Wisbech gardeners collect prizes at Anglia in Bloom

07:49 Thursday October 16th 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Wisbech is in the hat for a top prize at the Britain in Bloom Awards later on. The town has already won in this year’s Anglia in Bloom awards, picking up the Large Town prize. Now it’s up against the rest of the country. After their success among the towns in the east, our reporter spoke to some of the winning group at the award ceremony.
(TAPE)
GENTLEMAN: Well we won the Best Large Town.
LADY: We’ve won the Best Conservation Area. And we’ve won an award for the Age 12 to 18 Schoolchildren.
GENTLEMAN: Best Environmental Display.
LADY: Best Environmental. Yes. So boo to all those people who say Wisbech is not a really really nice place to live.
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Cambridge Summer Music Festival Appeal

17:36 Tuesday 14th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: One of the county’s oldest and best known music festivals is in danger of closing. The Cambridge Summer Music Festival is in its 35th year, but its Chairman Tim Brown, former Head of Music at Clare College Cambridge has now written to all supporters, asking for donations to keep it going. He says they need £35,000 by Christmas, or the Festival must end. He joined me a little earlier for an exclusive interview to explain why it’s come to this.
(TAPE)
TIM BROWN: We believe we have a wonderful festival, which has been going for 35 years. But we’ve hit hard times over the last few years, financially, and we decided that we should no longer go on starting every Festival with a deficit. And we decided that if we wanted to go on next year, we wanted to clear our books and start with a clean slate.
CHRIS MANN: How desperate are things? Is this actually a warning that you would have to close otherwise?
TIM BROWN: Yes. The Trustees met and decided that enough was enough, and that we would close unless we could raise the necessary money to clear our books and start with a clean slate.
CHRIS MANN: That’s a tough decision to make, given the heritage of this, and how much pleasure it brings to people. I know you all love being involved in this of course.
TIM BROWN: Yes. Absolutely. It was a very tough decision, and we put it off in a sense for a couple of years, thinking that we might be able to have a festival that would actually win us enough money to clear our deficit. But actually it never works that way, and we decided that enough was enough. (LAUGHS)
CHRIS MANN: So how are you going to raise that money? You’ve written I know to people who are connected to friends of the society. You are about to do a big media launch. This is your first interview about it all. What are you going to do?
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Televised debates – UKIP offer upsets rival parties

17:19 Monday 13th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: Plans for three TV debates in the run up to next year’s General Election have been put forward by the UK’s main broadcasters. One of the debates would include UKIP Leader Nigel Farage. Another of the debates would exclude LibDem Leader Nick Clegg. The proposals have been ruffling feathers in Westminster, where we can now hear from our Political Correspondent Alan Soady.
ALAN SOADY: Well the first of these debates Chris would be something different to what we saw last time around in 2010. This would be hosted by Sky News and Channel 4 jointly, and it would just be a head-to-head debate between David Cameron and Ed Miliband, who the broadcasters would argue are the two men who are most likely, or one of them, to be the next Prime Minister. The second of the debates would be hosted by the BBC. That would be a little more like we saw last time round, in that it would be David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg battling it out. The third of the debates under these proposals would be on ITV, and that would have those same three main party leaders plus also it would have Nigel Farage, the UKIP Leader standing alongside them, taking part in that debate as well. The main broadcasters all got together to come up with this proposal to put to the politicians, and they argue the reason for it being different from in 2010 is they say what they call the ‘political landscape’ has changed.
CHRIS MANN: Relatively new ground of course for the broadcasters. But why are some of the party leaders unhappy?
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Cambridgeshire candidates reflect on the rise of UKIP

17:06 Friday 10th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: The UK Independence Party, UKIP, has its first elected Member of Parliament, and has gone close to getting a second. Former Conservative MP Douglas Carswell won the Clacton by-election in the early hours of this morning with a majority of more than 12,000 over his old Party. If that wasn’t enough, UKIP came within just over 600 votes of taking the Heywood and Middleton by-election, where Labour just clung on. .. The UKIP MEP for the East and prospective Parliamentary candidate for Cambridge Patrick O’Flynn said it was a great day, but the Party still had work to do before the General Election in May.
(TAPE)
PATRICK O’FLYNN: We can’t take anything for granted. It is an absolute breakthrough for UKIP. We’ve had our first directly elected MP, and the British public are clearly taking a look at us, and saying we like some of the things you say, we quite fancy adding you to the range of parties represented in the House of Commons. But we need to keep building on our strengths, improving ourselves where we’re not strong enough, and showing that we recognise the magnitude of the opportunity we might be given by the British public.
(LIVE)
CHRIS MANN: Well at the General Election next year he will be up against Chamali Fernando, who is the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the Cambridge seat. She joins me now. Hello Chamali
CHAMALI FERNANDO: Hi there Chris.
CHRIS MANN: So, only one in four voters stayed loyal to the Conservatives. Second place there, and heaven only knows what at the Rochester by-election. Disarray.
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Nick Sandford on senior officer salaries and the financial competence of the local authority

07:39 Wednesday 8th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Now if I offered to increase your salary by nearly 50%, what would you think? I’m guessing you might think it’s a pretty good offer, too good to be true maybe. Well what if you’re the new Director of Public Health at Peterborough City Council? At a meeting this evening, the authority will ask permission to appoint a new Director, but they won’t be given the old salary of £80,000 that the previous Director was paid. Oh no! They will be paid just under £118,000. That’s a rise of nearly £38,000 a year. The City Council says the increase is necessary to compete with other health sectors and other local authorities. Let’s speak to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Peterborough, Nick Sandford. What do you make of this new salary that’s being proposed Nick?
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Marco Cereste on the abandoned renewable energy schemes

10:10 Wednesday 8th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

PAUL STAINTON: There’s concern this morning about the £3 million that’s been invested in the three solar park energy projects in Peterborough. Now two of them have been scrapped. Your comments this morning range from “a victory for Nimbyism” to ” has common sense prevailed over a poorly consulted project?“. Some people have called for a full-scale investigation into the actions of Peterborough City Council, and the way monies have been spent. So, has he been negligent or was he wise? Was he thinking outside of the box? Well let’s speak to the man who trumpeted this venture from the very start. let’s speak to Marco Cereste, Leader of Peterborough City Council. Marco, good morning.
MARCO CERESTE: Hello Paul. How are you doing?
PAUL STAINTON: Thank you for coming on. I’m fine. How are you this morning, and where does this leave Peterborough City Council and this £22 million black hole?
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Council v contractor over busway repair bill

17:38 Tuesday 7th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: The bid to recoup the costs of repairs to Cambridgeshire’s Guided Busway will cost £30 million and take three years to complete. But engineers say defects on the Busway must be repaired if the route is to remain safe. The big question of course is who will pay the bill. Councillors say it should be the contractors who built it. Today they voted to take legal action against Bam Nuttall, but legal action of course doesn’t come cheap. Look East reporter Ben Bland went along to the meeting.
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Cambridge letting agents ‘exploiting vulnerable tenants’

08:08 Monday 6th October 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: People in Cambridgeshire are being ripped off by unscrupulous letting agents charging excessive fees.That’s the fear of the MP for Cambridge, who wants to see a code of practice adopted by the lettings industry to curb excessive charges for reference checks and tenancy agreements. Administrative fees for three people moving into a three bedroomed house in Cambridgeshire vary from £650 at some letting agents in Cambridge Peterborough and St Neots to just £225 at one agent in Fenland. Julian Huppert says with rising house prices and a shortage of affordable homes, more people are now being forced to rent. He joins me on the line now. Morning Julian.
JULIAN HUPPERT: Morning Dotty. How are you?
DOTTY MCLEOD: I’m fine thank you. How do you know that these fees are actually excessive.
JULIAN HUPPERT: Well I think you can just look at how much is being charged. I had a look around in Cambridge at some places charging £250 to change a name on a form, £16 for sending an email or a letter. It doesn’t cost that much for a stamp and an envelope and certainly £16 for an email is pretty steep. But also there’s been work done around the country. So Shelter did a survey, and found that one in seven people who use letting agents have to pay more than £500 just to get started. That’s an exorbitant amount of money for people who often are struggling to get the money together to pay for the deposit and the rent anyway.
DOTTY MCLEOD: And do you think that this is a problem in Cambridge specifically?
JULIAN HUPPERT: It’s particularly bad in places like Cambridge, because you might say there’s a free market. If people think they are paying too much they’ll just go somewhere else. But anybody who has tried to rent a property in Cambridge will know you simply don’t have the opportunity of saying oh no, I don’t like this agent, I won’t look at any of their properties. You have to act very very fast. You have to be open to it. So people don’t really have an opportunity to choose.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Well also on the line is David Cox who is the Managing Director of ARLA, the Association of Residential Lettings Agents. David, something like that, charging more than £100 to change the name on a form, that’s quite hard to defend, isn’t it?
DAVID COX: Good morning Dotty. I think it’s slightly more involved than just changing the name on a form.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Well explain what might be involved with something like that. Because maybe we don’t realise what the letting agents have to deal with.
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