The next South Area meeting takes place next Monday at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre.

First comes an Open Forum at which anyone can say anything or ask anything of the councillors present.

Next, councillors will select community projects, to be funded by money from building developers as part of their planning obligations.

• new pavilions at Nightingale Avenue and Cherry Hinton Recreation Grounds
• a basketball court of MUGA at Cherry Hinton Recreation Ground
• a junior scooter park and trim trail on the Accordia Estate
• refurbishment of the family centre at Cherry Hinton Baptist Church

The pavilion project is a long-standing aspiration that has been delayed for several years as it has been linked with funding from the development of housing on the Bell School land. The planning consents have taken a long time, and consequently there has been no new pavilion. The existing one is looking a bit sorry for itself as you can see.

Next is a discussion about the city’s community safety strategy and the priorities for the next three years. Here is an excerpt from the document:

Strategic

To understand the impact of mental health, alcohol and drug misuse on violent crime and anti-social behaviour.

Tactical

• Personal Acquisitive Crime – emerging trends.
• Alcohol related violent crime
• Anti-social Behaviour – embedding new ways of working.

To continue to track and support County led work on:

A short note at the end commits the partnership to ‘keeping a watching brief’ on road safety issues, and the committee is cited as one of the means of doing this. Given the patchy nature of the information on which police priorities are based, this does not inspire confidence. Road safety is a worry that people bring up with me frequently, so I shall be asking questions about this.

I am also concerned about the stats about young people and crime in the report. 15-19 year-old girls in Cambridge are age band most at risk, yet there is also a suggestion that we have a problem with under-reporting of crime in the city. I’ll be asking how this is to be addressed, to make sure young people feel confident about reporting crime.

Finally, there are four planning applications, three of which are in Queen Ediths, in Wulfstan Way, Strangeways Road and Marshall Road.

The meeting begins at 7pm. For an agenda, see here: http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=122&MId=1192&Ver=4

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