From our District Councillor
David White joined the Council on April 1 as the Waste Strategy Officer,
replacing Martin Stacey. Dave's responsibilities include Recycling, Refuse
Collection and Fly Tipping. His email address is dave.white@eastcambs.gov.uk.
The Council's waste contractors are experiencing some teething problems with the new waste contract. Due to the increase in dry recycling being put out for collection at the kerbside, the recycling vehicles the recycling vehicles are having to make additional trips to Donarbon, and this is having a knock-on effect with the dry-recycling rouns sometimes not being compelted on the allocated collection day. Any recycling not picked up on the allocated day will be collected on the next working day (that would include Saturday). The issue will soon be resolved.
In April, we have our second meeting of the South Area Neighbourhood Panel. The panel is a valuable way of highlighting neighbourhood issues and concerns and is proving an effective means of increasing communication between Parish, District and County Councils and the local Constabulary.
The next meeting is on July 1st at Bottisham Village College at 7pm. Members of the public are welcome to attend and are able to raise issues that are of concern.
The Council is proceeding with the MasterPlan for Ely, Soham and Littleport. The question has to be asked - What needs to be done to make it possible for a higher proportion of our growing population to live and work locally enabling them to participate in the local community and enjoy more family and leisure time? The multi-faceted answer to this question could only be addressed by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of each township in turn and attempting to map out a better and more coherent future. In many ways, this process is not dissimilar to the development of Parish Plans, a process that has been used by a number of our lovcal villages and settlements.
The review process for Ely involved listening to expert advice, over 60 local organisations, a Visioning event attended by nearly 90 representatives of local interested parties together with a Seminar for District Councillors.
It rapidly became apparent that for Ely to reach its potential as a significant market town serving the needs of the local community then we should seek to grow to a population of 26-28,000. At this level there would be sufficient market scale to attract investment by a very broad range of retail, service and leisure providers. A higher level of localised employment would then be possible. The Masterplan addresses how to mass these activities to enable viable development to take place whilst financially supporting the development of the necessary infrastructure. In addition, the Masterplan addresses the many "quality of life issues" in relation to how movement in and around the city works, together with the new housing in a country park setting.
Over the next few months the development sites indicated in the Masterplan will come under the spotlight and detailed plans will be produced. Already, increased interest in commercial development is being stimulated by this process. Significant support has been gained through Cambridgeshire Horizons and we are working with them to provide agreement and support by government to our proposals.
The task is now to repeat these processes and develop Masterplans for both Soham and Littleport. The Ely Masterplan plays to the city's strengths of current scale on which to build for greater value, together with the Cathedral, the river and the rail network. In a similar fashion the Masterplans for Soham and Littleport must play to the strengths of their own communities. We need to recognise what makes these communities unique and work with local people to help realise a better more localised future.
If we can achieve a clear understanding of the "sales" points for each of our townships then we can develop a District-wide policy for promoting localised employment development to an audience both within and beyond our borders in order to fulfil our desire for more of our residents to live and work within our District.
This seems to be coherent for all of the District north of Fordham, but does not do a great deal for those communities who look toward Newmarket and Cambridge. Nevertheless, there are benefits: more relatively local choice of retail, leisure and sporting facilities with ready access to a greatly improved riverside and Country Park at Ely. More employment opportunities, travelling against the flows to Cambridge and London. All very largely financed by the developments and economic massing themselves supported by a modest seed-corn contribution from within the existing Council Tax that will be recovered many fold by the taxes and Rate Support Grant brought by the increased population.
I firmly believe that the Village Plan, Masterplan approach are valuable tools in achieving a better quality of life and we should all work on developing them across the District.