Issue - meetings

Councillors will review the projects received noting that the decisions will be taken by the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces in January 2023.

The Committee received a report from the Project Leader regarding the Environmental Improvement Programme (EIP). The report outlined new suggested schemes for 2022/23.

The Project Leader updated the report (paragraphs 3.1 and 3.3) to confirm that there was a total of £170,000 for the EIP programmes this was broken down into £100,000 allocated to Area EIP for which the funding is split proportionately to each Committee areas population and then the remaining £70,000 is for strategic environmental improvement projects.

Current Project updates could be found at https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/11531/environmental-improvement-project-summary-2022-23.pdf.

It was noted that the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, Food Justice, and Community Development would ultimately make the decision on which environmental improvement projects would be taken forward.

In response to Members’ questions the Project Leader said the following:

i.               If residents were able to assist with the funding and delivery of projects, they were happy to have this conversation with them and try to assist.

ii.             They had attempted to engage with residents more this year regarding the EIP scheme through the Citizenlab engagement tool.

iii.            Residents’ ideas and projects had been taken into account and put forward for approval in the Strategic EIP for a total of £25,000 funding outside of the Area EIP funds.

iv.           They were happy to keep reviewing how the EIP programme was managed. The main challenge was Officer resource required to assess quality of project submission and in the development and delivery of projects.

v.             Many of the schemes put forward by councillors were based on suggestions from residents.

Cllr Robertson produced a ‘help’ spreadsheet to enable councillors to go through the proposed projects, whilst considering the amount of funding available.  Suggestions for re-allocation of funding per project were made particularly for those rated amber/green in order to fund more projects across all wards in the area. These suggestions would be presented by the Officers to the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, Food Justice, and Community Development, who would make the final decision, taking into consideration all of the discussions at East Area Committee.