March 2019

Buckden Roundabout

March 2019

From Your Councillors

FROM YOUR DISTRICT COUNCILLOR

I am pleased to say that January has been a productive month

with a range of developments which I hope will benefit Buck-

den residents in the near future.

Involving the Community is currently very important because

of a drive by Central Government to make local communities

more responsible for various issues such as Care and Public

Order. I was very glad to be invited to the ACRE Conference on

Village Halls. Rising rural crime was a big issue, as large fork-

lifts stolen in one area were frequently being used to ram raid

ATMs in another. This increasingly leads to the withdrawal of

ATMs, causing serious dislocation to residents. Innovative web

based alerts and Tweets are being adopted, shared private

security was starting, and community activities for mid teens

was seen as desirable to combat County Lines.

In my view improving facilities in Buckden is a priority and I

have been meeting Cambridge County Council, British Library

Executives and other stakeholders to develop the facilities in

the Library. If talks go well, then we may be able to get access

to the complete BBC archive of programmes, and for the Busi-

ness Community, access to the British Library Small Business

Support materials. If you get bored with this then we can

probably all watch every programme ever made by David

Attenborough!

More importantly, Huntingdon District Council’s Homepage

now has a direct link to The Brexit database which gives a lot

of useful details on travel, exporting, holidays etc. More good

reading!

Hamish Masson Councillor HDC Buckden Ward

( Hamish.Masson@Huntingdonshire.gov.uk)

FROM YOUR COUNTY COUNCILLOR

The main County Council event of recent weeks has been the

decision on next year’s council tax increase. With increasing

demands and rising costs, together with the total removal of

any financial support from central government, the ruling

group really had no alternative other than to use the maxi-

mum flexibility offered on local taxation levels i.e. a 2% rise

for adult social care and 2.99% for other services (children

and young people, highways, bus subsidies etc). Even with

that increase, £27 million pounds had to be taken out of the

budget compared with last year. Cambs CCC will have to find

yet another £41 million of savings over the next four years.

The County Council has been working to find more cost-

effective ways of delivering services and making savings. One

is to move the Council HQ from Cambridge to Alconbury

Weald. This seems to me to be quite a good idea but I would

have liked to see it linked to an overall reduction in the num-

ber of councils. We currently have more layers of local gov-

ernment (parish, district, county and combined authority)

than we can afford.

The government has allocated £6.6 million to Cambridgeshire

as additional funding for road repairs. This is welcome but, to

get it in perspective, when a complete survey of all county

roads and footpaths was done a few years ago, the figure of

£350 million was quoted as what was needed to bring the

whole network up to standard.

By the end of March, we will know if and how the UK is leav-

ing the European Union. The County Council’s Audit and Ac-

counts Committee has considered a report on the potential

local impact of Brexit. It listed 16 potential risks, of which 10

have been scored as having potentially high or very high im-

pact should they come to fruition. The highest risk issues are:

•

Workforce recruitment and retention, both within the

council and in the services we commission

•

Ensuring EU citizens are fully informed, especially

those who are vulnerable and for whom we have a

statutory responsibility

•

Community reactions, including increased community

tensions

•

Impact on council finances should there be a negative

national financial reaction

•

Interruption to supplies and services, including medi-

cines and fuel

•

Impact on travel and road infrastructure caused by

disruption to and from ports

Local issues for Buckden residents

Getting out of the village has long been a challenge and will

get worse if and when more houses are built. The need for

changes at the Mill Road end of the village is high, both in

terms of congestion and safety. I was disappointed to see in

the project proposals put forward by the Mayor of the Com-

bined Authority no mention of an improvement to the railway

crossing near The Offords. Nearly all the schemes Mayor

Palmer is proposing are in East Cambridgeshire and Fenland.

Mayor Palmer lives in Soham.

By the time you read this, I will have made my last-ditch

attempt to get the A14 planners to change the proposed lay-

out of the road you take when you have gone through Bramp-

ton on the way to Huntingdon. It is my contention, widely

supported by the people who live in the Hinchingbrooke Park

area and those who work at or attend the hospital, that the

road layout proposed by Highways England will make the

traffic jams worse than they already are.

If you wish to raise any local matters with me personally and

would welcome a face-to-face conversation, I come to the

Aragon Room in the Village Hall at 7 p.m. on the evening of

the parish council meeting, the 2

Tuesday in the month.

At other times, please ring me on 07765 833 486 or write to

me at peter.downes@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

Peter Downes