St Neots Eatons report

It is now just over 6 months since I was elected as County Councillor for the Eatons and it has flown by as I have never been so busy in my life… and I can say in all honesty that I am not one who has at any time ever sat around waiting for things to happen. Apart from the main council meetings and the meetings and pre-meetings of the committees I have been appointed to — Health, Community, Pensions and Audit and Accounts — and, most importantly, assisting residents with their queries — there are workshops, training sessions, site visits and liaison with hospitals, police, schools and the district and town councils. However, I suspect that residents are not much interested in how I spend my time but the outcomes of my interventions so I list below a selection of the issues that I have been Involved with in the period:

Concerned about the need for more childminders in our new estates to allow the freedom of parents to return to employment, one of my colleagues called for restrictive covenants prohibiting the conduct of business activities from the home to exclude registered childminding. I supported and spoke to this Council motion as these blanket covenants are only included for marketing purposes in order to reassure prospective purchasers that they won’t be surrounded by neighbours carrying out noisy and environmentally unfriendly activities or attracting obstructive parking. There is no evidence that developers make any attempt to enforce the covenants once they have sold off the estate. Childminding is a benign activity that brings many social and economic benefits and I am pleased to say the Council agreed and is making efforts to ensure the policy is implemented by district councils in the County and taken up nationally.

Following a lead from fellow councillors, I was concerned that Section 106 funds, money due from developers to contribute towards community activities in St Neots, had been misallocated or not collected when it was due. I pursued enquiries through the Finance Department and, although not yet confirmed, believe that a not insignificant sum of money will be recovered and made available towards the town’s transport infrastructure. The enquiry has triggered a full audit of the administration of Section 106 agreements across the County so there may be wider implications.

The County Council has launched a wide-reaching campaign to reduce the level of smoking in adults and children, a cause of so much ill health among residents and, as a consequence, an additional medical and cost burden on the NHS which, as we all know, is under enough strain from non-preventable causes. As it happens the prevalence of smoking cigarettes is much less in Huntingdonshire than in other parts of the County (around the national average of 15% compared to parts of Cambridgeshire where the rate is practically double that figure) but there are worrying trends amongst certain sections, most particularly children who are being encouraged to vape — which was meant to be a measure to wean smokers from tobacco products not become an introduction to the habit. There are a number of educational initiatives being implemented which we all endorsed but I proposed that the health committee through its chairman should recommend to the Secretary of State for Health the adoption of the inspired New Zealand legislation that prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone currently under the age of 11 with the threshold increased by a year in each successive year. This is designed to stop young people starting to smoke in the first place and, conceivably, will eventually result in only a handful of the very elderly continuing to smoke.

The County launched a new grant regime, the Cambridge Priorities Capital Fund, designed to provide financial assistance for capital projects undertaken by charities and the voluntary sector, typically refurbishment of village community halls or the purchase of equipment for special needs or targeted groups such as youth clubs. Recognising that construction and indeed most other costs had risen over the past few years, I was instrumental in ensuring that the maximum grant level is realistic, now set at £40,000 from the originally proposed £20,000, and that co-funding with other public and private sources would be encouraged allowing projects to have greater impact. Expressions of interest from relevant St Neots organisations and were invited with submissions of interest due the end of September 2023. I hope to find that some of those will have been successful in their bids.

As noted in the separate story about the avoidance of the use of chemical weedkiller and the consequential proliferation of weeds in our roadside verges and gullies, I have been liaising with highways officers on everyone’s favourite subjects of potholes, parking, 20 mph limits, overgrown trees and signage. I don’t always get the result that residents might hope for but I usually get a response that explains the reason why something is being done or not done and challenge it where I feel there is cause.