{"id":4815,"date":"2025-07-10T08:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T08:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/?p=4815"},"modified":"2025-07-11T08:21:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T08:21:29","slug":"south-cambs-district-councillor-scdc-july-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/south-cambs-district-councillor-scdc-july-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"South Cambs District Councillor (SCDC) Report July 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bill Handley<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

District Councillor for Over and Willingham<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phone: 01954 200287 (leave a message). Email: cllr.handley@scambs.gov.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expiry of postal votes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a change to the law as part of the Elections Act, postal votes now expire after a period of three years.\u00a0Due to the timing of the re-application legislation, around 15,000 postal votes in South Cambs are due to expire at the end of January 2026. The SCDC Elections Team has just started the process of contacting affected residents to explain that they will need to make a fresh application via email, post or text message (or a combination). This is to ensure voters have sufficient time to make a new application before next year\u2019s elections. An article will also appear in the autumn edition of the South Cambs Magazine. Anything the Parish Council can do to raise awareness will be appreciated. Please put any questions to the elections team on elections@scambs.gov.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plaudits for SCDC\u2019s Contact Centre:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mystery shopper exercise at SCDC\u2019s Customer Contact Centre was recently carried out by an independent team of researchers through an external provider Insight6. The exercise involved 400 undisclosed calls made at various times during the Council\u2019s busiest time of year (during the release of Council Tax bills). The calls tested the Contact Centre\u2019s responsiveness, professionalism and knowledge across a wide range of services. The results showed that 98% of the Council\u2019s advisors answered enquiries to a high standard with an average customer satisfaction score of 81% across all service areas compared to a benchmark score of 68% amongst other Councils. An explanation of the mystery shopper process and more details of the findings can be found here: https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/vvyk5kfb<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, SCDC is now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure that telephone callers are efficiently routed either to the most appropriate advisor or to provide an immediate answer if the caller prefers. This helps to free-up time for call handlers to deal with more complicated inquiries where knowledge and experience (and the human touch) is important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developing AI to improve efficiency during the planning consultation process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the most recent Local Plan consultation, the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service (GCSP) received over 9,500 responses. These submissions ranged from professionally prepared documents by commercial organisations to handwritten notes from residents, each of which is valuable and contributes to shaping our community’s future. To enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of processing these submissions, the GCSP secured funding from central government to set up a partnership with the University of Liverpool with the aim of developing a cutting-edge AI tool, known as a Large Language Model (LLM) which is specifically designed to process and summarise the thousands of comments received during planning consultations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bespoke \u2018training\u2019 of the AI model ensured that the tool is finely tuned to both planning policy and the unique context of the Greater Cambridge area and involved the consumption of over 100,000 submissions received by GCSP between 2012 and 2024, covering 164 draft planning documents. Earlier this year, the AI tool was tested on 3 live public consultations, generating summaries of each submission, which were then compared to those manually created by planning officers. The results showed no significant differences in quality, with the AI tool providing accurate and comprehensive summaries and demonstrating remarkable efficiency, summarising each submission in just 16 minutes compared to the 18.5 hours required by the human planners. This significant time saving exceeded initial expectations and highlights the potential for AI to streamline the planning process. It is important to note that planners will continue to read each individual submission, and the AI tool will serve as an administrative support, not a decision-maker. Planners will retain the responsibility for making informed decisions based on the comprehensive review of all submissions. You can read more about this work here: https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/2sz8a3c6<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local Government Review – consultation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Local Government Review (LGR) continues apace. They plan is to replace District, County, and City Councils with single-tier councils by April 2028. This change means residents will access all services through a unitary council, rather than separate County and District Councils. The government believes these changes will streamline services, support economic growth, and facilitate housing development. The current advice is that parish and town councils will not be directly affected by the changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government asked the existing councils for their views on how best to configure the new unitary councils and to prepare business-cases and three proposals were shared recently. Council leaders are now asking residents, businesses, and local stakeholders to shape the final business cases, which are to be submitted to government in November for ministers to make the final decision on the new structures. The three proposals are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n