What a full council agenda it proved to be. The most emotional point of the meeting was then a speech from a care-experienced woman. She told of the challenges this brought to her life and how it never goes away, despite being near the end of a successful university course. The challenges faced by care-experienced people need to be acknowledged and their challenges recognised as a protected characteristic. This part of the council meeting is worth watching, even if you never watch any other part. You can see it here from 3 hours into the meeting.

The new chair and vice-chair of the Council were elected:

• Chair                     Cllr Sebastian Kindersley
• Vice-Chair           Cllr Gerri Bird

We welcomed new Councillors:

• Arbury                                           Michael Black
• Soham South and Haddenham    Bill Hunt

Several public questions were asked, focusing primarily on the proposed Cambourne to Cambridge busway, but also on potholes and police and crime panels. The questions are available here The answers will be published in due course.

The People Strategy was then approved along with some revisions to the Council Constitution and it was particularly good to see the incorporation of the Respect@Work pledge and policy.

There were a lot of boring but formal business to be sorted: committee places, chairs, vice-chairs, appointments to outside bodies, to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and the calendar of County Council meetings were all approved

The interesting part of the meeting then got underway, with a motion that considered the problems that childcare providers are having with new developments that often incorporate covenants preventing the use for business purposes. This has curtailed childcare provision, and is preventing some parents being able to work.

This was followed by a difficult motion, bringing back a similar motion to one previously presented about comparing the C2C busway with an on-road solution. There has already been an audit of the routes and there will be a public inquiry into the proposal before it can be built, so rather than spend further time and money re-reviewing proposals, it seems sensible to place that burden on the public inquiry.

Following the speech from a care-experienced woman, the Council passed a motion to treat care-experienced people as if that is a protected characteristic.

A motion on ensuring that the cycling network is easier to identify and that consolidated maps are easily available was passed. Relatively straightforward ideas to encourage active travel.

The final motion was one on potholes. This is a challenging issue across most of the country at the current time. An amendment was passed to the motion and the amended motion passed by the full council. This acknowledged the significant problems we are currently facing, but also sets out some of the changes already in place to start dealing with the issues.

There were no questions about the CPCA, and the Council meeting came to an end.

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