Thing global. Vote local. – Cllr Dan Lentell

It’s Friday night and the results of the election for Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Commissioner are in. Darryl Preston, the former frontline officer and previous incumbent, will serve another four year term. So what? So everything. This is the single most important job in our beloved county’s crazy paving landscape of disjointed local authority. I don’t know if there’s an actual Bat Signal sitting on the Police Commissioner’s desk but, if there is, it really does matter that the office holder is not an unqualified joker. Time and again Commissioner Preston has delivered for South Cambs in general and for Over & Willingham in particular, so I’ll be popping a bottle of Smirnov Ice to celebrate his narrowest of narrow wins.

Cards on the table, I was (once upon a not so very long ago) one of those who did not think very much of the whole PCC concept. Then I started seeing what a realworld difference an inquisitive, industrious, and integrity-mined individual can make happen (and help stop from happening) in that all too overlooked role. So the low turnout on Polling Day – just 25.6% overall is disappointing. Cambridge City had the largest turnout of our council areas (37.65%); Fenland had the lowest (17.44%); while we in South Cambs were on (25.37%). Up and down the land, the 24hr Party Political People will spend the coming days pouring over the local council and PCC results with an eye to the coming UK parliamentary general election.

In the meantime, I just want to say that for all the attention and focus we as a society put on our national pantomime at Wastemonster, it’s local decision-makers who have the real power to blight or benefit us. Don’t believe me? Take a wee shufti at your council tax bill, a document getting so heavy it no longer requires a paperweight in a near or moderate breaze.

Isn’t it time to have a proper conversation about whether one English county requires quite so many separate councils? All those half empty office buildings, top brass salaries and pensions come at a price and are a drag on efficiency like a breeze block tied to a carrier pigeon. Our underfunded and underperforming local corporate media outlets are overwhelmed, simply unable to comprehensivelty report the incomprehensible cacophony.

Shouldn’t the power to determine Cambridge’s path ahead be where The People can see it and hold it to account, not hiding away at a £1,000 a head conference in Leeds? Without a shift towards a slimmed down unitary authority model – Cambridgeshire North Great Ouse and Cambridgeshire South Great Ouse District Councils perhaps – our democracy and ourselves will be continue to get poorer even as gentrification on an industrial scale tears at our social fabric and withers our body politic.

Cllr Dan Lentell