County councillor for ten Cambridgeshire villages: Pampisford, Ickleton, Duxford, Fowlmere, Gt Abington, Thriplow, Whittlesford, Little Abington, Babraham, Hinxton.
District councillor for the communities of Whittlesford, Heathfield and Thriplow.
At the Highways Agency/County Highways compound at Station Road East there is a large metal shed (arrowed) where the workers change and shower after a busy day putting cones on the motorway or whatever.
It was supposed to be a temporary structure when it was put up five years ago, and now the HA are asking for it to be made permanent. And I suppose one more metal shed down there wont make much difference. But it was originally supposed to be a portakabin - looks a jolly big one is all I can say, from the pictures going with the application.
Over to Thriplow Village Hall on Saturday morning to look in at the consultation with people about improving the recreation area and particularly facilities for children (ie swings, play area etc).
Met the people running the group, amid the general hubbub - it was very well attended, with amazing selection of cakes and lots of littlies crawling around as well as people voting by stickers (see pic) for the facilities they would like to see most. The group is called the Thriplow Rec Improvement Committee, or TRIC for short. Its aim is to raise funds from a variety of sources and to consult widely so that the improvements can be afforded, and are relevant to the needs of the users and to the neighbours of the play area, indeed to everyone in the village. I'm certainly very willing to see what South Cambs can do to help.
I have continued to work closely with Thriplow Parish Council, particularly on planning matters that affect the village and also the Heathfield estate: • I supported the successful appeal last May to the planning inspectors that meant the children’s swimming pool at Thriplow Heath could continue in business; • I got the district council planning committee to visit Heathfield in November, and I spoke against the planning application to build additional houses at the entrance to the estate. The application was rejected. I also opposed the proposal to split a Heathfield house into four flats, because of the parking problems it would bring, but that application went ahead; • I supported an application from residents in Fowlmere Road that eventually overcame planning officer objections. I attend the neighbourhood police forum that covers Thriplow. I also go to the Duxford Airfield liaison meetings, and last summer worked with the parish council to persuade the airfield to stop sending tankers through Heathfield on airshow days. I continue to chair the district’s corporate governance committee and am now the chairman of the Climate Change Working Group. I was recently interviewed on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire about solar farms. I hope to ensure that the proposed solar farm on the bridleway east of Thriplow makes a contribution to the community nearby. I backed a successful bid from the village cricket club to obtain a grant from South Cambs District Council to put astro-turf in on the practice nets. I’m sure this will help improve performance!
I'm not posting much on this yet,as most people know about it, and there is a meeting next Tuesday in the Village Hall chaired by the parish council - mainly to see if there is the will and the support to start a co-operative village shop. Tough decisions too for the current owners, who have really made a go of it for the last five years, and made it the heart of the village. And for the Post Office...
Suddenly there is all this activity to spread solar panels across packets of countryside. These are not community schemes for putting panels on school roofs, but industrial scale proposals backed by investors, who are taking advantage of the favourable rates for electricity that the government has offered. They may be a really good idea, but we need to have the debate now about something that will still be there a quarter of a century later? Who gets the best deal out of this – the people, the planet, or the investors? Click here for an excerpt from my radio cambridgeshire interview
We are now into double figures in terms of sites across Cambridgeshire, with planning decisions having to be made soon about Bourn and Chittering. There are also proposals for Croydon near Royston, and at Thriplow, near Wilburton and at Ickleton. With the exception of Cornwall, where proposals are about nine months further ahead in terms of planning applications, there is nothing like this any where else in the UK. I guess we have both the spots of low-grade farmland (between the generally pretty high-grade fields) and, more critically, the good connections to the National Grid that these people are looking for.
I think the reason for this surge of activity is the money these schemes will make for their backers by supplying electricity into the national grid at a rate guaranteed for the next 25 years. That fixed price, called the feed-in tariff (FiT), is currently set at just under 30 pence a kilowatt for these schemes generating up to 5 megawatts. But anything built after March 2012 gets 5p a kilowatt less. So for an investor seeking a maximum return, guaranteed for 25 years, this all has to be up and running in the next 12 months – which isn’t a long time in planning terms.
The government has said what it calls “clean energy cashback” will allow many people to invest in small scale low carbon electricity, in return for a guaranteed payment both for the electricity they generate and export. And the cost of paying for this tariff will be met out of our electricity bills. Should we in Cambridgeshire be doing something equally quick to build our own solar parks – after all it is our county. The problem is the up-front cost. It could be £50 to 100k to put panels on a school. These solar farms are costing more like £12million to build, and typically need about 35 acres of land.
Solar farms may have great potential – Kevin McCloud from TV’s Grand Designs is a supporter so they must be a good thing. But we do need to understand the returns for everyone involved. How much profit over the 25 years will the investors make compared with the payments they are offering local landowners and support for communities? Is it a fair return or not?
Will this activity drive down the cost of building solar panels – in other words, a price worth paying because of the knock-on benefits? If most of these developments are about putting up panels in a field, then how much technology and know how will be transferred to putting panels on school roofs?
How much employment will these solar parks provide? The solar industry talks about tens of thousands of jobs being created. Once the panels are in place – a six month build – then how much more is there to do for 25 years apart from maintenance and mending the fences round the site?
Update for 2013: I read recently about solar panels installation on Trinity College, Cambridge, and it reminded me of the meeting I chaired last year with conservation officers at South Cambs District council. We were trying to work out how to strike a balance between the need to keep buildings representing the reason they were listed in the first place, and recognising that different energy sources can keep buildings useful and functioning rather than just museum pieces. That's not always easy, but it is worth trying to find that balance.
Once a year in early February I drive up the M11 and leave behind the chi-chi world of Cambridge, with its ipads and its skinny lattes, to fulfil an obscure duty of South Cambridgeshire District Council. I cross over through the mists and fog to the outskirts of the fen country, to spend an evening in a meeting room with a dozen Cambridgeshire farmers, who are accountable under the Swavesey Byways Act, 1984, for the upkeep of the drove roads around that village. There is no public money spent on the upkeep, except some administrative time, and costs and labour are carefully husbanded by people who know the value of most things. Decisions are made as to which droves need attention, and what needs to be put by in case of emergencies. Some gentle banter is exchanged about how things might be done on this road, as opposed to that, and, in recent years, the encroachment of the guided busway. All who attend are urged to keep an ear to the ground for cheap supplies of the "planings", the raw ingredient skimmed from motorway repairs that keeps the drove roads accessible.
