South Cambridgeshire District Council

Histon, Impington & Orchard Park Ward

District Councillors’ Monthly Report – June 2025

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us using the details below.

Martin Cahn: Cllr.Cahn@scambs.gov.uk 07826 748407
Sunita Hansraj: Cllr.hansraj@scambs.gov.uk 07584 671322
James Rixon: Cllr.rixon@scambs.gov.uk 07815 186507

Anti-Social Behaviour Policy

This has been revised to incorporate new legislation, and we now have a dedicated team to implement it. There has been a steady increase over the past 5 years in ASB incidence – 375 last year which amounts to about 6% of our housing stock.

Q4 performance report

An increase in staff sickness coincided with a huge increase in calls. It is not helped by people being reluctant to use the call back facility and consequently hanging on for ages. We were told that people within the organisation will be trained up in order that they can stand in should we have such a crisis again. This data was collected pre the implementation of AI SAM -.SAM is answering 30% of calls, surprisingly it was not more. We have recently redone the mystery shopper exercise, and this shows that we are still performing to a very high level.

LIFT

The next report on LIFT is outstanding and we have entered the project for a couple of national awards. Chris Riches has been running 7 projects using the scheme and 246 residents have seen an increase in their income as a result. The cost to run is £100k but for every £1 spent the benefit is £36. An additional 113 people are now getting pension credits and we have topped the UK charts for new claimants and are the only council to get into double percentage figures.

Service Support Grants

These grants have become ever more critical to organisations supporting the most vulnerable and so we intend to increase the allocation to £300k from the current £167k.  These are 3-year grants, and it is proposed that 2 new streams are added – cost of living and pilot place-based projects.

Recycling disposable vapes

A ban on disposable vapes comes into force on 1 June. A reminder that these should not be put into household bins as they contain batteries and can start fires.

All shops that sell vapes are legally obliged to accept used vapes for recycling, so if you or family have vapes from personal use, or if vapes are collected as part of a litter-pick, they can be taken to the nearest suitable shop, including newsagents, supermarkets and petrol stations as well as specific vaping shops.

Disabled residents in South Cambridgeshire set to benefit from increased funding for home adaptations

Disabled residents and people with long-term health conditions can now access more support to live independently at home, thanks to increased funding.

Some residents will be eligible for up to double the funding available compared to last year to make their homes safer and more comfortable with essential adaptations like ramps, hoists, or showers.

The changes were approved by the District Council as part of an update to the adaptations and repairs policy for Cambs Home Improvement Agency. The new policy includes enhanced assistance for low-income households to improve home energy efficiency.

Key changes include:

• Doubling funding available to an individual as a top up grant or loan from £15,000 to £30,000. The maximum available under a Disabled Facility Grant is £30,000, so for those with complex needs, this will increase the amount available to meet a person’s assessed needs to a maximum of £60,000.
• Increasing the amount for repairs grants or loans to low-income homeowners from £10,000 to £15,000 enabling residents, with the support of Cambs HIA, to make their homes more energy efficient and improve any major disrepair. For homes which are assessed as failing the housing, health and safety rating system, this sum will increase to £25,000.
• Supporting those who need to self-fund adaptations to their homes in a comparable way to those eligible for the grants in recognition of the needs that people face irrespective of tenure.

The changes have been made possible with extra funding from the government, bringing the total available for home adaptations to more than £1.02 million for the coming year.

Funding to protect historic buildings

Last month (2 April), the government announced that communities in England can now apply for a share of almost £20 million to help care for historic buildings and heritage sites in their local area.  The new £4.85 million Heritage Revival Fund is currently accepting applications for projects that will help to rescue and repurpose neglected historic buildings, like theatres, department stores and former banks. It will do this by supporting community organisations, charities and social enterprises in England to take ownership of these sites for community uses.  The programme will be delivered by the Architectural Heritage Fund and will run from 1 April 2025 until 31 March 2026. The deadline for expressions of interest is 27 June. The deadline for Capital Grant applications is 29 September, for a decision in December 2025.

Expiry of postal votes

Following a change to the law as part of the Elections Act, postal votes can no longer apply indefinitely. They now expire after a period of three years.  Due to the timing of the reapplication legislation, around 15,000 South Cambridgeshire postal votes are due to expire at the end of January 2026. Our Elections Team will shortly be starting the process of contacting those residents whose postal vote will be expiring. We will explain to those voters that to keep their postal vote in place they will need to make a fresh application. We may contact affected electors via email, post or text message (or via a combination of means) to raise awareness of the changes and to ensure they have sufficient time to make a new application if they want to before next year’s elections. We also plan to include an article in South Cambs Magazine in Autumn 2025.

Affected electors who do not make a fresh application will have their postal votes removed when they expire at the end of January 2026. We appreciate your support as local members in supporting residents with this process. If you have any questions, you can email the elections team at elections@scambs.gov.uk.

Future Homes Standard announced

On 6 June the government announced the publication of the Future Homes Standard this autumn and have confirmed that solar panels will be included, leading to installation on most new build homes. Under proposed changes, new homes will also have low-carbon heating, such as heat pumps.  To deliver these aims, the proposed Future Homes Standard would see building regulations amended to explicitly promote solar, subject to practical limits with flexibility in place for new homes surrounded by trees or with lots of shade overhead.

LGR update

Two briefing sessions are being arranged by the scdc CEO with parish and town council clerks/chairs, for which invitations will be sent. The main purpose of the briefings is to provide a short update to parish/town councils and to explain the public engagement work that is planned, coordinated by all seven councils.  This will involve a public survey and a more bespoke stakeholder survey, as well as some focus groups run by an external company.  The launch date for the engagement isn’t quite finalised but it’s likely to be toward the end of next week.  The briefings will be on 17 and 24 June.  More details about the engagement will be shared as soon as everything is signed off by all the councils.

Three options announced for council reorganisation plans

Council leaders have announced they have identified three preferred options for creating new unitary councils across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

The announcement has been made in response to a national government requirement to replace the current district, county and city councils with simpler unitary councils, instead of two tiers of local government.

From April 2028, rather than dealing with separate county, city, and district authorities, residents will access all services—from road maintenance and bin collections to education, planning, social housing, social care, and support with benefits—through a unitary council.

Parish and town councils will not be affected and will continue to operate as they do now, serving your local communities.

The Government believes these changes will improve services, making them simpler and more efficient for residents and businesses, as well as supporting economic growth and delivering much needed housing.

Since these proposed changes were announced by Government in late 2024, all seven authorities have been working collaboratively to identify viable options for new unitary councils across the region.

In a joint statement, the leaders of Cambridgeshire County Council, Peterborough City Council, Cambridge City Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Huntingdonshire District Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council. have said: “As Council leaders we are working collaboratively in the best interest of residents and businesses across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The Government’s reorganisation agenda has raised some challenging issues for us all which we have been working through collectively over the last few months. We still have outstanding questions and issues which have yet to be resolved.

“However, we agree that there are currently three options that appear to be the most financially viable based on the Government’s criteria. These options are based on existing authority boundaries and are being further developed to be submitted to Government by late November. The three options each contain two new unitary councils that would in future cover the entire Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area and replace all existing local authorities:

Proposal A – A North-West/South-East Option

Unitary 1: Peterborough City Council, Huntingdonshire and Fenland District Councils – along with County Council functions.

Unitary 2: Cambridge City Council, East Cambridgeshire and South Cambridgeshire District Councils – along with County Council functions.

Proposal B – A North/South Option

Unitary 1: Peterborough City Council, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland and Huntingdonshire District Councils – along with County Council functions.

Unitary 2: Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District – along with County Council functions.

Proposal C – An East/West Option

Unitary 1: Peterborough City Council, East Cambridgeshire and Fenland District Councils – along with County Council functions.

Unitary 2: Cambridge City Council, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire District Councils- along with County Council functions.

“We recognise each option has different strengths and different implications for services, our local communities, and businesses. We are taking an evidence-based approach, inevitably the different needs and local identities of our areas will have a significant impact on the preference of our own councils, and we must respect that. We encourage residents, our partner agencies and businesses to feed into this process by sharing what matters most to them through an engagement exercise being launched next week.

“We also want to take this opportunity to reassure residents that services will not be affected, and to praise the collective local government workforce across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for their continued efforts on behalf of our communities during this period of change. We appreciate that reorganisation may create some uncertainty for them which we will work with Government to do our best to mitigate