cambridge – Katie Thornburrow

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

What does it mean for Cambridge to ‘grow’?

Last week I took part in an excellent event organised the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge University and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) looking at the question ‘What does it mean for a city to grow?’

This matters a lot to me, both as a councillor and as an architect and maker of spaces, and so I was pleased to join a panel with Peter Studdert, a former Chief Planner for Cambridge, and Cambridge Ahead’s Director of Programmes and Partnerships, Andrew McGowan.

It was nice to see familiar faces in the audience (hello, Anthony!) and I really enjoyed the discussion. Here are some of the points I wanted to make as my contribution.

Perhaps we should start by asking what we mean by ‘a city’ – is it the historic centre, the local authority boundary, the green belt, the travel to work area, the economic region…and how far does it go? All the way down to KX?

Bin collections

One of the things that people often raise when we’re out canvassing in Trumpington is bin collections – whether it’s because the new schedule means that collections or missed or because of problems with bin lorries getting into some of the newer developments.

Having rubbish pile up is a real problem, and the City Council puts a lot of effort into making sure this doesn’t happen – but sometimes things do go wrong.

You can report a missed bin collection using the City Council website – there are also details of service changes and other useful information that may help. See https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/report-a-missed-bin

(image Sebastian Ballard [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)