Katie Thornburrow – Cambridge City Councillor for Petersfield and former Cabinet Member for Planning and Transport

Looking at the resilience of Cambridge

You may have noticed that things have been a little bit tricky for me at the moment as a failure to reach agreement on the leadership of Cambridge City Council at our AGM on May 21^st means that there are no council committees, no cabinet members, and attendance at external events has largely stopped because we no longer hold formal roles. It should all be resolved when we meet on Monday June 1^st.

While there are lots of meetings and conversations, my diary is strangely empty, because the many briefings, training sessions, committee meetings and other council business has all temporarily gone. But it does leave me free for some of the work I do in addition to being a councillor, around food policy, water scarcity and the climate emergency.

Yesterday I got to see the latest stage of a project that I’ve been involved with for a long time, looking at how resilient Cambridge is in a number of key areas. Resilience Web Cambridge and the Cambridge Room organised a series of seminars and have now published a report on what they found.

The events ran from Wednesday 21 January to Wednesday 8 April 2026 and looked at food, reuse, flooding, energy, communications, community. Each involved a group of experts drawn from local community groups as well as national experts, local councillors and the interested public. They were organised as hybrid meetings.

The report is a vitally important document, but it doesn’t mark the end of the project – because now we follow through what we are reporting on.

There will now be workshops to explore solutions, using the good practices that have been identified by the project to date, and we are considering how to develop resilience toolkits for local residents to use. As Helen Cook and Charlie Barty-King from Resilience Web put it, “resilience isn’t just about bouncing back after disaster, but about transforming how we operate now to anticipate and avoid crises as much as possible, and to make a positive response to a crisis second nature.”

I was really pleased to be able to introduce the report to a packed room at the Glasshouse, and to have the chance to talk to so many people about this important work.

Read more on the Resilience Web website

Download the full report here.

Download the summary as a PDF here.

Let’s work together for Cambridge

At the Council AGM on May 21st no Leader was chosen and as a result there are no Cabinet members and all committee seats are vacant. We will reconvene as a Council on June 1 to resolve this. It is an unwelcome situation that has arisen because the other parties would not support me as Leader but were unwilling to put any other candidate forward or to propose a solution.
This is what I said at the end of the meeting. I call on the other parties to put the interests of Cambridge first and resolve things. They know where to reach me.

Here is the transcript of what I said:

Maria Cleminson: Councillor Thornburrow.

Katie Thornburrow: I have worked with Tim Bick and many of his members, very collaboratively and very successfully, and with enjoyment. I’ve also worked with Naomi Bennett, and Jean [Glasberg], and Hugh [Clough], with enjoyment, and we’ve been a really good council collectively. I have gone out of my way to work with green issues across the city.

And we need to get on and make make a decision about a leader. It may be that Tim could put his name forward, or you, Naomi.

We have put our case about our leader. We are prepared to be in opposition and we would still work constructively and collaboratively, and we would do everything possible for the best um, the needs of the council and our residents.

We have not said that we wouldn’t work with you in that way. And if you were to put your name forward today, and if that was the democratic decision going forward, we would then go and talk about the scrutiny committees and we would enable the council to get on.

We are prepared to work. We have a proposal about a way to work, you can propose a way. We feel that one of us could be a leader, and we will respect the democratic decision of of the councillors in this chamber.

Our proposal has not been accepted, I’d really value proposals from you. If we were in opposition, we would be constructive and collaborative. We would continue to work in our wards, and we would continue to do what we could for the council and the greater good.

Maria Cleminson: Thank you, Councillor Thornburrow

Serving the people of Cambridge

Yesterday I was elected as Leader of the Cambridge City Labour Group, and Councillor Rosy Moore (Coleridge) was elected as Deputy Leader. In a post on the Cambridge Labour website I said:

‘As Leader I am here to serve our community and ensure that every resident’s voice is heard as we work to make Cambridge a great place to live for all. I’m proud that under Labour Cambridge City Council has worked to tackle inequality and reduced our carbon emissions by 50%. I will ensure we continue to prioritise the climate and biodiversity crises, protect the environment, and support residents through the cost of living crisis we are facing.

‘I am very grateful to Cameron Holloway and Rachel Wade for their leadership of the council last year. We will continue to work hard to build more council homes, tackle homelessness, and provide high quality services for Cambridge residents.’

On Thursday 21st May Cambridge City Council will hold its AGM and the Leader and Cabinet will be chosen by councillors. I’ll write more after that meeting.

Details of the Council AGM, and how to watch it online, are on the City Council website.

My Response to the DevCo Consultation

The government wants to create the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation and there is a formal consultation our views. Many local groups have submitted theirs, for example this from Cambcycle, as well as the City Council. You have until 11:59 tonight (April 1st) to get yours in!

I’ve already written here about my views, but these are the answers I have submitted as an individual – please note that they are not a formal City Council or Labour response.

What do you think about the current delivery of infrastructure and homes in Greater Cambridge?

While Greater Cambridge has experienced constraints in infrastructure (particularly water supply, waste and transport), local planning capability is not the problem. The Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service (GCSPS) is recognised as the most progressive and effective planning authority in the country, having won the RTPI Planning Authority of the Year in 2025.

The consultation documents refer to a6:1 imbalance between job creation and housing supply (41,000 new jobs created between 2011 and 2019) but this historic data does not reflect current reality where job creation has slowed and house building grown. We need accurate and current data to support decision making.

What we want from a Development Corporation

On March 19 Cambridge City Council held an extraordinary meeeting to discuss its response to the Government consulation on “Establishing a Development Corporation in Greater Cambridge” – please read more and respond online.

Each councillor got three minutes to talk, and these are my speaking notes which i mostly followed. They reiterate the points I’ve made elsewhere. You can also watch the whole debate on the City Council YouTube channel.

Notes Towards a Talk

While we have concerns over the shape, function and makeup of a future Development Corporation, I think we should welcome the government’s recognition that Greater Cambridge will benefit from extra help and support.

We face enormous difficulties due to systemic, national-level constraints in water supply, waste water treatment, electricity grid capacity, communications, and transport.

So, if a devco can provide the national convening power and multi-billion-pound, long-term investment needed, we will embrace it.

However, we want it on our terms, working with elected local authorities not against us.

We want a development corporation to help us to deliver our ambitions, not countering them

To expand what is possible, not limit our potential

And to help deliver our promises to the people of Cambridge, made when they elected us.

So, what does that mean?

“Let’s Talk About” – the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation

On the evening of March 4 I took part in a public discussion about the government’s consultation on establishing a Development Corporation for Greater Cambridge, organised by the Cambridge Room, of which I am proud to be a Trustee.

We were joined by Peter Freeman and Beth Dugdale from the Cambridge Growth Company and Cllr Dr Tumi Hawkins from South Cambs District Council. Also on the panel was Eleanor Riley from The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government who talked through government context and details of the consultation.

Each of us was given a chance to outline our views, and these are the speaking notes I used – though I may have said something slightly different on the night.

The consultation on the Development Corporation runs until the end of the month and I urge you to read the papers and make your own contribution. And perhaps my notes will be helpful.

Notes towards a talk

Thank you all for being here. Today, I want to share my thoughts on the proposed development corporation (devco), and I have three main points to make: one is a common-sense point about democracy, one is a practical concern about the planning service drawn from my own experience, and the third is a more radical proposal for the future of Greater Cambridge, because the challenge today is not just acknowledging the devco and the government’s ambitions, but defining how we use it to deliver our wider objectives rather than just “business as usual” expansion.

First, we must address the democratic deficit that is too easily built into a centrally-led Urban Development Corporation. The government’s proposal relies on a top-down model where the board is appointed by the Secretary of State. While the proposal invites local council leaders and the combined authority mayor to sit on this board, having a few seats at the table is simply not enough for true democratic integration. To meet our challenges, the board must also include specific expertise in ecological resilience, local food policy, circular economics, and community or youth engagement.

How will we feed ourselves?

Last Wednesday, January 21, the Council Chamber in Cambridge Guildhall was filled with a group of people brought together to consider one of the most important questions facing us today: how do we feed ourselves? They were joined online by others as part of a series of public conversations about the main challenges and opportunities that Cambridge faces under the theme “How Resilient is Cambridge?”

The meeting was convened through a partnership between Cambridge City Council, the Resilience Web (resilienceweb.org.uk) and the Cambridge Room (cambridgeroom.org), and marked the end of a process that started in July 2022 when I made a commitment in a City Council meeting commitment to find a way to “explore the resilience of the city to the climate emergency in a series of open consultations.” I knew that something like this takes planning, organisation and support and I am grateful that the Cambridge Room and Resilience Web were able to provide all three.

It was the first in a series where we will be talking about several aspects of resilience, including flooding, energy, and communications, but I’m pleased that we started with food security because it was thinking about this that led me to become a city councillor in the first place.

The consultation on the Local Plan is open

This evening I took part in a public meeting in St Barnabas Hall organised by the Friends of St Matthew’s Piece to help residents who want to contribute the the new Local Plan for Cambrige and South Cambridgeshire.

I outlined the plan process and talked about some of the key policies being proposed before we had a wide-ranging discussion about the principles, the practice, and the way the Local Plan fits with the work of the Cambridge Growth Company.

Here is the presentation I used, with details of particular policies that I had been asked to focus on.

2025.12 Local Plan Update to FoSMP Reg 18 Consultation Download

I hope all those present will take the time to comment, either as individuals or as a group, and I urge you to do the same. Even if you only want to comment on a specific area, please take the time to get involved and let the councils know what you think. If there are policies you think are really important, like around tree canopy or open spaces, let us know that they matter to you – that way they are more likely to make it into the final plan.

You can find all the details of the draft Local Plan on the planning website at https://www.greatercambridgeplanning.org/local-plan and take part in the consultation by going to https://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation. The consultation is open until 5pm on Friday 30 January 2026.

Redeveloping the Beehive Centre

I’ve just been talking to Emma Bullimore on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire about the Beehive Centre scheme which has been granted permission for an “outline application (with all matters reserved) for the demolition of existing buildings and structures and redevelopment of the site for a new local centre”(reference 23/03204/OUT if you want to check it on our planning portal).

I explained that earlier this year I had been on the planning committee waiting to consider the application and the case officer’s recommendation to refuse the application, when we heard that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government would make the decision. We decided to consider the application anyway and make an “in principle decision” so that we could listen to the case officer, objectors and supporters, and to debate the application. The committee unanimously agreed that to support the officers recommendation.

A Future for Rail in Cambridge

I’m a great believer in developing an integrated transport strategy that makes the best possible use of railways, and I’ve been the chair of the East West Main Line Partnership for some months now. The Partnership brings together the various local authorities and other bodies with an interest in EWR. The Partnership is not responsible for the design and route of the Oxford-Cambridge scheme – that is the responsibility of the East West Railway Company – but we are key to establishing the vision for this vital route.

Today I was briefed about current progress, and will have a further meeting with two planning officers who are now dedicated to the work of EWR and the implications for South Cambs and Cambridge. This follows the announcement from the Department for Transport about the development of the service and includes hybrid battery-electric trains to deliver faster, greener services along the partially electrified route while keeping costs down, a new eastern entrance at Cambridge station and – finally – formal plans for a new Cambridge East station. This is something I’ve been advocating for years and it’s great to see it come to pass. And it’s good to see that the announcements are in line with the submission to the consultation made by the Shared Planning Service on behalf of South Cambs and the Cambridge City Council.