerous if you are on a bike or have a walking stick…) will be made safe as soon as possible.

In the meantime, let me know of any dangerous potholes that you encounter and we will make sure they go on the list of repairs.

Shocking figures have recently shown just how many roads in Cambridgeshire are substandard– for more details, see the Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrat post, which highlights the lack of maintenance over the years.

The snow has meant that yesterday’s (Friday’s) waste collections in Cambridge had to be cancelled. There is also some impact on car parks.

Details of the Council’s plans can be found on Cambridge City Council’s website, or by calling 01223 458282.

Friday’s blue bin and black bin collections are now planned for Monday (21st). Green bin collections start again on Wednesday.

The BBC is forecasting more snow, so please check the Council’s website for the latest news.

This Saturday is the eagerly anticipated Mill Road Winter Fair, an eclectic mixture of exciting events and chic commerce, from ale tasting to Yamuna body rolling! See the Fair’s website for details: http://www.mill-road.com/winterfair.aspx

Cambridge Fair Trade City, a coming-together of fair trade merchants and campaigners like me, has a market stall in Ditchburn Gardens and will be displaying goods from Abantu – arts and crafts from all over the world that you can purchase knowing you will be helping people while not hurting the planet, and Traidcraft. We hope to have some samples of fair trade goodies for people to try out.  Here’s a photo of our fair trade stall in Cambridge’s central market during Fair Trade Fortnight this year.

Hope to see you there!

County Council officers will be showing new plans for a central hybrid cycle lane on Hills Road Bridge this week. The design will build on the trial scheme already in place and you can view plans on Tuesday 24th and Monday 30th November:

Tue 24th: 5.00 - 7.30, College Hall, Hills Road VI Form College

Monday 30th: 5.00 - 7.30, Science Lecture Room, Hills Road VI Form College

Ruth Murphy, a director of Addenbrooke’s Hospital,  has now responded to my letter about staff smoking and leaving litter in residential streets. While they are entitled to have a cigarette in their break, leaving litter behind is not.

Ms Murphy writes that there are now smoking shelters on the edge of the hospital site, and she has undertaken to have signs put up to encourage staff not to smoke near people’s homes. The hospital is making other efforts to get people to stop smoking altogether.

Any problems, get in touch with her.

I have now received a response to my letter of 16th September to Addenbrooke’s director Stephen Graves about staff smoking and leaving litter in neighbouring streets such as Red Cross Lane and Greenlands. See previous post.

He confirms that staff do have smoking shelters on site and should not need to go off site to indulge.

Progress is slow. A month after my initial letter, he has passed the complaint on to another director, Ruth Murphy. I shall be hoping to hear from her soon! I would be interested to hear from anyone in either of these two streets as to whether you notice any improvement.

The real time information display at the bus stop near Hills Road VI Form College has been out of action for some time, meaning people have to walk down to the next bus stop to find out whether there’s a bus due.

I reported this to the County Council on the 12th September, and so did two of our Focus deliverers. A response has been a long time coming!

It transpires that there has been a power failure to the shelter, which has burnt the fuses. What alarms me is that neither the City nor County Council had staff available and able to repair it – which is the main reason for the delay.

 See my latest mail from the County Council, which promises a remedy soon.

Dear Cllr Taylor,  Apologies for the delay in getting this display up and running. Our
contractor’s engineers did inspect the site almost immediately. It was found that there
was a power failure to the shelter, which has burnt the main fuse to both the shelter and the display. Because this is not part of the display’s circuitry, our contractors were
neither able nor authorized to replace the fuse.  I have since then been in contact with
the Street Lighting team at the council, who as well is not responsible for power to
shelters, and we have sourced a certified electrician to do the job. I am expecting that
they will visit the shelter sometime next week, and let me know what the outcome is.
Hopefully this should be sorted out next week, but if there are any further delays, I will
let you know.

A car has been left on the corner of Gunhild Close for the past four weeks. One of our Focus deliverers reported it to me and the Council will now be taking action to have it removed.

If you notice any abandoned vehicles, ring the City Council on 458282.

Lib Dem councillors had a conference in Queen Edith’s last Saturday, so we took the opportunity to show our colleagues ‘the sights’. We took the City Council’s Executive Councillor for Sports and Recreation, Julie Smith, to the Nightingale Avenue Recreation Ground to show her where the all-weather games area is to be.

She noticed the poor condition of the park benches — missing and loose slats — and she has put in a complaint, asking for them to be repaired/ replaced.

The toilets at the ‘rec are another cause of contention. The ladies’ loos suffered severe criminal damage to its fixtures and fittings last month and it has taken a few weeks to put things to rights. Even the sign with the emergency phone number had been removed!

It is hoped they will be open again by this weekend.

Next Monday, the committee I chair, the Customer Services and Resources Scrutiny Committee (5.00pm, The Guildhall), will be considering a new procurement policy. Councillors will also be put on the spot as to the practical aspects of procurement and purchasing by a motion and a petition about types of food the Council buys or doesn’t buy.

First, there is to be a petition asking the Council to ban foie gras on its premises, and next there is a report on moving to Freedom Food standards for chicken and egg products – a motion first proposed by the Labour leader of the opposition, Cllr Lewis Herbert.

The procurement policy itself sets out best practice, taking in practical measures to ensure good environmental standards and manage risk. It confirms the Council’s commitment to fair trade, which I am particularly pleased about, as it builds on my own council motion leading to Cambridge being recognized as a fair trade city in 2004.

As well as the procurement motion, councillors will be reviewing equalities policies in the light of the new Single Equalities Act and setting a new direction for its door-to-door publication Cambridge Matters.

The meeting is open to the public and if you wish to speak at it or ask a question, contact the Council’s Committee Manager before the meeting, martin.whelan@cambridge.gov.uk. For a full agenda, click here: http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/public/councillors/agenda/2009/1012sr/00.pdf

One of the less glamorous aspects to life as a councillor is sorting out blocked drains! They are, however, a pain in the neck as they flood the pavements and roads, turning grass verges into bogs and cycle paths into mini-lagoons.

Two particularly bad ones on Hills Road, one outside Homerton College and the other closer Addenbrooke’s, were reported this week to the County Council and are being attended to.

The Lib Dem City Council has divided Cambridge into four areas so that local issues can be determined locally. The area meetings decide on smaller planning applications and environmental, leisure and community grants as well as other issues, including policing priorities. These meetings are open to the public.

The South Area covers Queen Edith’s, Cherry Hinton and Trumpington and usually meets from 7pm on Thursdays in Queen Edith’s.  The next meeting is this Thursday at Hills Road VI Form College and will include a presentation on the new recycling arrangements coming in this autumn.

If you can’t come along but would like me to raise an issue on your behalf, please let me know.

Here is an agenda: http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/public/councillors/agenda/2009/0924areas/00.pdf

I have recently received fresh complaints about litter and disturbance caused by Addenbrooke’s staff on the streets near the hospital.

Although staff were given a smoking area after complaints when the hospital site went smoke-free, they continue to gather in neighbouring streets to smoke.

 Residents of Greenlands and Red Cross Lane have been in touch with me to say they are getting fed up of the litter left behind – plastic cups and sandwich wrappers as well as smoking-related detritus such as cigarette ends, as well as the general disturbance of having people chatting just outside their homes.

I have asked the hospital’s director in charge of the site if he can request staff not to impose on local residents in this way.

 Update: see latest post.

The digging got underway today — loads of people of all ages from 3 upwards, and plenty of sunshine to help things along.

The garden now has its own blog:

http://rockroadlibrarygarden.blogspot.com/

I was first contacted about the land behind Rock Road Library by Lucy King, a pupil from Morley School, asking if she could turn into a proper garden. She not only sent me a hand-coloured picture of her vision of a garden but offered her labour and that of her friends too. I don’t get many letters from people of that age, so it has great to help her turn her dream into reality. 

A few more gardeners later, all from the local community, and support from both City and County Councils amongst others and I am pleased to say it’s now happening. They have relaunched the ‘Friends of Rock Road Library’ and will be running community events as well as creating a garden.

There is a mixture of schoolchildren from Lucy’s class and from Spectrum, Morley’s After-School Club, local residents and businesses.

A generous garden centre has already offered help and a landscape architect has worked with the Friends to draw up plans. You can see them on the Friends noticeboard as you enter the library.

The first digging session is on 12th September – if you’d like to join in, contact Jane Elliott — chair of the Friends’ Group and Head Gardener – on 710095 or email her at J.Elliott@ioe.ac.uk. See you there with your spade!

Cambridgeshire County Council has just announced two bits of news:

1. that the roadworks for the Guided Bus will finish on Sunday - good news even though it is six months late

2. that they will immediately start a 4-month trial of segregating cyclists and motor traffic by putting them in separate lanes on the uphill parts of the bridge, divided by a ‘rumble strip’ (white line to you and me). They are going to put in temporary kerbs and white lines on Sunday night as soon as they finish the Guided Bus work, so we will wake up on Monday morning to a new traffic layout.

It’s the second of these that takes my breath away. As a cyclist, it’s great news, as the bridge is just about the most dangerous place to cycle in Cambridge. It will make the bridge useable by less confident cyclists including children. However, it’s a shame the County didn’t give more warning before embarking on such a bold plan. They have consultation meetings and exhibitions next week (Tuesday at Hills Rd VI Form College, Thursday at St Paul’s Church) but they don’t have much time to tell people about them.

I hope the manic motorist tendency gives a fair trial to the new arrangements, but more important, I’m pleased that we will have a safer cycling environment for the 4,000 people who ride their bikes over the bridge every day.

To find out more, see http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/cambridgegateway