Image acknowledgement to Cambridge City Council

Just to provide some local commentary on yesterday’s vote at the County Council to submit Option A to government . Governments have said each council in an area can submit one option to government and it should preferably be made up from building blocks of district council areas.

Councils can submit an option which breaks district boundaries but government have made it clear that they will prioritise options which follow district boundaries. Consequently if multiple submissions are made any submission which follows district boundaries will be prioritised. Advice was sought on this matter from the department of local government MCHLG.

South Cambs District Council and Cambridge City council have made it clear from the start that they would be submitting option B Cambridge city & South Cambs as one area, Peterborough, fenland, East Cambs and Hunts as the other area. Once this plan was confirmed any subsequent option would have to consist of district council areas to be considered against option B and not immediately discounted as not following the rules.

Agreement was reached across councils that the county council would work on option A and Huntingdonshire district council option C. Then on the day Hunts District Council were due to start consulting on option C they announced they were also consulting on a just Huntingdonshire district council and everywhere else in a separate unitary authority option.

The Peterborough Mps then suggested a butterfly arrangement where Peterborough took some of fenland and some of Huntingdonshire district council area. This is being pushed by the Labour MPs and likely to be submitted by Peterborough city council. Labour and without getting too political but this is a political post are arguing that it’s OK to break district council boundaries because the rules say you can. The rules do say that but they are clear that you go down the ranking if you do that and other submissions which don’t break the rules will be prioritised. Cambridge city and South Cambs are likely to both vote to submit option B.

Another rule is that unitaries of 500,000 are ideal furthermore the financial modelling basically suggests that either East Cambs or Hunts area need to partner up with fenland and Peterborough. This process is far far harder at the county council than at South Cambs district council or in the city. Councillors from every part of Cambridgeshire sit at the county council, emotions were high and it was a really difficult day. We voted to submit option A to give govenment choice as part of a range of options and not per se as the best option as not all those who voted for this option felt it was the best option. There is a lot to recommend it, it feels obvious that Bottisham for example is closely tied to Cambridge city, but the same case can be made for St Ives both in different district council areas. We voted to submit this option on the understanding that government who will make the final decision will have a range of options to choose from submitted from our area.

To my mind this is a bad job if you are going to break up Cambridgeshire you should do it once and do it right, there would be a mighty argument in the middle but you should split by areas that are Cambridge facing and areas that are Peterborough facing. That was not however what government wanted to do they wanted a fast decision made for the lowest cost.