Cambridgeshire County Council; greener, fairer, caring.

County Council

The composition of the County Council (61 members) is now

Conservatives 22                                        Liberal Democrats 23

Labour 9                                                      Independent 3

St Neots Independent  1                           Non-aligned 3              

This has changed significantly since 2023 Conservatives lost 5 members.

The Joint Administration of Lib Dem, Labour and Independent and St Neots Independent councillors continues to run the council. The next County election is due in May 2025.

The County Council responsibilities are managed across these committees:

Responsibility	Committee
Highways	Highways and Transport
Education	Children and Young People (and Corporate Parenting Sub-Committee)
Social Care Libraries Registration of births deaths and marriages Trading Standards	Adults and Health Communities, Social Mobility and Inclusion ditto ditto
Strategic Planning for Minerals and Waste (disposal)	Planning Environment and Green Investment
(Managing the County Estate, land and buildings)	Environment and Green Investment Assets and Procurement
(Ensuring we use taxpayers money wisely)	Strategy, Resources and Performance

I am chair of the Assets and Procurement committee, I also sit on the Communities, Social Mobility and Inclusion committee, and Environment and Green Investment Committee.  I am the council’s representative on the RECAP board, a partnership between the local authorities with responsibility for waste in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough region. I also sit on the Fire Authority.

Finances

That the Council did not go bankrupt is unquestionably the largest achievement at the County Council this year and it was a challenge.  Councils across the country are issuing section 114 notices to declare bankruptcy.  When a council goes bankrupt it means brutal slashing of services and a fire sale of assets, we have avoided that in Cambridgeshire, we should avoid it next year but it gets harder each year and it means certain areas are consistently underfunded.

A report from the Council’s Chief Executive Stephen Moir and Executive Director of Finance and Resources Michael Hudson says:

“In 2023-24, pressures on our budget have arisen principally due to several very high-cost children’s social care placements and a delay in receiving income from a newly constructed solar farm (which requires connection to the electricity grid). In addition, we are seeing that demand for bed-based care for older people is also rising, following a period of reduction in demand and then stability stretching back for some time, to the beginning of the pandemic.“

The report also pointed to wider national and international issues which are having an impact on the council’s pressures—such as interest rates which the Bank of England has said are likely to remain above 5% until 2026. This will affect all goods and services the council buys, the cost of borrowing, and pay award costs for council workers as well as for a large externally commissioned workforce which includes staff working in residential care for vulnerable adults and children.

County Council Budget for 2024/25 – a summary

Income

(In black and white, Council Tax = 34%, the other segments follow clockwise)

This shows how the budget will be spent

(In black and white, Services for vulnerable adults = 32%, the other segments follow clockwise)

The budget includes (these amounts cross-cut the headings above):

• Invest £57 million to sustain children’s and adult social care services.

• Real Living Wage, which has increased to £12ph outside London, to take account of the Government uplift of the legally enforceable Living Wage, being paid by adult care providers.

• Prioritise £3m to continue to provide holiday food vouchers for all children eligible for free school meals, despite the government support being likely to end in the next financial year.

• Invest £2.2m to deliver other anti-poverty initiatives – such as support to make sure that vulnerable people are claiming all the welfare benefits that they are entitled to.

• Put £1.3m into delivering more accessible libraries to support vulnerable communities.

• Prioritise investment of £23m into making highways, footpaths, and cycleways safer – on top of a recently announced government allocation of £2.3m. This will be to deliver improvements which both repair and prevent potholes, deliver improved drainage schemes, and reinstate cycleway maintenance and weed clearance.

• Put additional funding into schemes for people experiencing mental health issues to prevent them reaching crisis, particularly focussing on younger people.

• The proposals include an increase of council tax by 4.99%, the maximum permitted by Government before a public referendum is needed – with a total of 2% of this increase dedicated to adult social care services across the county, and £17.6m of identified additional savings – from areas such as:

• moving to LED streetlights which are set to deliver £1m in energy savings each year.

• £1.5m across the next three years from rationalising the council’s office accommodation.

• Balanced budget for 2024/25 through a mix of savings, use of one-off reserves, and the generation of additional income including a council tax rise for the coming year to 4.99% comprising 2.99% Council Tax and 2% Adults social care.

• This would see band D properties in the county paying an additional £76 per year, although more than half (64%) of county lives in homes rated band C or below and would see rises of between £50 and £70 per year.

Adult Social Care – is the most costly item in the County Council’s budget.  With an aging population costs are only going to increase.  This has lead to extremely careful cross party work via the committee system with significant debate and compromise as to how to move forward.

Population growth	Cambridgeshire	National
2011-2021	9.3%	6.3%
Growth forecast 2021-2031	14.3%	6.9%
Over 65s Population
2011-2021	26.3%	19.6%
Over 65s Growth forecast 2021-2031	26.6%	18.1%
Adult social care workforce
Vacancy rates	10.8%	10.7%
Turnover rates	38%	29%

Strategic work to respond to this includes

Care Academy, launched January 2024, this is a care professional website aimed at training, development and benefits for social care professionals. It allows employers to track and monitor professional development of staff, whilst providing portable training passports for continuous career development. It promotes continuous learning. A better trained workforce will improve the care given to adults that the Council is supporting.  It is a cross county initiative working with Peterborough, Herts and Nottinghamshire.

The Council’s ‘Care Together’ initiative is beginning to take shape; localizing care and support opportunities for older people, improving the homecare offer available locally, improving older people’s early intervention and prevention services to help delay need for long term health and social care, facilitation a much closer working with GP services/primary care.  There are also befriending services and day opportunities.

There are 29 new care micro-enterprises, delivering 900 additional care hours per week in rural villages and towns – introducing different type of providers into the homecare market to increase capacity and choice for all.  These provide 1) new choice in care and 2) opportunities for setting up a small business, whether or not you have a background in care: Help at Home: Care Micro Enterprises – Cambridgeshire County Council

There has been investment in the local Market in response to the cost-of-living crisis: Supporting the market in dealing with inflationary costs. Supporting the market to provide the Real Living Wage with 87% of providers now paying their staff the RLW and the RLW requirement is being included in re-tenders.

This has delivered a positive impact on market capacity: Homecare waiting times are the shortest ever, learning disability waiting lists have reduced by half.

Drug and alcohol treatment services: additional national grant funding has delivered significant improvement in treatment outcomes, exceeding national benchmarks, strengthened the workforce and developed stronger partnership links for improving overall care.

Behaviour change services, public health commissions a number of behaviour change services. Its weight management services supports efforts to address obesity.  There is significant demand for these services. 54% of people using tier 2 weight management services achieve desired weight loss.

Children and Young People  Children’s Services, with staff previously shared across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have been teased apart into two separate services.   We have many new officers for Cambridgeshire, who are bringing energy and ideas to the service.

The County Councils Network (CCN) says that with increasing demand for care services, especially for vulnerable children, costs are outstripping resources. Nationally, £319 million of the projected £639 million overspend by county councils this year comes from children’s services. One in ten ‘well-managed’ councils were unsure if they would be able to balance their 2023/24 budget (a legal requirement). This figure is expected to rise to four in ten for 2024/25. The national overall budget deficit is expected to reach £4 billion up to 2026, even though councils are planning over £2billion of savings and cuts in order to avoid Section 114 notices being issued (the local government equivalent of bankruptcy).

Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) The cost of provision for children with SEND has escalated and was expected to grow to over £90 M by 2025/26. However the government has awarded Cambridgeshire £49M, under the ‘safety valve’ process, which will be used to create 463 new special school places, with a further £11.3M in capital funding to support new SEND provision on mainstream school sites. Cambridgeshire has historically received less funding per child for education than other areas, whilst having a high proportion of SEND.

Highways and Transport  An additional £23m has been prioritised for Highways spending with the same allocated for the next financial year and a Government pot hole contribution of an additional £2m.  It is worth noting the £2m is less than 4% of the council’s budget for highways spending so whilst welcome will certainly not fix all the pot holes.

The first draft of how this additional money should be spent came to Highways committee in March but was rejected by Cllrs.  This money is important and precious. The state of our highways is extremely poor but it is far far better to wait and get the allocation of money right than rush to spend it and make bad decisions.  Whilst this may not be quite the news residents of Cambridgeshire want to hear I think on balance they would prefer the council to make the right decisions than rush and make the wrong decisions.  Getting this right is a top priority.

Cambourne Busway – council voted to progress this in October 2023 so the project moves to the Department of Transport. 

A14 Upgrade tree planting.   After significant effort and regular meetings between myself, Northstowe and Girton councillors and National Highways we have finally seen the trees which failed to establish along theA14 replaced with new specimens and a commitment to restart the 5 year tree management programme to ensure trees do establish.

20mph zone – Histon and Impington and Orchard Park won funding for these schemes from the Combined Authority.  This is money that could not have been spent on maintenance and was ringfenced for transport.  

Civil parking enforcement – in coordination with the District Council and Greater Cambridge Partnerhip civil parking enforcement (parking tickets) has commenced in South Cambridgeshire. This has been particularly effective in Orchard Park which can struggle with pavement parking. In Histon and Impington there has been a small amount of quiet work resolving issues with traffic regulation orders which are now out of date but have not been rescinded and unnecessary signage.

Busway – The Health and Safety Executive have required that parts of the ‘southern’ busway between Addenbrookes and Cambridge Train Station must be retrofitted with fencing once that work is concluded buses will return to the southern busway, improving journey times for busway buses.

Flooded busway, an exceptionally wet winter has lead to extensive flooding on the northern busway maintenance track/ cycle way particularly in the Fen Drayton lakes area.  The Greater Cambridge Partnership leads work on whether this situation could be resolved.

Ring fort road path which will connect the nature reserve area of Orchard Park behind the skate park up to the A14 footpath by the roundabout slowly moves forward. I managed to get National Highways to sign off the permissions.  L&Q estates the new iteration of Orchard Park’s urban planners have been dragging their feet but hopefully work will start this year.

Franklin Gardens entrance junction the B1049/ Cambridge Road south of the A14 roundabout.  This is extremely frustrating it is controversial there are obvious snags with the design and I cannot get in touch with the developers however hard I try. There are significant issues with the planning conditions attached to this junction in 2013.

Other business

Internet Connectivity The council has won grant funding of 5.4m to increase connectivity across the county including ensuring the hardest to connect properties are connected to the internet and increasing connectivity in public spaces.

Staff morale and bullying – changing the culture of the council officers is critical to improving council performance. A lot of work has gone into this and the culture is changing as was evidenced in the first Council Staff awards this February.  That said there is a long way still to go.  

Making better use of Council buildings. Council services are the frontline of the council but there is a whole lot of internal infrastructure including council offices which allows the organisation to function.  These spaces have a significant cost and a value.  For a long time they have been underfunded and county buildings have been allowed to decline.  Post covid and after the relocation of the council headquarters to Alconbury from Cambridge is the right time to review the buildings the council operates from with a view to reduce overall office space and reinvest some of that money in improving the remaining office space with all council buildings to become net zero by 2030.

Fire Authority There are two overriding issues for the fire service; money and how difficult it is to recruit on call firefighters.   On call firefighters have to commit to stay within 5 minutes of the fire station for 80 hours a week which is not something I could commit to.   It is important that we are aware of this as it is an ongoing challenge.  Would our own workplaces be supportive of employing on call firefighters even though it can lead to an amount of disruption?

Histon, Impington & Orchard Park there has been much work across the division but it is worth mentioning a few specific grant funding projects. A Youth worker started in Orchard Park, CamTrust in Impington won funding for a member of staff to support their clients (adults with learning disabilities) to do work experience, this has lead the council to review whether this funding could become more permanent and Orchard Park Primary school recently won funding to turn an unused classroom into a community room.