From our District Councillor
I wish to use this month's newsletter to discuss East Cambs District Council's bid to find a new headquarters sight.
The Full Council took a step closer to deciding where its new HQ office accommodation should be located by shortlisting four sites as potentially suitable at its meeting on Tuesday, July 20th.
Three of the four shortlisted sites had been chosen from a long list of nine locations, which itself was earlier whittled down from an original list of 19 possible locations for the new HQ. The fourth option, a site on the Soham bypass, was added to the list at the meeting.
The selected options which will now go forward for more detailed investigation and assessment are to:
- extensively re-build and re-furbish the Grange
- construct a new building at Cambridgeshire Business Park on Ely's Angel Drove
- a new building at Lancaster Way Business Park in Witchtbrd
- a new building at Soham bypass
All four potential choices were regarded as preferable because they are immediately available and also had other advantages, and the Council will be conducting a public survey during August and September to gauge the views of the district's residents on each of the shortlisted sites. This will be followed up with two public meetings, at the Council's offices in Ely on 12th October and Soham Village College on 14th October. There will also be a series of open staff meetings about the proposed move as well as a survey of the staff's opinion about each of the sites.
Chief Executive John Hill said: "We have gone through a rigorous selection programme to arrive at the shortlist of the best possible sites for further consideration. The four chosen sites each offer different advantages and we now have to examine the fine details before making a final decision.
Uppermost in our minds are the needs and wishes of the residents of our district, as well as the views of the Council's members and staff It is important that we have as much feedback as possible so we can make a correct, fully informed decision. This is a once-in--a-lifetime event and we want to ensure we get it right."
Office accommodation has been on the Council's agenda for several years, as space at The Grange has become increasingly clamped with more staff having been needed to take up the extra duties imposed by central government and to deal with the expanded operational requirements generated by the district's rapidly growing population.
With office space limited and resources stretched, the Council needs to decide whether to re-build The Grange to ante a more modem and efficient working environment, or whether to seek alternative new accommodation elsewhere.
With the Full Council having now confirmed the four shortlisted sites, further detailed and thorough assessments of each site will take place. A seminar for councillors will be held in October to hear the results of the assessments into the four sites, follows by two committee meetings to examine the details. The matter will Then go to a special meeting of the Full Council meeting on 30th November for a final decision to be made.
The public are entitled to attend the special meeting of the Full Council in November, as well as the preceding meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny committee on 29th October and the Policy and Resources committee meeting on 10th November, at which the matter will be debated.