December local news roundup - support scheme for the elderly expanded, protecting our beautiful chalk streams, concerns over plans for a massive new town & more

Mobile Warden Schemes expanded across South Cambs

The district council’s popular Mobile Warden Scheme has just been expanded to cover 20 further villages in South Cambridgeshire. The Lib Dem council dedicated £200,000 to launching seven new schemes, to add to the 15 existing schemes that currently cover 30 villages.

Mobile Wardens visit elderly people in their homes and provide practical help with daily tasks, as well as friendly social contact. In the past year, more than 300 residents received regular visits from Wardens, and help with things such as shopping, filling in forms and collecting prescriptions.

Protecting our beautiful chalk streams

Lib Dems in South Cambs are pushing to protect some of the world’s most important chalk streams found in the district.

More housing in the area will put more pressure on the aquifer from which water supplies are extracted, which will in turn reduce the water in our local chalk streams.

“The Environment Agency is responsible for water supplies, and we need to ensure that it gets the money from the government it needs in order to safeguard the streams and habitats like them,” said Lib Dem campaigner Ian Sollom.

Lib Dem candidate calls on Mayor Palmer to dump his imaginary tunnels

Aidan Van de Weyer, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, has called on Mayor James Palmer to cease expenditure on the so-called Cambridgeshire Autonomous Metro until a realistic plan with broad support is adopted.

"Mayor Palmer is continuing to shovel public money down the tunnels that only exist in his imagination. He spent more than £2 million on developing a business case for his initial idea for the CAM, which involved sending bendy buses down large tunnels under Cambridge. All of this work has now been binned without a word of apology to the taxpayers who are funding this farce. And he is now effectively starting from scratch again." Read more

South Cambs District Council commits to supporting 12 refugee families

Lib Dem-run South Cambs District Council will offer housing to four refugee families a year for the next three years, in a plan agreed by the council’s cabinet recently. Over the past 18 months, the council has helped four refugee families from war-torn areas settle in the district, and this month’s decision aims to build on this effort to assist those most in need.

The families helped will include those who have been forced from their homes in Syria, Iran or Sudan, who require urgent medical treatment, and who are survivors of violence and torture. Read more

Campaigning against a massive new town in the countryside

You may have heard the recent news that a property developer, Thakeham, is proposing a new town in the countryside southwest of Cambridge, which would consist of 25,000 new houses and would cover an area similar to that of Cambridge itself. 

This has been a bombshell for residents of villages between Cambridge and Royston, whose communities would be completely absorbed by such a development. And the impact would be felt much more widely. It’s clear from the published plans that the scheme is not sustainable at all, from environmental, transport, or employment perspectives.

South Cambs Liberal Democrats are campaigning alongside residents of the affected villages to halt the plan. Read more