Report on the last year by Cameron Holloway, outgoing leader of Cambridge City Council.
It has been a privilege to be Leader of the Labour Group and the City Council over the last year.
It has been a year full of activity and achievements for our Labour-run Council – too many to record comprehensively here, but I hope that this gives a sense of some of the major pieces of work we have done this year.
Congratulations and good luck to our new leader Katie Thornburrow and our new deputy Rosy Moore!
Housing programme
Our house building programme continues to go from strength to strength. We celebrated our 1000th home of our partnership with Hill, and have now built over 700 council homes, with a further 300 on site. We completed sites such as Eddeva Park and Aylesborough Close.
We also began work on Arbury Court and Kingsway – while challenging, these projects have started well, with a lot of hard work from councillors to support and listen to residents and traders. More broadly, the North Cambridge Framework for Change has felt like a positive means of engaging with residents.
Most importantly for the future of our housing programme, we have put in a bid to Homes England for £96m to build 1300 council homes in the next decade, over 800 of which would be at social rent, alongside 1300 market homes. I spent time with members of the Homes England Board when they visited Cambridge and Northstowe earlier in the year, and they appeared genuinely impressed by our housing programme.
We were inspected by the Regulator for Social Housing, scoring a C2 (1 is the best, 4 the worst), with the possibility of improving to a C1 in the next year or two.
In the budget, we allocated record investment for repairs and maintenance of our existing housing stock – a total of £41m for 2026-27. We should see the benefits of this increased investment in better outcomes for tenants in the coming years.
Tackling poverty and inequality
This year, we have continued to focus on helping those most in need.
One stand-out figure from this year was the reduction of our group of long-term rough sleepers from 44 to 34 – a 23% fall in just one year. We also launched the Charter to End Homelessness, which brings together people and organisations from across society to prevent homelessness.
We have fought back against the Lib Dems’ scrapping of holiday vouchers for 20,000 families across the county.
Meanwhile, we continue to work with Cambridge Sustainable Food on social supermarkets and the provision of healthy, nutritious food, cookery lessons, and much more. Their new café at the Meadows is great news.
There is so much that we already do as a Council every day to support residents in need, but we must always strive to do more. We have started to look at what more support we could give to residents in need in the coming autumn and winter, given inflation resulting from disruption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Less immediate, but vital for tackling future inequality, we have initiated work on a major new programme, called Included, to support disadvantaged young people growing up in Cambridge to gain skills, education, and ultimately good jobs.
Climate and nature
We have brought in new nature reserves with the Logan’s Meadow Wetland and two small reserves at Cherry Hinton, and continued to protect and enhance our chalk streams, several of which are now visibly flowing much more freely after great work by volunteers and council staff.
We have started work towards becoming a Nature City, as we continue to embed nature across Cambridge.
We once again received an ‘A’ rating from the Climate Disclosure Project.
We made significant progress on the District Heat Network, with very strong support from colleges and Cambridge University. We started building WREN solar farm at Waterbeach, which will power our electric bin lorries.
We continue to invest in retrofitting our council homes, including 50 to net zero carbon standards.
We approved the introduction of a Smoke Control Area across the whole city, to improve air quality and reduce illness.
The Butterfly Trail was a huge success, and the Trees for Peace project was a lovely way to engage communities in all 14 wards.
We also renewed our Climate, Biodiversity and Urban Forest strategies.
Communities
We have continued to invest in our communities. Some of my most enjoyable outings of the year have been the openings of new community facilities, such as a new football pitch at Abbey Pools, a newly equipped King’s Hedges Learner Pool, and the Cherry Hinton Hub.
We brought in three-year core grant funding for some of our charities and community groups – providing vital support at a very difficult time for the third sector and the people they work with.
We had some fantastic Refugee Week events, and we continued our support for asylum seekers and refugees with several events across the year, as well as a new grant pot to specifically support resettlement.
We have worked hard to develop a relaunched, more inclusive and financially sustainable Folk Festival. Tickets for the two days at Cherry Hinton Hall have now sold out, and good progress is being made on the events at other venues across the city, which should help to open access to more people.
We have deepened our ties with universities and colleges, and the launch of Cambridge University’s Civic Engagement report felt like a very positive step.
Everyday services and assets
We continued our excellent record on bin collection – currently at 99.9% success rate. We are smoothly rolling out weekly food waste collections.
We renewed and extended our Council Tax reduction scheme, which, totalling £10m for 9000 households, is one of the most generous in the country.
Our new Operational Hub at Cowley Road is a fantastic building, supporting our staff with proper, modern facilities.
We continued our campaign for a tourist tax, which stepped up a notch when the government announced that it will give Mayors the relevant powers.
The Park Street project concluded – a huge financial success for the Council, and a project that has come in on time and well under budget.
We got the Corn Exchange and Guildhall proposals through Planning, with the Market well advanced too. These are important projects for maintaining and investing in public buildings and open spaces.
Rachel Wade has worked hard to improve the Council’s communications, with more human stories, more proactive, positive pieces, and more video.
Local Government Reorganisation
Local Government Reorganisation has loomed large this year, and it will quickly come to dominate the work of the Council in the next two years.
We have promoted Option B, which sees Cambridge and South Cambs grouped together, with Hunts, Peterborough, East Cambs and Fenland forming a larger unitary in the north. Option B was supported almost unanimously by Full Council. As well as campaigning for this option, we have been working hard to start preparing for the detailed work that will be needed to transition from one council to another.
We were also asked whether we wanted to postpone this year’s elections. I am proud that we took the decision to go ahead – particularly given Steve Reed then reversed the offer following legal challenge, and announced that all elections would go ahead anyway.
Planning and Development Corporation
This has been another exceptional year for our Shared Planning Service, which has been recognised by the Royal Town Planning Institute as the best in the country. We have made good progress with our draft Local Plan, holding 100 events as part of our latest round of consultation. We are also introducing a developer tax – a community infrastructure levy – to fund sustainable transport infrastructure.
Planning matters this year have been somewhat overshadowed by the Government’s work on a development corporation.
Things got off to a bad start with the decision not to progress the Hartree decision, which we have fought all the way and mentioned at every opportunity to ministers and Peter Freeman.
In October, Matthew Pennycook announced £400m for a development corporation, which was when discussions began in earnest about the specific nature of a future development corporation.
We have given a strong message to Government that we oppose any attempt to take away our planning determination and plan making powers, and that we feel that a development corporation should focus on the provision of infrastructure.
Civic year
Dinah Pounds did a fantastic job as Mayor, ably supported by Richard Swift as Deputy Mayor. There were so many highlights, including meeting Stormzy, but the award of Freedom of the City to HMS Protector stands out, as well as Dinah’s support for and promotion of music and the arts. We marked the 80th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day, as well as Remembrance Sunday.
New governance system
We have had to quickly adapt to a new governance system this year. There are upsides and downside to it, but it has been good to see both Cabinet and Scrutiny meetings functioning well. Hopefully this will continue into the new council year.
Thank you
This report contains just a part of the work we have done this year. The last twelve years of Labour majority administration have left a major mark on this city, not least in the form of high quality new council homes all across Cambridge. I wish you all the best of luck in the coming year as we work, with other parties, to continue that legacy and to provide the support our residents and our natural environment need. Thank you, good luck, and see you soon!