November 2018

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5 Buckden Roundabout
November 2018
FROM YOUR DISTRICT COUNCILLOR
After the pause for the summer, the political calendar at HDC is now beginning, with meetings of the Corporate Governance
Committee on 10 October and full Council on the 17th. There is a lot of pessimism coming from the Lib Dems about money, chil-
dren in care, social housing, which are all pressing issues, but on the back of Northampton’s financial collapse, there are also
very serious attempts by Government to review and reform Local Government funding. HDC is well run by its Conservative Ad-
ministration and excellent HDC Officers, so at a local level, we are better placed than many areas, and the reform process for
funding is gaining momentum.
The Buckden Neighbourhood Plan is being formally launched with the questionnaire which should have come out in October.
Please let me know if you did not see it or if you need a hard copy. I have been exploring some of the options that are open to
the village for developing our sports and child play provision. I have been visiting villages in other areas with more developed or
larger facilities, than Buckden’s and hearing about how they have raised the funding. Burwell Parish Council managed to get
over £650,000 from the Football Association, mainly because it had over 36 active teams in the area. Others in South Cambs
have used some form of local crowd funding to set up small and focussed facilities for netball and mini-skateboard parks. A pop-
ular development is a Trim Track, an all weather 3 metre track around a football pitch which can be used for netball training,
winter cycling, running and skateboarding. It is expensive, but it provides a lot of facilities for the 13-19 age groups. Simple
things like clearing scrub can open up areas for all sorts of activities. Spin cycle sites with large screens are also being evaluated -
- we are lucky to have these at our One Leisure sites, but maybe local versions would be popular here?
All good reasons to make your voice heard and make your ideas known, and if there is secret group of white-water canoe enthu-
siasts in Buckden, please come forward and let us know, new lakes are being created around us as we speak, and it is relatively
easy to divert levels!
Do have a think about what you and your family want and need, even if it is white water canoeing, and let’s get it into the plan-
ning process!
Hamish Masson (Cllr) Buckden Ward, Huntingdonshire District Council
Mob 07876 035941, hamish.masson@huntingdonshire.gov.uk
From Your Councillors
FROM YOUR COUNTY COUNCILLOR
Those of us who were watching reports of the recent Conservative Party Conference were no doubt relieved to hear Mrs May
announce ‘the end of austerity’. One of the effects of the austerity programme of the last few years has been to reduce the
grants from central government to local government to enable it to provide services. This continues to be the case for the cur-
rent year and, as far as we know, for next year for which we are now planning.
These monthly articles have to be submitted in good time for the magazine to be printed and distributed and so, by the time
you read this, the Budget statement will have been made and we will know more clearly what is in store. We live in such a fast-
moving situation that predictions, whether of gloom or joy, are almost bound to be wrong.
You will not be surprised to know that my preference is for the protection of services to those in greatest need, particularly the
elderly and the very young, even if that means paying a bit more in tax, both local and national. We shall see.
Some better news, in my opinion, was the statement by Ofsted, the organisation for inspecting schools, that they intend to pay
less attention to performance data and place greater emphasis on what pupils are taught and how they are taught. This is a
development I warmly welcome. I have been saddened to see how, over recent years (specifically since Mr. Gove was Secretary
of State for Education), teachers and Heads have got bogged down in recording and analysing data, sometimes in minute detail
which was not statistically valid. This has greatly increased their workload with little benefit to pupils. Pupils learn best when
they enjoy school and teachers can make the lessons interesting and varied. I very much hope this will be the trend over the
coming years.
I know that housing developments are very much on the minds of Buckden residents. A recent Cambridgeshire and Peterbor-
ough Independent Economic Review, produced for the Combined Authority Mayor, makes it quite clear that lots more houses
are needed in this area. So we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that developments are going to happen. What we must be
vigilant about is that they are well supported in terms of roads, cycle-paths, school places, medical facilities and local amenities.
We should put pressure on our District Council to insist that new houses are built to the highest environmental standards so as
to slow down the potentially disastrous acceleration of climate change.
Peter Downes, October 13th , 2018