LONGSTANTON, NORTHSTOWE, OVER, OAKINGTON & WESTWICK<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Council composition <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Liberal Democrats 23 Conservatives 22 Labour 9 Independents 4 Non-aligned 3 <\/p>\n\n\n\n County Council <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Council has completed its third year as a Joint Administration, which has seen a successful partnering of Liberal Democrats, Independent and Labour Groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The County Council is the statutory Local Authority for Highways, Social Care, Education, Waste and Recycling, Libraries and Leisure, Registration services (births, deaths, marriages), and Public Health. It also convenes citizenship ceremonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The County Council is a partner organization on the Cambs and Peterborough Mayoral Combined Authority, which was created in 2017. It assumed the Transport Authority remit that previously sat with the County Council. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The County Council, together with South Cambs District and Cambridge City Councils, is a partner on the Greater Cambridge Partnership. The GCP is a time-limited body with the remit of dispersing government funding for infrastructure in this high growth area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Council key service committees also cover Environment and Green Investment, and Assets and Procurement. The council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 and has developed a Cambridgeshire Net Zero 2045 action plan. The council has a Health in All Policies approach to all of its work, in an effort to address the wider determinants of health inequalities which are pronounced across the county and exist within all localities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Social care is demand-led, with expenditure on a mixture of preventive and means-tested care; this accounts for 70% of the council\u2019s net budget. Good work has been done to bolster the social care workforce, both via rolling out the Real Living Wage and supporting our providers to do so; developments of the Care Academy supporting professional training and development, and the creation of new work around \u2018care microenterprises\u2019, new small, localized care businesses that offer both new employment opportunities and also new choice in care provision for those who need it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Highways is the service perhaps most in the public eye as we all encounter it every day, the network consists of some 2,600 miles of roads and over 1,800 miles of rights of way. The well-known \u2018managed decline\u2019 of the Highway Network over many years has left the network in very poor condition and the service in a state of fire-fighting. Government provides 33 times more funding to the national highway network than it does to Local Authorities for their highway networks. Workforce is challenging too with a thin officer corps covering a massive brief; our Local Highways Officer covers 35 villages, for example. Extra funding would be welcome, but we also need the workforce to be able to spend it. This is a predicament common to local authorities and there is competition with national transport projects. Huge efforts are underway to introduce cyclical maintenance where none existed, for example on gulley emptying, but turning round a network allowed to decline so severely, with limited resources to do so, will take time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cambridgeshire\u2019s population is growing far above the national average, which puts very significant additional pressure on demand led services. This trend is set to accentuate as National Government is looking to expand the Cambridge area by a very significant degree, through a Development Company, in a scheme known as Cambridge 2040\/50 depending on the speech of the day. \u2018Cambridge\u2019 in this scheme has not been defined though it is assumed to mean South Cambs at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Water scarcity and a poor public transport network are the headline factors of concern around growth, even at the rate laid out in existing local plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Income is via a combination of government grants and council tax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n BUDGET 2024-25<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The budget seeks to bridge a potential funding gap for the coming year of \u00a323m in County Council funding for 2024\/25 as a result of inflation and other factors. This has now been closed to c.\u00a32m. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The revised proposals focus on sustaining social services, continuing to provide free school meal vouchers for eligible children during holidays, progressing the council\u2019s commitment to pay the real living wage to people providing adult social care, and prioritising highways and cycleways maintenance across the county. However, even with a proposed council tax rise of 4.99% \u2013 2% of which will be dedicated to adult social care services \u2013 the combination of demand for services, inflation and the ending of some government grants will still leave a \u00a32m gap in the 2024\/5 budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Included in the proposals for the coming year are for the council to: The proposals include an increase of council tax by 4.99%, the maximum permitted by Government before a public referendum is needed \u2013 with a total of 2% of this increase dedicated to adult social care services across the county, and \u00a317.6m of identified additional savings \u2013 from areas such as: Committees and Outside Bodies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My responsibilities are serving on: Outside Bodies member CONTACT DETAILS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the above, or any other matters. Firouz Thompson, County Councillor for Longstanton, Northstowe, Over and Oakington & Westwick Email: firouz.thompson@cambridgeshire.gov.uk <\/p>\n\n\n\n For those on social media we have highly active Facebook groups: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/2066298150052161\/ – Longstanton, Oakington and Northstowe https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/libdems3rdMay18 – Over & Willingham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LONGSTANTON, NORTHSTOWE, OVER, OAKINGTON & WESTWICK Council composition Liberal Democrats 23 Conservatives 22 Labour 9 Independents 4 Non-aligned 3 County Council The Council has completed its third year as a Joint Administration, which has seen a successful partnering of Liberal Democrats, Independent and Labour Groups. The County Council is the statutory Local Authority for Highways, Social Care, Education, Waste and Recycling, Libraries and Leisure, Registration services (births, deaths, marriages), and Public Health. It also convenes citizenship ceremonies. The County Council is a partner organization on the Cambs and Peterborough Mayoral Combined Authority, which was created in 2017. It assumed the Transport Authority remit that previously sat with the County Council. The County Council, together with South Cambs District and Cambridge City Councils, is a partner on the Greater Cambridge Partnership. The GCP is a time-limited body with the remit of dispersing government funding for infrastructure in this high growth area. The Council key service committees also cover Environment and Green Investment, and Assets and Procurement. The council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 and has developed a Cambridgeshire Net Zero 2045 action plan. The council has a Health in All Policies approach to all of its work, in an effort to address the wider determinants of health inequalities which are pronounced across the county and exist within all localities. Social care is demand-led, with expenditure on a mixture of preventive and means-tested care; this accounts for 70% of the council\u2019s net budget. Good work has been done to bolster the social care workforce, both via rolling out the Real Living Wage and supporting our providers to do so; developments of the Care Academy supporting professional training and development, and the creation of new work around \u2018care microenterprises\u2019, new small, localized care businesses that offer both new employment opportunities and also new choice in care provision for those who need it. Highways is the service perhaps most in the public eye as we all encounter it every day, the network consists of some 2,600 miles of roads and over 1,800 miles of rights of way. The well-known \u2018managed decline\u2019 of the Highway Network over many years has left the network in very poor condition and the service in a state of fire-fighting. Government provides 33 times more funding to the national highway network than it does to Local Authorities for their highway networks. Workforce is challenging too with a thin officer corps covering a massive brief; our Local Highways Officer covers 35 villages, for example. Extra funding would be welcome, but we also need the workforce to be able to spend it. This is a predicament common to local authorities and there is competition with national transport projects. Huge efforts are underway to introduce cyclical maintenance where none existed, for example on gulley emptying, but turning round a network allowed to decline so severely, with limited resources to do so, will take time. Cambridgeshire\u2019s population is growing far above the national average, which puts very significant additional pressure on demand led services. This trend is set to accentuate as National Government is looking to expand the Cambridge area by a very significant degree, through a Development Company, in a scheme known as Cambridge 2040\/50 depending on the speech of the day. \u2018Cambridge\u2019 in this scheme has not been defined though it is assumed to mean South Cambs at least. Water scarcity and a poor public transport network are the headline factors of concern around growth, even at the rate laid out in existing local plans. Income is via a combination of government grants and council tax. BUDGET 2024-25 The budget seeks to bridge a potential funding gap for the coming year of \u00a323m in County Council funding for 2024\/25 as a result of inflation and other factors. This has now been closed to c.\u00a32m. The revised proposals focus on sustaining social services, continuing to provide free school meal vouchers for eligible children during holidays, progressing the council\u2019s commitment to pay the real living wage to people providing adult social care, and prioritising highways and cycleways maintenance across the county. However, even with a proposed council tax rise of 4.99% \u2013 2% of which will be dedicated to adult social care services \u2013 the combination of demand for services, inflation and the ending of some government grants will still leave a \u00a32m gap in the 2024\/5 budget. Included in the proposals for the coming year are for the council to: – Invest \u00a357 million to sustain children\u2019s and adult social care services. – Further the Council\u2019s commitment to the Real Living Wage, which has increased to \u00a312ph outside London, to take account of the Government uplift of the legally enforceable Living Wage, being paid by adult care providers. – Prioritise \u00a33m to continue to provide holiday food vouchers for all children eligible for free school meals, despite the government support being likely to end in the next financial year. – Invest \u00a32.2m to deliver other anti-poverty initiatives \u2013 such as support to make sure that vulnerable people are claiming all the welfare benefits that they are entitled to. – Put \u00a31.3m into delivering more accessible libraries to support vulnerable communities. – Prioritise investment of \u00a323m into making highways, footpaths, and cycleways safer \u2013 on top of a recently announced government allocation of \u00a32.3m. This will be to deliver improvements which both repair and prevent potholes, deliver improved drainage schemes, and reinstate cycleway maintenance and weed clearance. – Put additional funding into schemes for people experiencing mental health issues to prevent them reaching crisis, particularly focussing on younger people. The proposals include an increase of council tax by 4.99%, the maximum permitted by Government before a public referendum is needed \u2013 with a total of 2% of this increase dedicated to adult social care services across the county, and \u00a317.6m of identified additional savings \u2013 from areas such as: – moving to LED streetlights which are set to deliver \u00a31m in energy savings each year.– \u00a31.5m across the next three years from rationalising the council\u2019s office accommodation. – more than \u00a32m from reviewing the highest cost children\u2019s placement costs, and home to school transport routes \u2013 to bring children closer to home and reduce travel time. – \u00a30.5m from driving down the amount of bad debt. – reviews of income raised by permits and parking charges are also proposed to raise just under \u00a31m. Committees and Outside Bodies My responsibilities are serving on: – Children and Young People Committee – Environment & Green Investment Committee (sub) – Communities, Social Mobility, and Inclusion Committee (sub) Outside Bodies member – Cambridgeshire Music Board – Northstowe Delivery Group – Needingworth Liaison Committee CONTACT DETAILS Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the above, or any other matters. Firouz Thompson, County Councillor for Longstanton, Northstowe, Over and Oakington & Westwick Email: firouz.thompson@cambridgeshire.gov.uk For those on social media we have highly active Facebook groups: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/2066298150052161\/ – Longstanton, Oakington and Northstowe https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/libdems3rdMay18 – Over & Willingham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/CCC.png?fit=410%2C123&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Tb23-Mn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3002,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions\/3002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
– Invest \u00a357 million to sustain children\u2019s and adult social care services.
– Further the Council\u2019s commitment to the Real Living Wage, which has increased to \u00a312ph outside London, to take account of the Government uplift of the legally enforceable Living Wage, being paid by adult care providers.
– Prioritise \u00a33m to continue to provide holiday food vouchers for all children eligible for free school meals, despite the government support being likely to end in the next financial year.
– Invest \u00a32.2m to deliver other anti-poverty initiatives \u2013 such as support to make sure that vulnerable people are claiming all the welfare benefits that they are entitled to.
– Put \u00a31.3m into delivering more accessible libraries to support vulnerable communities.
– Prioritise investment of \u00a323m into making highways, footpaths, and cycleways safer \u2013 on top of a recently announced government allocation of \u00a32.3m. This will be to deliver improvements which both repair and prevent potholes, deliver improved drainage schemes, and reinstate cycleway maintenance and weed clearance.
– Put additional funding into schemes for people experiencing mental health issues to prevent them reaching crisis, particularly focussing on younger people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– moving to LED streetlights which are set to deliver \u00a31m in energy savings each year.
– \u00a31.5m across the next three years from rationalising the council\u2019s office accommodation.
– more than \u00a32m from reviewing the highest cost children\u2019s placement costs, and home to school transport routes \u2013 to bring children closer to home and reduce travel time.
– \u00a30.5m from driving down the amount of bad debt.
– reviews of income raised by permits and parking charges are also proposed to raise just under \u00a31m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Children and Young People Committee
– Environment & Green Investment Committee (sub)
– Communities, Social Mobility, and Inclusion Committee (sub)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Cambridgeshire Music Board
– Northstowe Delivery Group
– Needingworth Liaison Committee<\/p>\n\n\n\n