Thank you, Madam Mayor, and congratulations – I am really looking forward to working with you over the coming year and to seeing what you will make of the Mayoralty. You will be a fantastic ambassador for the city and I know that your theme of Accessible Cultural Enrichment in our Communities will be powerful, timely, and genuinely impactful.
I want to thank Cllr Mike Davey and Cllr Alice Gilderdale, for their outstanding leadership of the City Council over the last two years. In difficult circumstances, they have worked tirelessly to build council homes, address poverty and inequality, tackle the climate and biodiversity crises, and to secure the financial sustainability of the Council.
Mike – you have been a wise, kind and strong leader. Thank you, also, for the invaluable and generous support you have given me in recent days. I’m delighted that you are staying on the Council, so that residents in Petersfield and beyond can continue to benefit from your insights and hard work. But I also hope that you now have a bit more time to spend with your family, on dog walks, and at Cambridge United.
Alice – you put in a huge amount of work behind-the-scenes, but you have been the glue keeping us all together, you’ve always made time for everyone, and I hugely admire your communication skills and your fierce commitment to social justice. We are sad to see you go, but wish you all the very best for the future.
And so we start a new Council year with some new faces. Congratulations and welcome to Cllrs Jamie Dalzell and Bob Illingworth – we look forward to working with you.
Congratulations, too, to our new and returning Cabinet members – Cllrs Antoinette Nestor, Mike Todd-Jones, Anna Smith – I’m excited to see what you will do in your roles.
As for me, it’s a huge honour and responsibility to take on the leadership of this Council. I am very fortunate to have by my side Cllr Rachel Wade, whose empathy and strength will be invaluable, as well as a skilful and experienced Cabinet, and a very strong Labour Group.
I look forward to working with our fantastic council staff: in city services, communities, economy and place, the corporate group, planners, waste workers, legal, IT – everyone who keeps this city going. I’m constantly impressed by your knowledge, your generosity, and your deep commitment to supporting Cambridge residents.
Cambridge is a special place, a global city, that brings together people from across the world.
It’s a wonderful, diverse, multicultural city. Not just that, but it’s a city that will always oppose attempts to divide our communities, and a city where everyone is welcome.
No one is a stranger in Cambridge.
But the wonderful, supportive communities we have here don’t happen by accident. It takes the work of many generous residents of this city, and the support of the City Council. In a world where far-right populism is on the rise, as many people lose faith in politics, we cannot be complacent. If we are to protect and strengthen democracy, we must enthuse and involve our residents in local decision making – not just through voting once every few years, but through opportunities to shape and feel a part of their local community on a daily basis.
Recent times have seen a major Government focus on Cambridge, and I know that, while proud of the success of our city, many residents worry about the sustainability of growth in our area. I believe we can and should support efforts to facilitate the world-leading research and innovation that takes place here in Cambridge and benefits people across the planet, but this shouldn’t be at the expense of existing residents. Genuinely affordable housing, solutions to our acute water shortage, improved transport, and new social infrastructure can benefit everyone, and are key to ensuring that existing inequalities are bridged, not exacerbated, by the coming investment in our area.
And as change comes to our area, we’ll continue to prioritise tackling poverty and protecting the environment.
We know we’re an unequal city, and that’s why much of our effort focuses on helping those who need it most. We continue to prevent and address homelessness in the city – 57% of those who started last year as long-term rough sleepers in the city have now moved on to long term accommodation. And we’re tackling the causes of the housing crisis too – we’ll soon build the 1000th home of our house building programme, and, from April, we’ve hiked council tax on second homes and empty homes in the city.
At the same time, we’re supporting good, local jobs and amenities – helping young market traders start their own business, investing in the Corn Exchange for its 150th year, and building a new community centre, library, pre-school, and shops in East Barnwell.
We’re also finding ways for businesses to give back to the city. The Greater Cambridge Impact Fund aims to raise significant sums to invest in local projects addressing poverty and inequality, and our new Match My Project scheme makes it easy for companies to offer practical support to charities and community groups.
But it’s not just the human inhabitants of Cambridge we work to support – it’s also animals and plants, our natural environment.
Protecting the environment is one of our core aims, and it’s only becoming more urgent as the years go by. Last year saw catastrophic biodiversity losses and the hottest year on record. The chance to keep global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees is rapidly slipping away.
The work to fix this starts on our doorstep.
Our chalk streams are of international significance, and we’re undertaking vital work to protect and restore these rare and beautiful habitats. We will continue to create opportunities for nature to flourish throughout the city, with exciting projects like the Logan’s Meadow wetlands, and tree planting programmes in our parks and on our streets, helping our furred and feathered, slimy and scaly friends, but also helping ourselves – pollinators help us grow crops, trees and wetlands can mitigate the effects of extreme weather, and time in nature is hugely beneficial to our own wellbeing.
We must also play our part in protecting the environment globally. We will continue our efforts to reach net zero carbon emissions in our own operations by 2030 and to help others in the city and beyond to do the same: developing a city centre district heat network powered by renewable energy; using new, electric bin lorries; adapting our buildings, including our council homes, our leisure centres, and this building, the Guildhall, reducing costs and carbon to ensure they are fit for the future.
All of this will need the talents, enthusiasm and generosity of the people of Cambridge. The coming years will be tough, but they’ll be exciting too, and I believe that, working together, we can achieve a huge amount for this city.