The bimonthly South Area Committee meeting of Cambridge city councillors comes to Hills Road on Monday 2nd February, at 7pm, when it meets at St Johns Church, between Blinco Grove and Cavendish Avenue. The meeting is open to the public, and there is a public speaking slot too, so if you have any issues which you wish to draw to the attention of councillors (including our county councillors), this is the place to do it. If you just want to keep up to date with the decisions councillors are making locally, this is the place to come and listen.
One subject which may feature in the public slot is the new Hills Road cycleway, which has been causing disquiet amongst a few residents. Some new comments on this blog are an example of the issues.
The public “open forum” will be followed by three items about the area. Under “Policing and Safer Neighbourhoods”, this latest report on crime in the area will be discussed; and there will be major items about the 20mph speed limit project and how developer contributions to the area might be spent. All of these will have an impact on most residents, and it’s really important that we show councillors how much we care about the issues by actually turning up to the meeting. Too often these things are discussed with little public input.
Full details on the meeting are here at the council website. Please come along: if you’ve never been before, why not make this the first time? Don’t forget, if you don’t have your say now, there’s no point in complaining afterwards.
Thank you for advising that this meeting was to be held. I attended what turned out to be a very poorly organised event that generated much understandable anger within the audience.
1. The Councillors were not seemingly fully aware of what is happening within their areas of responsibility. A set of plans were produced showing the redevelopment of the Addenbrookes roundabout. Half of the Councillors were not aware of the intention to redevelop the roundabout. Having viewed the plans, I see a significant cost to the Council Tax payer with questionable return on investment or vision as to what the changes will deliver.
2. Hills Road cycleway. It is apparently the vision of one man/department at County Hall to spend ?1.4M on reconstructing the Hills Road cycleways. Funds have been sourced from Central Government to reconstruct the cycleways which currently operate safely and effectively. As a cyclist, the most significant problem is crossing the railway bridge on Hills Road. This problem is not being addressed.
3. The introduction of a 20mph limit on most roads in the South of the City was approved. Whilst this proposal is laudable, no account had been taken of the limited success of the 20mph speed limit in the North of the City where the average reduction in road speed is 1mph.
I came away from the meeting thinking are The Councils and the Councillors really as incompetent as they came across at the meeting? I will attend the next meeting if only to see if it is also a shambles. I hope that putting more of a spotlight on the probably well meaning but amateurish Councillors, will get them to raise their game.