Cambridge City Council Budget Consultation

I need your help to fight some damaging proposals from our Labour city council. Of particular concern are:

• Cutbacks to the network of public safety CCTV cameras: these give people a sense of freedom in streets and open spaces by helping them feel safe, in an age when police and council patrols are thin on the ground;
• Above-inflation price hikes for swimming and playing sport: introducing obstacles to taking part in active recreation, quite contrary to the overriding need to increase public health by expanding participation, which would also increase council income
• Further reductions in public toilet provision: one of the bedrock services people rely on a local council to provide in a civilised city, which Labour have already drastically cutback here.

Surely this isn’t the type of city we want to be? Hardly what you would expect from a progressive council!

These ideas sit on a longer list of measures that the council wants your view about. A number are poorly defined and quantified and most are simplistically presented without discussion of consequences.

Yet it seems like they are all being actively sold to us, as if by the Conservatives themselves. Labour have even said these ideas might help to make it a ‘better council’.

No-one in Cambridge can fail to be aware that the council is spending beyond its means because it has been telling us so for years – without doing much about it.

It’s now clear that the new Labour government, despite its promises to end austerity, is not going to bail Cambridge out. So Labour locally are scuttling to act – with alarming lack of judgement, threatening some of our core services.

They don’t need to take all the measures on their list. Yet they rejected our call to drop their tone-deaf ideas for CCTV, sport & exercise and public loos: so it will take your help to consign them to the bin. We are worried that Labour will implement them if they get encouragement.

So please use your voice in the council’s current consultation survey. We hope you will agree to say NO to the three themes we have highlighted*, but you will find other measures to give your view on too.

The survey is here: