Agenda

Abbey – Elliot Tong

Arbury – Mike Todd-Jones

Castle – Antoinette Nestor

Castle – Cheney-Anne Payne

Cherry Hinton – Robert Dryden

Coleridge – Tim Griffin

Coleridge – Rosy Moore

East Chesterton – Alice Gilderdale

Market – Anthony Martinelli

Newnham – Jean Glasberg

Petersfield – Katie Thornburrow

Queen Edith’s – Karen Young

Romsey – Mairead Healy

Trumpington – Ingrid Flaubert

West Chesterton – Rachel Wade

The Council is required to appoint a Leader of the Council. Article 7.3 of the Constitution states:

The Leader will be a councillor elected to the position by the Council and will remain as Leader until the day of the Annual Meeting of the Council in the year their term of office ends or until:

1.  death or disqualification; or

2.  resignation from the office; or

3.  removal from office by resolution of the Council.

Group Leaders will each have the opportunity to speak for not more than 10 minutes on their Group’s priorities for action and objectives for the forthcoming municipal year.

Council notes:

1. The rapid expansion in the use of novel, primarily electrically powered, two-wheeled vehicles, using Cambridge's roads, shared use paths, public spaces and footpaths, many of significant size and weight and capable of high speeds;

2. That this innovation has the welcome potential to broaden travel opportunities;

3. But that this trend also has the potential of conflict with other users and an increased chance of accidents unless properly regulated

4. That apart from those vehicles expressly licensed by the Combined Authority, some of these types of vehicle remain illegal to use on the public highway, whilst there appears to be a lack of clarity of the status of others.

Council believes that a national regulatory approach needs urgently to be put in place to enable responsible use in appropriate places of vehicle classes assessed to be safe, and to prohibit irresponsible use, use in inappropriate places and of vehicle classes not assessed as safe, empowering local authorities and the Police to enforce accordingly. It requests the Chief Executive to write to the city’s MPs, Combined Authority, Police Constabulary and Local Government Association seeking their active support in seeking this outcome.

In the meantime council requests the Chief Executive to facilitate a report to the Strategy & Resources Scrutiny Committee within the next 6 months on means by which the city council might exercise influence and potentially co-ordinate the best use of existing powers in a concerted fashion to mitigate the adverse, and channel the positive effects of the phenomenon, including but not limited to engagement with

•  the Police on the use of existing enforcement powers

•  the County Council as both the highways and trading standards authority in the city

•  the city council’s own services with responsibility for public open spaces, environmental enforcement and community safety 

•  the Combined Authority as local sponsor of the Voi licensed pilot in Cambridge

•  delivery companies whose services utilise the novel vehicles

•  interest groups in the city representing established users of spaces now also used by novel vehicles.

Introduction (not part of active motion)

The Green and Independent Group proposes the following motion to address resident concerns over the state of our rivers and chalk streams. We regard the river as an integral part of the life of our city. Threats to our rivers are a threat to us all.

The purpose of this motion is to:

·  state our city’s aspirations for our river and chalk streams (“the declaration of the Rights of the River Cam”)

·  petition the organisations responsible for our river to improve their performance in order to help save our river and its tributaries.

·  consider the limits placed by the depleted state of our river on future growth in buildings and infrastructure.

Active Motion

1 Declaration of the Rights of the River Cam

This council declares that the River Cam and its tributaries should have the following rights arising from their existence in nature:

·  The right to flow and be free from over-abstraction

·  The right to perform essential functions of flooding, moving sediment, recharging groundwater and sustaining biodiversity

·  The right to be free from pollution

·  The right to feed and be fed by sustainable aquifers

·  The right to native biodiversity

·  The right to restoration

·  The right to maintain connections with other streams and rivers

This council undertakes to assess the impact of all its decisions on the health of the river and ensure that all its decisions support these rights.

This council calls on all residents and organisations to act as guardians of the River Cam and engage with the river in a relationship of respect and stewardship.

2 Responsibility

This council notes that the responsible bodies are:

Environment Agency – general oversight

Cambridge Water - water supply

Anglian Water - sewage

The council proposes to write to all three bodies to share its concerns over the state of the river and call upon them for their assistance.

3.Interaction with the Council’s own actions and the growth of the city

The Council proposes to set up a small cross-party group to draw up a plan for the protection of the river. This will include considering the impact of future growth in buildings and infrastructure in the City on the depleted state of our river, and the limits that may be necessary to respect the rights of the river to report back to full council prior to updating the Local Plan. For the avoidance of doubt, it is intended that this group will supplement rather than displace the work of existing scrutiny committees.

End of Active Motion

Background Notes (not part of active motion):

1  On Midsummer’s Day in 2021, Friends of the River Cam made the first public declaration in the UK of the rights of the River at Jesus Green, linked to the Universal Declaration of River Rights: https://www.rightsofrivers.org

2  The declaration is repeated on Midsummer’s Day each year and is repeated in the text of this motion.

3  This year the declaration will be at 6pm on 21^st June with a  ...  view the full agenda text for item 13b

The Council notes:

·  The need to tackle growing antisocial behaviour in Cambridge from electric mopeds and a minority of electric scooters (as well as some cyclists) riding at speed on routes and pavements reserved for pedestrians, putting community safety at risk – particularly that of elderly and disabled people.

·  That three-way partnership work is underway between the Council, Cambridgeshire Police and the County Council to tackle this on public paths and pavements.

·  That a large number of electric moped drivers are employees of food and other delivery companies, working on zero-hours or other insecure contracts in a gig economy which does little to ensure good working conditions for employees, and that these drivers are therefore incentivised to cut corners in the interest of speed as a result of this model.

The Council resolves to:

·  Welcome the work of the three way partnership, and agree to build on plans for ‘Respect’ signage on Midsummer Common plus the existing no cycling signage on Christ’s Pieces.

·  Consider increasing levels of signage across other central city green spaces, with a view to ending e-moped and scooter usage of paths.

·  Ask that the Council enforcement team allocate time to undertake targeted patrols when enhanced signage is in place, following an assessment of the key times of day at which the issue of antisocial driving of electric mopeds and scooters arises.

·  Encourage our Cambridge Police Superintendent and County Road Safety team to initiate a serious dialogue with community and city-wide groups on increasing the safety and security of pedestrians and cyclists across the city, including giving greater priority to action on cutting close passes and near misses to cyclists on city roads by thoughtless drivers (while recognising the need for our police to focus on crimes causing greater harm, particularly in light of continued police cuts from central government); and address pavements and pedestrian areas where adults regularly cycle unnecessarily, passing close to – or even hitting – pedestrians.

·  Request a report to the Environment and Community Scrutiny Committee from the three-way partnership on pedestrian and cyclist safety issues, particularly those associated with the misuse of e-mopeds and e-scooters, and the partnership actions being taken to address this – with prior consultation of relevant organisations that have an interest in the issue, who will also be able to contribute at the start of the committee meeting where it is considered.

·  Instruct the Chief Executive to write to the relevant government minister in order to:

o  Lobby for legislation to increase the powers available to local authorities to take action on electric mopeds and scooters.

o  Express the Council’s concerns about the gig economy model that incentivises drivers to cut corners with respect to public safety.

o  Request that central government consider legislation or other incentives to address this underlying cause.

Members of the council note their experience of the recent election campaign as the first occasion where those without specific forms of photo ID were not permitted to exercise what was otherwise their democratic right. In addition to the data formally collected by polling station staff of those who were turned away in Cambridge, council also notes the potentially far greater number who were deterred from going to a polling station at all because they did not have any of the appropriate forms of photo ID, of which many of us will be individually aware.

This experience prompts re-affirmation of Council's demand of Government to scrap the new voter ID requirement and return to the tried and tested, inclusive approach which has maximised turn-out whilst avoiding malpractice in elections over many years - and to scrap it before any further test of electoral opinion is suppressed in a similar way.