Services

Conservatives believe in making the City Council accessible, efficient and accountable in its provision of services.

Wages and expenses. With pressure on wages in the public sector, Councillors should be setting a lead. Conservatives will push for a reduction in City Councillors’ basic and special responsibility allowances, and will negotiate with other parties to achieve this. For instance a reduction by 10% would save £25,000 that could be used to reduce council tax. We would also look at reducing the chief executive’s salary or sharing this post with one of the neighbouring district councils.

Area committees are expensive due to the number of council and police officers present. Conservatives will review this system because the current low public participation rates are not sufficient to justify this expense. We will look at how residents’ participation can be made more effective and move planning decisions from area committees to timely meetings of a full planning committee.

Scrutiny Panels that review council policies should be independent of the controlling group. It is a scandal that a “crony scrutiny” system operates on the City Council whereby members of the Liberal Democrat controlling group chair the panels. Conservatives would allow members of the opposition to chair scrutiny panels.

Trust in politicians is at a low ebb. We will expel councillors from our group who set a bad example of politicians, for instance by lying or by physical or verbal aggression toward others.

Freedom of Information. Local Conservative influence was recently critical in getting the City Council to adopt a freedom of information agenda. The Conservative-led government has forced councils to publish all expenditure over £500, allowing local residents and opposition parties to hold councils to account. We believe in full transparency at Council meetings and are appalled that the City Council has fought tooth and nail to stop meetings being filmed by members of the public.

Planning department. Conservatives will provide sufficient resources for the planning department. City planning decisions are at the heart of the council’s long-term impact on our lives.

Campaigning for fairer funding. Cambridge has historically received a poor funding deal from national government, meaning that our schools and other services lose out relative to the rest of the country. The Conservative-run County Council succeeded in March 2011 in winning an extra £4.5 million for Cambridgeshire’s councils from national government.

Localism. Whereas the Liberal Democrats’s version of ‘localism’ places all power in the hands of local authorities, Conservatives believe in devolving power right down to communities, families and individuals.

• Conservatives believe that voluntary bodies are often more responsive to the needs of residents than the City Council can be. A Conservative leadership of the City Council would give more responsibility to voluntary organizations such as residents’ associations and the numerous Friends groups set up by the users of our parks and open spaces, and would be willing to fund such bodies to perform functions currently delivered by the Council. We applaud the efforts of the County Council to keep libraries open – despite the funding cuts necessary to reduce Labour’s deficit – through greater use of volunteers. This model of running libraries is much more than a money-saving exercises and has previously been successful at several libraries throughout the County.
• We believe public bodies are run better by their workers than by top-level managers. We fully support the Academy schools programme, which gives schools autonomy from local authority control. We welcome the efforts of the Parkside Federation and Chesterton Community College to gain Academy status, and are disappointed by the obstructive efforts of the Lib Dems – who seem to believe in Localism only when it means more power for Lib Dem councillors – and Labour, whose government initiated the very same Academy programme.
• We oppose the centralisation of services where they do not benefit the end user – the public. The City Council must keep a presence outside the centre of Cambridge – we support the city’s area offices, City Homes South and City Homes North, and wish to see their role expanded to cover more City Council services.