Graham Casey on a cultural strategy for Peterborough

07:19 Monday 23rd February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Peterborough’s new cultural strategy for the next five years goes before the City Council Cabinet for approval later. The proposals aim to increase the number of people taking part in cultural events, attracting people with talent, and making better use of the city’s green spaces. The hope is that the Council can achieve this despite investing less in Vivacity, the Trust that runs cultural services in Peterborough. Councillor Graham Casey has been driving the development of Peterborough’s cultural strategy 2015 to 2020. Now Graham, I think one of my favourite sentences in the strategy document is that this strategy “is not about spending more money.” Because you’re actually having to try and do more with less, aren’t you?
GRAHAM CASEY: We are. Yes. Good morning Dotty. Yes it’s difficult times really, and I’ve always been aware that culture has been one of the soft targets for cuts. But actually people involved in culture are incredibly creative people, and we’ve just got to use that creativity to keep doing what we do best, and that is actually providing cultural services to the city.
DOTTY MCLEOD: So what are your goals for the next five years? Continue reading “Graham Casey on a cultural strategy for Peterborough”

Cameron tours the East of England

17:10 Thursday 19th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: So the Prime Minister David Cameron is in Cambridgeshire right now, making a speech about the economy. It’s part of a tour of the East of England today. He says that the region is the fastest growing anywhere in the UK outside of London. Our reporter Emma Howgego is at his speech, and she talked to me a little earlier about what it contains.

EMMA HOWGEGO: We’ve been on a bit of a whistle-stop tour of the East of England Chris. He started the day in Suffolk, over in Felixstowe, then made his way to Lowestoft, before heading off to RAF Marham in Norfolk, and the final stop on his tour is at the Cambridge Science Park. The reason he’s here? Well it’s his favourite topic of the election campaign, the economy.
CHRIS MANN: And what message is the Prime Minister trying to get across overall today?
EMMA HOWGEGO: Well he says the East of England is the fastest growing region outside of London. Of course he says that is down to the policies of the Coalition Government. He claimed that the region has 80,000 more businesses than in 2010, and that 200,000 extra people are now in regular work. He highlighted science and high tech industries as the reason that places like Cambridgeshire are doing so well.
CHRIS MANN: And he’s had words to say about the future. He’s got some plans and some announcements.
EMMA HOWGEGO: That’s right. Well David Cameron has outlined plans for further growth in the region. Amongst the announcements, £5 million for the Science Park Technology Centre in Cambridge. That money will be match-funded by Trinity College. He outlined his overall plans for the region at his first meeting in Felixstowe earlier.
(TAPE)
DAVID CAMERON: Now today I want to talk about what this means for the East of England, and in particular the steps we’re now going to take to see through our plan, here in this region. This includes transforming the infrastructure that has frankly held the East of England back for too long. It means backing the region’s unique strengths in science, technology, defence, agriculture and energy. It means improving the quality of life for this region. And above all it means delivering the jobs and growth on which our future prosperity depend.
(STUDIO)
CHRIS MANN: So in that clip we heard there, the Prime Minister mentioned infrastructure Emma. Put some meat on those bones. Continue reading “Cameron tours the East of England”

Tough at the top – Wayne Fitzgerald on executive pay at Peterborough City Council

17:22 Wednesday 18th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: It’s been a big day for the restructuring of local government backroom staff in our county, with the two biggest authorities merging resources in what is a landmark deal. Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council have announced the formal merging of some senior jobs in the past couple of hours. Peterborough are claiming it will save them half a million pounds. Let’s bring in one of the men behind this, councillor Wayne Fitzgerald. Hello Wayne.
WAYNE FITZGERALD: Hi. Good evening Chris.
CHRIS MANN: A member of the Employment Committee on Peterborough City Council, and also Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care. Just in round terms, tell us why you’ve had to do this and how tough it’s been. Continue reading “Tough at the top – Wayne Fitzgerald on executive pay at Peterborough City Council”

Cambridgeshire council tax rise agreed but problems lie ahead

08:08 Wednesday 18th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Council tax in Cambridgeshire is set to rise by 1.99%. The increase comes as the County Council faces £150 million of cuts over the next five years. The rise in council tax was agreed yesterday by the Council after being approved by the committee which sets the budget, but UKIP councillors voted against the rise, and Labour councillors abstained. Joining me now to talk more about this are three county councillors, Paul Bullen for UKIP, Paul Sales for Labour and we’re going to start with Kilian Bourke for the Liberal Democrat party. So Kilian, this increase in council tax, it will put more pressure on people’s pockets. How do you justify it?
KILIAN BOURKE: Well it’s on an average Band D property, and that’s going to be an increase of 43p per week. And the reality is that if council tax had been frozen, there would have had to be further cuts to bus services, to children’s centres, to social care. That would be a terrible decision in my opinion. And the Council did a survey, and the online survey showed that 78% of people would be prepared to have some level of increase, and 54% of people supported an increase of 1.99% or above. So it’s justified.
DOTTY MCLEOD: OK. Which department are you most worried about for this budget? Where is going to really feel the pressure of these cuts?
KILIAN BOURKE: It’s very simple. It’s social care. The sustainability of public services and the NHS depends on the Council’s children and adult social care services being able on an increasingly tight budget to provide those services. And also actually the NHS is providing an integrated older people’s service, and that social care service and the NHS’s new over-65 service, these two things have got to work, because if they don’t, we’re going to have real problems in the years to come.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Now this council tax rise wasn’t passed unanimously. The UKIP group voted against it. Paul Bullen is from that party. Why did you vote against it Paul? Continue reading “Cambridgeshire council tax rise agreed but problems lie ahead”

Council upbeat despite colossal deficit and millions written off on failed solar projects

08:19 Monday 16th February 2105
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: So let’s go back to Peterborough and the subject of solar farms, which we haven’t spoken about for a while regarding Peterborough. The City Council has announced it’s going to investigate a potential solar farm project at America Farm. Last October it scrapped plans to build two out of the three parks it had been backing for farmland outside the city, Newborough Farm and Morris Fen in Thorney. Those plans have now been cancelled, but the project for America Farm always remained a possibility. Now back in October we worked out that the total cost invested in the three projects was just short of £3.1 million. Let’s talk again to Gavin Elsey. Why is America Farm different from the other two sites Gavin. Let’s start with that.
GAVIN ELSEY: Firstly there are a number of differences Dotty. Firstly it’s a solar farm, not a wind and solar farm. Secondly the size of the project. And thirdly it’s the quality of the land. It’s not Grade 1 land, it’s Grade 3 land, so it makes it entirely different on those grounds.
DOTTY MCLEOD: And do you have an estimate of how much money a solar farm, just one solar farm at America Farm could bring in without these other two parks?
GAVIN ELSEY: I haven’t got the figures off the top of my head but I know that it would bring in several million pounds a year over the life of the contract.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Because you have already spent, we just mentioned the figure, £3 million on these solar parks. How much more are you going to be spending on this? Continue reading “Council upbeat despite colossal deficit and millions written off on failed solar projects”

Fletton Parkway overspend – the devil in the detail

08:08 Monday 16th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: There are calls for an investigation into why improvements to the Fletton Parkway in Peterborough will end up costing over 30% more than planned. Widening of the road hit problems in January when soil contamination was discovered, adding £4.5 million to the project cost and delaying completion. Now three counclllors say the decision to approve that extra spending needs to be looked at closely or called in. One of those councillors is David Harrington, an Independent councillor who represents Newborough. David, what’s your issue with the way this decision’s been made?
DAVID HARRINGTON: Good morning Dotty. Well the purpose of the call-in is not to question the need for the scheme. I fully appreciate that growth has got to take place in the city, but it’s has to be measured and it has to be sustainable. And it’s to look into if the Council can demonstrate if it has understood the terms of the contract it’s entered into, and effectively managed the obligations of the running of the contract. There are a number of discrepancies in the Cabinet report. It says that the fixed price contract option is a lot more complex than the preferred target cost model, which they went along with. And it’s actually not true. Both are very complex in their respective detailing and I want to question, did the Council fully understand their obligations in the contract. Because the type of contract, this target cost contract, effectively means that the Council enters into a partnership with the contractor, and they do it on an equal 50/50 basis. And all variations of that contract should be fully identified before the scheme starts, to see what proportionality of any risks have taken place. Now it appears that the Council have been fully loaded with all of the costs, and the contractor, as far as it appears, has no obligation in any of this. So it needs to be demonstrated why the contractor had no costs that it had to meet.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Because this is a considerable extra cost, £4.5 million to get this road finished.
DAVID HARRINGTON: Exactly. And there’s a number of things that are interwoven in the report that was put before Cabinet. It was already identified that this road would need a major upgrade. That was identified in 2011 at a cost of £9 million. Well that must have been apparent then, that there would have been significant money to upgrade drainage etcetera, to make that amount of money costing to be viable. So they must have known that there were going to be problems with the building of this new extension. So I can’t see why those weren’t taken into effect in the first instance, why this £9 million wasn’t identified and put in with the contract that we have now.
DOTTY MCLEOD: OK. Well let’s talk to Gavin Elsey, who is Peterborough City Council’s Cabinet member for Street Scene, Waste Management and Communications. The basic charge Gavin is that the City Council took their eye off the ball when they were signing up to this scheme. Do you think that’s fair? Continue reading “Fletton Parkway overspend – the devil in the detail”

Peterborough abandons costly solar farm ventures

17:30 Friday 13th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

WILL FYFE: In the last half an hour, Peterborough City Council have announced they’re dropping plans for two proposed solar farms. The sites at Newborough and Morris Fen will no longer be considered, but they do want to do more research on a site at America Farm.

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Shadow Chancellor in Cambridge with policies for government

17:10 Thursday 12th February 2015
BBC Radio Cambridge

CHRIS MANN: The pretender to the Chancellorship Ed Balls was in Cambridge today .. and he used an interview with me to launch another salvo at the Government over tax avoidance. It was a wide-ranging chat, held in the aisles at B&Q on Newmarket Road would you believe, which is where the Labour politician was staging an election walkabout. But as blokes often do, we started talking about football.
(TAPE)
CHRIS MANN: Ed Balls, welcome to Cambridge.
ED BALLS: Good to be here, and congratulations to Cambridge United on that great Cup run. The whole of the Eastern region including us Norwich City fans were urging you on, so well done.
CHRIS MANN: That’s very kind. Thank you. They’ve got a million and a half quid they didn’t have before.
ED BALLS: That’s true.
CHRIS MANN: You’re a money man. What would you spend the money on?
ED BALLS: I think you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got young people coming through the youth system and getting into the first team, but also maybe moving on to Championship and Premier League clubs and then bringing money back into the club. I think in the end it’s investing in the quality of the experience for your supporters and your youth system which really makes the difference. Now there’ll be some clubs who’ll think why don’t we blow it all on a new striker, but I think that’s always risky and short-termist.
CHRIS MANN: Of course we heard the news this week, five billion quid to go for the new Premiership deal. A lot of money at the top of football of course, but not a lot of money at the bottom. Does it say something about our society?
ED BALLS: I think that it’s good that the Premier League is now the global football league, and that we’re creating jobs and getting tax revenues and winning business from around the world, but it shouldn’t simply be going to twenty Premier League clubs and very highly paid Premiership footballers. It needs to come down through the league structure and down into the grass-roots. And I don’t think when you’ve got that scale of money that it’s right for the ticket prices to be going up and up and up every year. Now some clubs do things in different ways and try and keep the ticket prices down, but I think that fans will say we like the Premier League, but let’s make sure it really works for all fans and all of football. And I think the Premier League and all the big clubs, they’ve got a job to do to show that’s what’s going to happen in the next few years.
CHRIS MANN: I’ve been talking to a couple of customers here in B&Q today, to say what would they want from you if you were to get into government. One of them very concerned about university fees, that you would support universities and help fund them.
Continue reading “Shadow Chancellor in Cambridge with policies for government”