County Council 2009 Labour Group Manifesto

The Tory Record

During the 12 years of Tory administration, citizens of Cambridgeshire have faced a series of inflation-busting hikes in Council Tax - ending with a 3.9% increase in the coming year. In return, they should surely see an improvement in the quality of Council services. Instead we have become accustomed to problems of un-repaired roads, inadequate youth provision, falling social care budgets and closed libraries.

The Tories protest that government grants discriminate against Cambridgeshire. This is incorrect. Problems are largely of the their own making.

• Government provides extra funds according to deprivation and benefit take-up is an important factor in the calculation. While many other authorities have been pro-active in providing advice and help for those who wish to claim the support due to them, Tory Cambridgeshire lags far behind the national average level of take-up. At the personal level, this under-claiming depresses family incomes and impoverishes local communities. At the County level, the consequent lowering of the deprivation rating leads to a reduction in base grants for a range of essential services...
• National evidence has been gathered on how contractors consistently overcharge local authorities for smaller works. The Labour Group has produced prima-facie evidence that this does happen in Cambridgeshire, but still our Tory-led administration stubbornly refuses investigate possible abuse.
• Some larger contracts have also been poorly written and managed. The authority has had to write off £800,000 above budget on the construction of Milton Road School. The opening of the Central Library has been delayed long beyond the scheduled date and a further financial write-off is anticipated. Long delays in the completion of guided bus work on the Hills Road bridge are creating disruption and significant financial loss for the wider community.

Our Vulnerable Adults

The new Tory budget for 2009-11 slashes £14.5 million off budgets for supporting elderly and disabled people.

In voting against these cuts, Labour members pointed out that we face a demographic time-bomb. Experts warn that, within comparatively few years, the number of older people who develop age-related conditions - most notably, but not exclusively, dementia - could even double. We cannot heap all responsibility onto the shoulders of an army of unpaid family carers, who receive little practical help from social services.

Our Labour government has introduced creative and important measures to introduce individual budgets for service users, that will also improve the lives of those who care for disabled and elderly relatives.

The Labour group will continue to insist that the Council must meet its obligations to our most vulnerable citizens and their carers.

Our Children

National events have reminded us of the need for constant vigilance against child abuse. Our councillors have been active in cross-party work to implement Labour initiatives to establish children's centres and extended schools across the county.

Labour councillors have urged the need to improve programmes for rapid action to help children who show signs of physical and behavioural problem. Not only does early intervention greatly improve outcomes for the individual child, it has also been shown to deliver significant cost savings in the longer term.

We also press for better play facilities, suitable to the needs of younger children and for more and better quality youth provision as they grow older.

Growth and the Environment

The Expansion Agenda

The government target of producing 67,000 new homes is looking increasingly hard to achieve in the current economic climate, but the need for new affordable homes remains a social necessity.

The Labour Group will continue to stress these fundamental principles of growth.

• New homes must not be built at the expense of schools, health centres, social facilities and open space, which define the difference between vibrant communities and urban sprawl. The County record to date is poor. In the pathfinder Cambourne and Orchard Park, the developers and the Tory district and county councils have failed to deliver on clear promises. Social facilities must be in place before people move into their new homes.
• The guided bus scheme, designed to serve the new town of Northstowe, is already far advanced. At the same time, however, the issue of how public transport links can be put in place for the even larger settlement planned for the airport site remains unresolved. The Labour Group insists that transport solutions must be identified before planning decisions are finalised.

Congestion Charging

Traffic congestion has been an important issue in and around Cambridge City. The Tory administration has unveiled a controversial plan for congestion charging, to be levied on all using the city roads between 07.00 and 09.00 on weekday mornings. Political groups in the County Council take these positions:

• Conservatives are split down the middle between supporters and opponents. The administration has therefore kicked the issue into the long grass by holding 'further consultations' that will last until after June. How, we ask, can the Tories face the electors with no clear position on their own defining policy?
• Liberal Democrats support the proposals in principle.
• Labour councillors cannot support the proposals in anything like their present form.
• Proposed charges have the potential to impoverish low-paid workers in both the public and private sectors who must work in the morning - like care staff, nurses, cleaners and chefs and many more...
• The current proposals do not address the major traffic problems of East Cambridge.
• Costs will fall disproportionately on city residents - especially those who travel to work out of town, against the flow of traffic.

Our Roads

Starved of money for repair and improvements, the condition of both our urban and rural roads is deteriorating rapidly. On the major road network, we will press for an early resolution to the problems on the A14 as well as for safety measures on the A604 and some Fenland roads. In the north of the county, action must be taken to alleviate growing heavy traffic problems on the A47.

Our Labour government has given local authorities greater power to influence the development of public transport within their own regions. Labour councillors will press for a coherent policy for bus and rail services in order to reduce private car use.

Climate Change

We agree with the wider consensus that Cambridgeshire must take its share in the broader effort to achieve the 80% reduction in consumption in fossil fuels, which Labour has set as the target for the year 2050. This is a challenging agenda.

At the same time, since Cambridgeshire is the lowest lying region of the country, it will be the first to experience the effects of rising sea levels, land water flooding and soil deterioration which, unhappily, scientists advise us are already irreversible. In the neighbouring low-lying Netherlands it is taken for granted that protection of the land for the use of future generations can only be achieved through concerted action by local authorities, the environmental agencies and central government. To date neither Tory nor Liberal Democrat councillors see this as a major issue within the climate change debate. Labour councillors will continue to argue that programmes for protection against climate change must receive high priority.