July 2020

5 Buckden Roundabout July 2020 District & County Councillors From your County Councillor As the Covid - 19 lockdown eases slightly, our minds begin to turn to what our communities may be like in the future. We have learned a great deal over recent months about ourselves and our priorities, about others and their concerns. What has been most heartening is the increase in community goodwill and the desire to help neighbours, especially the most vulnerable. The challenge as things get ‘ back to normal ’ will be to capture and channel that sense of social responsibility. I think different communities will do that in different ways and it will be interesting for me, as a County councillor who has the privilege of observing five different localities quite closely, to see how that is tackled. For Cambridgeshire County Council and indeed all councils across the country, the next few years are going to be very difficult indeed. Some councils are already forecasting that they may be bankrupt within a few months. As councils pro- vide some absolutely essential services to those in greatest need, nobody really knows how this is going to work out. The government ’ s Covid - 19 support funding has reduced the funding gap but not closed it. Councils vary in size of course but estimates show that councils may be short by between £20 and £30 million each. At the beginning of May, Robert Jenrick, Minister for Local Government , warned that councils should not ‘ labour under a false impression that what they are doing will be guaranteed funding by central government ’. In addition to carrying forward debts, councils face a future drop in collection fund income through lower business rate income. Extra costs arising from the Covid crisis are expected to continue for some time so, in essence, it may take years to get back to normal. Assuming there will be some economic recovery, depending on its speed, the financial experts forecast that there could be an ongoing cash shortfall in council coffers for the next five 5 years or more. Why, you might be asking, am I telling you this bad news? It is because we cannot expect council services to do what we have come to expect of them. We have got used to a pattern of ser- vice and already we complain – why aren ’ t they filling the pot - holes, cutting the verges, re - marking the faded lines, widening the footpaths and so on? Who will look after the frail elderly, the children from broken homes, the homeless and hungry? So I come back to where I started. I forecast that there will have to be much more local community activity, local financial input, local social responsibility. I have no blueprint for how that will work in practice but it going to a huge challenge for us all. Peter Downes From your District Councillor District Councillors Annual Report Overview Funding and the lack of it has been the central focus of the political year. In the early part of the year the focus was on reforming local government and improving services by ensur- ing that all the various councils, agencies, third sector groups etc worked in alignment. This process was called “ Transformation ” and at regional and sub - regional level it has had some success. The impact at local level has so far been less, but there are some very useful Care and Vulnerable initia- tives from the County Council. Huntingdon District Council It is now about six months since Covid - 19 first emerged abroad and dominated everything. HDC is a very proactive and well managed Council. It is one of the few District Councils facing Covid to maintain a full range of waste services and to manage its daily responsibilities on a staff homeworking basis, to 76 percent of normal capacity. This is because it initiated software developments in the last two years to give it that capacity, called “ Council Anywhere ” which allows remote teams and remote locations to operate effec- tively. Huntingdonshire is a big area with districts as far apart as Stilton and St Neots and customer service levels have been improved in all the Wards. Huntingdon has also invested in business and housing proper- ties to give it a rental stream to counter the ever - reducing gov- ernment funding, and while under financial pressure, it is not in the severe difficulty of many Councils who have spent re- serves to find themselves near bankruptcy. Important for Buck- den, the Parish Precept continues to be paid in full by HDC, unlike many other District Councils who can and have invoked a government option to reduce payments to Parish Councils. Other examples of the HDC response to Covid include checking 6,000 vulnerable households, supporting and helping the 3 rd Sector Network, managing Grant payments to local businesses of £27m, redeploying One Leisure staff to help Pharmacy deliv- ery and getting the Homeless off the streets and into accom- modation. Safer Towns and Open For Business - For our Businesses and Community HDC is launching a programme to support the re - opening of small to medium size businesses in town high streets and en- courage our community to shop locally again, safely. £157,000 in grant funding from the European Regional Devel- opment Fund (ERDF) has been obtained by HDC and will pro- vide business focussed measures: • Support to develop an action plan • Communications and public information for re - opening • Business facing awareness raising activities to manage re - opening safely, including visiting information officers. • Working with each town to ensure local information of shops open, when and how you can order, click and collect or pay contactless are promoted. This infor- mation will be collated on the HDC hub. • Temporary public realm changes, and routing for one - way access etc. (Continued on page 6)