After a lovely mild autumn, it is now  feeling appropriately wintry for December!

Which calls to mind an idea first put to me last summer when the temperature was a balmy 82 degrees. It is a creative scheme to help the vulnerable elderly.

The people who came up with it are the creative folk at Cambridgeshire Community Foundation (CCF), a charity that matches grant givers to groups or individuals in need of funds.

Here’s how it works:

Most people over 60 receive a Winter Fuel Payment of between £100-300. It’s what is called a universal state benefit, so everyone eligible for a pension gets it. I know it is much appreciated by many older people, who need the extra money to heat their homes properly, yet I hear some people say they are comfortably off and can manage perfectly well without state benefits.

Here is an answer for them. If they prefer to give the money to help someone less fortunate, they can donate their Winter Fuel Payments to the CCF’s Winter Fuel Fund. The Fund will go to charitable projects for older people – for example, it might pay for an old lady to go and have lunch at a day centre one day a week, or for an outing. People can register their interest on line at http://www.cambscf.org.uk/the-winter-fuel-fund.html; or email Sam Weller at sam@cambscf.org.uk.

Hills Road Sixth Form College recently applied for planning permission to demolish their existing sports pavilion on Sedley Taylor Road and build a new one. The application was considered at the recent South Area meeting on 7th November.

Many residents of Sedley Taylor Road have concerns about parking and access to the existing sports pavilion and playing fields, and fear that the new pavilion could increase these difficulties. There has been a well supported petition, and residents met the College before the application to express their concerns. So parking and traffic were very much in councillors’ minds at the meeting, and although the application was approved, one of the conditions was that the College submit a travel plan including measures to discourage private motor vehicles and to encourage other means of transport. The travel plan has now been received. Here it is: HRSFCtravelplan

I have asked that it come back to the Area Meeting for consideration.The next meeting is on 9^th January, at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre and begins at 7.30 p.m. The travel plan is the third item on the agenda.

The Government is conducting a review of parliamentary constituency boundaries, to cut down the number of MPs and even up the number of people in each parliamentary constituency, ie the number who elect each MP. The Boundary Commission is responsible for carrying out the review and they are holding a hearing at the Gonville Hotel in Cambridge now (10th-11th November)

As readers of the Queen Edith’s Focus and this website will know (Queen Edith’s is in Cambridge!), I am disappointed that they are not taking this opportunity to restore Queen Edith’s to its rightful place as part of the Cambridge City constituency, and I have made a submission to the Boundary Commission, which I reproduce at the end of this post.

You can comment in person at the Gonville Hotel Cambridge hearing today, or on line at the Boundary Commission’s website before 5th December.

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At the South Cambridge Area meeting this week (7th November), police agreed two new priorities:

• attending the Morley and Queen Edith’s Primary Schools and Homerton Children’s Centre to crack down on illegal or dangerous driving and parking
• cycle theft in Trumpington, as there has been a big increase in the last few months, mainly in Hills Road

They will continue with these objectives from the last quarter, slightly adapted to take account of offenders moving from one area to another:

• moped misuse in Queen Edith’s and Cherry Hinton
• anti-social behaviour and drug misuse in Cherry Hinton

Thanks to Mrs Ann Winter from Queen Edith’s, who addressed the meeting about the problems experienced with bad driving and parking in Godwin Way (the road where Queen Edith’s Primary School is). The petition for yellow lines on the Godwin Way/ Close corner now has nearly 50 signatures: do sign it if you haven’t already. Thanks to Layla Vandenbergh, who has put it on line on the County Council’s website: http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/view/GodwinParking. I have paper copies to sign if anyone would like one.

The next South Area meeting on 7th November will include a discussion on police priorities. The meeting’s at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre and open to everyone. It starts at 7.30 and we anticipate the policing discussion will begin by 8 p.m. You can view an agenda  for this meeting on the City Council website, as well as the police crime statistics and reports on the last few months.

The police come to the South Area meetings once every two months to put forward priorities for the next period and hear views from the public, including suggestions for new priorities.At the last meeting, we asked them to prioritise mini-moto anti-social behaviour, and it will be interesting to see what the police have to say about that.

One priority I intend to suggest is driving behaviour near schools. I regularly receive complaints about motorists parking on corners, on yellow zigzags, or blocking the road outside schools – creating a very hazardous environment for everyone, especially children.

If you are concerned about a particular type of crime or nuisance, or have something you would like to propose as a priority, come along to the meeting if you can. It starts at 7.30 p.m. and the police priority setting is the first major item after public questions. If you can’t make it, please pass your idea to me or one of the other councillors for Queen Edith’s, Cherry Hinton or Trumpington and we can put it forward on your behalf, with your permission.

The meeting will also be discussing where to put new CAB advice hubs (see previous post). After that it will determine three planning applications:

11/0900/FUL Hills Road Sixth Form College Sports Ground, Sedley Taylor Road (a new pavilion)

11/0873/FUL 12a Drayton Close (annexe to existing residence

11/0202/FUL 31 Beaumont Road (change of use from private dwelling house in multiple occupation)

The next meeting of the South Area Committee, on 7th November, will determine a planning application for a new sports pavilion at Hills Road VI Form College. You can see details of the application here:

11/0900/FUL Hills Road Sixth Form College Sports Ground, Sedley Taylor Road

There are two other planning applications: one in Drayton Close and one in Beaumont Road. You can see a full agenda on the Cambridge City Council website.

I attended a hearing of Cambridge City Council‘s Licensing Panel, which granted a premises licence to Sainsbury’s for its new store on the Cambridge Leisure Park. The store is not trading yet, but is likely to open early next year, underneath the budget hotel — and opposite Tesco’s.

As explained in my previous post, the Leisure Park was designated a cumulative impact zone.because of high levels of booze-fuelled crime in the Hills Road/ Cherry Hinton Road area and a high number of places selling alcohol – 17 on the Leisure Park alone, plus wine shops and off-licences nearby. This means that new drinks licences are only issued if the applicant can demonstrate that their operation will not make existing alcohol-related crime worse.

Premises licence applications are not well publicised, and they go through automatically if there are no objections. When I first heard about this one, there were no objections on file, so I put in my own. I did this because first: I cannot see how a new store selling alcohol can avoid making the alcohol-related crime worse, and secondly: because I thought the proposed finish time of 11 p.m. was too late. I asked that if the committee were minded to approve the application, that the drinks sales should stop at 9 p.m., as does the Sainsbury’s in St Andrew’s Street.

There have been three other objections: one from the manager of the Essentialz shop on the Hills Road Bridge, one from the chair of the Rustat Road Residents’ Association, and one from the police. The objections performed a function, as they enhanced the dialogue between the police and the supermarket, so that by the time of the meeting yesterday, the application had been amended for the better, including an earlier closing time of 10 p.m. (for the drinks sales, not the store). There was also an undertaking to provide security guards on Friday and Saturday nights, and to have the alcohol area locked with shutters outside licence hours. There will be no strong beer or cider on sale and Sainsbury’s will operate a policy of asking anyone  looking under 25 to show ID. They will join CAMBAC, (Cambridge Businesses Against Crime).

The police and the residents’ association were satisfied with the changes and withdrew their objections, but the hearing still went ahead, as there were still two objections sustained.

I am impressed with the provisions that have been put in place and I hope they work. Sainsbury’s assured us that they have a national pricing policy and are not likely to get into a price war with Tesco’s (also on the Leisure Park) – but there are other outlets nearby and I hope they behave responsibly too.

We shall wait and see.

Residents on Godwin Way and Godwin Close are concerned about poor parking by motorists, particularly on the corner of Godwin Close. This blocks the view for motorists and pedestrians and is particularly dangerous because there is a primary school on Godwin Way, the Queen Edith Primary School, taking children as young as three.

At a resident’s request, I have prepared a petition calling on the County Council to introduce parking controls, probably yellow lines on this corner – corners should of course not be parked on according to the Highway Code.

If you would like to sign, you can download the petition here: Parking_Godwin. The survey is also on line at the Cambridgeshire County Council website:
http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/petition/1645

books

The Save Cambridgeshire  Libraries petition was presented to Tory county councillors at Shire Hall yesterday (28th September). It is the Conservative administration at the County Council that we need to persuade to keep our libraries in their current form. Professor Jane Elliott, the chair of the Friends of Rock Road Library, spoke eloquently of the need for a professional service rooted in the local community.

The 8,000+ names calling for Cambridgeshire County Council to keep libraries open with professional librarians were presented to Cambridgeshire County Council’s Cabinet at Shire Hall and the Cabinet  heard from campaigners from various Cambridge libraries. There was a strong contingent from Rock Road Library to ‘welcome’ the councillors – you may have seen us on the news. If not, you may still catch it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rpwxj.

Thank you to all the people who signed the petition, emailed friends, stood around in school playgrounds, as well as everyone still involved with the campaign.

Here is the wording of the petition, which garnered 2,500 electronic signatures and 5,500 on paper. Stupendous.

We the undersigned call upon Cambridgeshire County Council to reject proposals to close libraries or to replace the existing professional service with a reduced service run by volunteers. We believe that libraries are a vital part of the community.

The Council has now dropped its plan to set up a Trust to manage the library service but is still looking at the use of volunteers. While we know there are many people who value their libraries and are willing to spend some of their own time helping to work in the library and raise funds, there is still a need for the experience and expertise of professional librarians.

Co-location, putting public services together is an interesting idea if it can work without too much compromise. Books and bookcases however, do not move easily, so it may be more practical for other services to come to the library rather than for the library to move elsewhere.