RESTORE COUNCIL BASIC SERVICES AND END ‘DOORMAT CAMBRIDGE’
Cambridge Liberal Democrats’ priority is to refocus the city council on its basic everyday services. In our platform for the city council elections on May 7th we propose to restore some of the cutbacks made by the Labour administration in street cleaning, public toilets, and anti-social behaviour enforcement and to reform the failing repairs service to the council’s housing tenants.
As part of our plan to get council basic services in the city “back on track”, we aim to introduce tough new performance standards to monitor cleanliness of the city, and seek to stem anti-social behaviour by consulting on citywide controls on noisy and dangerous joy riding and press for measures to curb the nuisance from poorly-run Airbnb-type accommodation and unregulated Houses in Multiple Occupation.
We also want to keep neighbourhood centres, like Arbury Court, and the city centre “attractive and relevant to all, places where good businesses can prosper.” Emphasising the importance of working with residents and traders, their focus is on revitalising the role of centres as social and amenity hubs. They propose a new initiative to develop a vision for a much more inclusive city centre and support for major public investments in the so-called Civic Quarter, so long as they “increase usage, accessibility to all and reduce waste and energy - and payback to local people by subsidising council services.”
For the long term of the Cambridge area, the Liberal Democrats aim to see the council adopt its new Local Plan, taking further strides to meet the local housing shortage, and to win government funding for further new social housing. But they will continue to actively challenge the government for infrastructure investment, its plan to remove local democratic planning powers and its abandonment of plans to regenerate North-East Cambridge. Having campaigned for many years for a simpler system of local government, the party commits to making the new unitary council work for the city, whilst serving a larger area.
Read our full election platform below: