5
Buckden Roundabout
March 2019
From Your Councillors
FROM YOUR DISTRICT COUNCILLOR
I am pleased to say that January has been a productive month
with a range of developments which I hope will benefit Buck-
den residents in the near future.
Involving the Community is currently very important because
of a drive by Central Government to make local communities
more responsible for various issues such as Care and Public
Order. I was very glad to be invited to the ACRE Conference on
Village Halls. Rising rural crime was a big issue, as large fork-
lifts stolen in one area were frequently being used to ram raid
ATMs in another. This increasingly leads to the withdrawal of
ATMs, causing serious dislocation to residents. Innovative web
based alerts and Tweets are being adopted, shared private
security was starting, and community activities for mid teens
was seen as desirable to combat County Lines.
In my view improving facilities in Buckden is a priority and I
have been meeting Cambridge County Council, British Library
Executives and other stakeholders to develop the facilities in
the Library. If talks go well, then we may be able to get access
to the complete BBC archive of programmes, and for the Busi-
ness Community, access to the British Library Small Business
Support materials. If you get bored with this then we can
probably all watch every programme ever made by David
Attenborough!
More importantly, Huntingdon District Council’s Homepage
now has a direct link to The Brexit database which gives a lot
of useful details on travel, exporting, holidays etc. More good
reading!
Hamish Masson Councillor HDC Buckden Ward
( Hamish.Masson@Huntingdonshire.gov.uk)
FROM YOUR COUNTY COUNCILLOR
The main County Council event of recent weeks has been the
decision on next year’s council tax increase. With increasing
demands and rising costs, together with the total removal of
any financial support from central government, the ruling
group really had no alternative other than to use the maxi-
mum flexibility offered on local taxation levels i.e. a 2% rise
for adult social care and 2.99% for other services (children
and young people, highways, bus subsidies etc). Even with
that increase, £27 million pounds had to be taken out of the
budget compared with last year. Cambs CCC will have to find
yet another £41 million of savings over the next four years.
The County Council has been working to find more cost-
effective ways of delivering services and making savings. One
is to move the Council HQ from Cambridge to Alconbury
Weald. This seems to me to be quite a good idea but I would
have liked to see it linked to an overall reduction in the num-
ber of councils. We currently have more layers of local gov-
ernment (parish, district, county and combined authority)
than we can afford.
The government has allocated £6.6 million to Cambridgeshire
as additional funding for road repairs. This is welcome but, to
get it in perspective, when a complete survey of all county
roads and footpaths was done a few years ago, the figure of
£350 million was quoted as what was needed to bring the
whole network up to standard.
By the end of March, we will know if and how the UK is leav-
ing the European Union. The County Council’s Audit and Ac-
counts Committee has considered a report on the potential
local impact of Brexit. It listed 16 potential risks, of which 10
have been scored as having potentially high or very high im-
pact should they come to fruition. The highest risk issues are:
•
Workforce recruitment and retention, both within the
council and in the services we commission
•
Ensuring EU citizens are fully informed, especially
those who are vulnerable and for whom we have a
statutory responsibility
•
Community reactions, including increased community
tensions
•
Impact on council finances should there be a negative
national financial reaction
•
Interruption to supplies and services, including medi-
cines and fuel
•
Impact on travel and road infrastructure caused by
disruption to and from ports
Local issues for Buckden residents
Getting out of the village has long been a challenge and will
get worse if and when more houses are built. The need for
changes at the Mill Road end of the village is high, both in
terms of congestion and safety. I was disappointed to see in
the project proposals put forward by the Mayor of the Com-
bined Authority no mention of an improvement to the railway
crossing near The Offords. Nearly all the schemes Mayor
Palmer is proposing are in East Cambridgeshire and Fenland.
Mayor Palmer lives in Soham.
By the time you read this, I will have made my last-ditch
attempt to get the A14 planners to change the proposed lay-
out of the road you take when you have gone through Bramp-
ton on the way to Huntingdon. It is my contention, widely
supported by the people who live in the Hinchingbrooke Park
area and those who work at or attend the hospital, that the
road layout proposed by Highways England will make the
traffic jams worse than they already are.
If you wish to raise any local matters with me personally and
would welcome a face-to-face conversation, I come to the
Aragon Room in the Village Hall at 7 p.m. on the evening of
the parish council meeting, the 2
nd
Tuesday in the month.
At other times, please ring me on 07765 833 486 or write to
me at peter.downes@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
Peter Downes