The new leader of Cambridge City Council has said he is prepared to challenge the government if he believes the plans put forward for growth are not reasonable for the city. Councillor Cameron Holloway (Labour) was elected as the new leader of the city council last month. He took over the role from Councillor Mike Davey (Labour), who announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down as leader after the local elections.
Holloway says it is a “real privilege” to be leader of the city council as he said the job offers the “opportunity to spend your time helping a very large number of people. I grew up with my parents being teachers and an ethos of public service, wanting to help people, and that has then gone through my working life where I have worked for the last six years in prison education, and I do that in my politics as well.
“That is what I want to do in all areas of my life and now I am in this really fortunate position of being able to hopefully have a positive influence in Cambridge and beyond and spend my time really making a difference to people’s lives.”
Preparing for growth
One of Holloway’s responsibilities as leader of the city council is to sit on the advisory council for the Cambridge Growth Company, which was set up by the government to boost growth in the Greater Cambridge area. He says the government’s ambitions for Cambridge are “one of the most significant, if not the most significant work going on” in relation to the city and the surrounding area.
He says whether the government’s aims are a good thing or a problem for the city would depend on what the plans end up looking like. Holloway says he believes the best thing the government could do would be to help the city council accelerate the emerging local plan, which he says already included “significant housing growth” and has had a lot of public input into it.
“We have an acute water shortage in the area – at the moment that is holding up any building of new homes,” he explains. “Essentially, if we can get help to both increase supply and reduce demand from the existing stock that will be fantastic, that would help us with our water crisis, but also help us to bring in more homes that are desperately needed.
The government has just green-lit the building of the new Fens Reservoir, as Cambridgeshire is one of the most water-stressed areas in the country. In order to speed up delivery, the reservoir has been awarded the status of ‘nationally significant’. This means the project is so crucial that the planning process is escalated from a local level to the Secretary of State. “I have been really encouraged by the government’s statements on infrastructure-led growth,” Holloway says of the plans.
Traffic and transport
“Transport is another real need of people who are already living here,” he adds. “That is not about building in order to make loads of new homes, that is actually a need right now.” Anyone who drives in and out of Cambridge will know the medieval city is prone to traffic jams, despite its huge number of cyclists. Better transport infrastructure is needed to help reduce traffic. “It is a massive pain for everybody,” Holloway says. “If they can help with that, if they can help to alleviate our water crisis, can help to bring in new social infrastructure, that will be absolutely fantastic.
“It will help our existing population, as well as then allowing for more houses to be built, because there are lots of people who want to come and live here and I don’t think we should be saying, well it is only us, we are the ones who are living here already, we are very lucky, but we don’t want anymore please.
“We want to say yes we are a welcoming city, yes we are proud that we are a really successful city that contributes a huge amount to the country and to the world, but the government and Peter Freeman [chair of the growth company] can help us to make sure that success doesn’t make us a really unequal city, and doesn’t harm people who live here.”
Holloway says – despite being a Labour councillor – that he would be prepared to challenge the government on its plans if he did not think they were reasonable for the city. “I’m [on the advisory council] representing the people of Cambridge. Now clearly there are very differing views within Cambridge about what the future of Cambridge should look like, but that is my role to represent us as a city, to represent what I think is a reasonable way forward for Cambridge.
“If I think what is being proposed is not that, then I will challenge it. If it is something I think is going to benefit our area, then I will welcome that.”
Tackling poverty, protecting the environment, and empowering people
Holloway also highlights the three main issues he wants to take on as leader, including tackling poverty and inequality, protecting the environment, and empowering people to “strengthen democracy in the city”. Holloway explains that tackling poverty would include work to help people who are homeless, as well as preventative work, such as building more social housing to keep people from facing housing insecurity.
Looking at the environment, Holloway says he wants to make sure the city council is both protecting nature in Cambridge, as well as “enhancing habitats”. He recognises that many people “see a tension” between protecting the environment and the pressure for building new homes in the area. “I don’t think that it is an either or,” he says, “[but] I do accept there are challenges there. I do think that with the emerging local plan that we have, we are putting housing in strategic places that will allow us to build the significant numbers of homes that I believe we need to help meet our housing needs.”
He recognises Cambridge has a real affordability crisis and one way to combat that is to build new homes – but not at the expense of the environment. “By keeping them to certain areas where we can actually make places that have good social infrastructure, good transport links and are not sprawling across areas that are currently green fields,” he says, “then we can do that while also actually having biodiversity enhancements in some areas.”
Holloway says he also wants to empower people to be more involved in local democracy, as he feels more people are becoming disillusioned with politics. “It is something I picked up as I was canvassing for the local elections, and I think it is because people feel their living standards are getting worse and have been for a while. I think that is probably the main reason. But I also think it is because they don’t see positive changes being made in line with what they want to see.
Restoring trust
Holloway says there the two elements he and his fellow councillors are aiming to do to restore trust in politics. The first is the goal of every politician: trying to make people’s lives better. The other, though is a novel approach.
“It is about empowering residents to be involved in small scale decisions on their doorstep,” he explains. “It can be something very small, but if they can see a visible change, then that is hopefully going to be something they can be proud of and help them see that they can have an influence.
“Also seeing that larger decisions on things – like our regeneration work in North Cambridge – their voices are also being heard, so it is not just that the council comes in and says ‘we are doing this, you have got to put up with it whether you like it or not’, we have to make sure we are listening to residents in those ways.”
Holloway says that as part of this approach, the city council needs to look at different ways of consulting with people, as he thinks the current methods tend to favour those who have the money and time to take part. “I think we can go to communities more directly; we can also consult at an earlier stage of plans. Rather than just presenting something then putting it on a website and asking people questions, which will tend to invite those who are already engaged, we need to go out to communities and ask them what they would like to see for their area.
“Then we can actually start to develop something with them, and it is hopefully something they can feel more pride in, rather than feeling as if it is a sort of antagonistic situation where the council is trying to do something, they don’t want it to happen, and then we sort of get into a fight – and that is not good for anyone.
Consult to collaborate
“At the moment people say that they get this sort of consultation fatigue, they say ‘oh there is too much consulting’, but at the same time they say we are not listening, so that suggests we are getting something wrong if both of those messages are coming back to us. Maybe we don’t need to consult so much in the way that we do now, but we do need to do more of the deep listening to residents.”
Holloway says as the new leader he is looking forward to working with people across the city. “I take this responsibility incredibly seriously, I’m here because I want to help people. If they have any issues they would like to discuss, whether they think they are big or small, I am here to talk about them, I will listen.
“Not every decision that I make, or that the council makes, is going to be one that they like, but we will commit to listening to everyone’s views.”
Before he became a councillor, Cameron Holloway helped found East Anglia Bylines and remained on our editorial board for our first three years. We’re all delighted to see his well-deserved appointment as Leader of Cambridge City Council.
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