Hello, in this State of the District address, I am pleased to be able to update you on all that has been achieved over the last year.
2024 marks a significant milestone as we celebrate the council's 50th anniversary. Tonight, we will reflect on our journey, celebrate our achievements, and look forward to the future.
But I want to start by expressing my sincere thanks to the officers and Members who have supported everything achieved over the last year.
Last March, we agreed on a new Corporate Plan for the District Council, which informs everything we do as we refocus our vision, review our priorities and work with staff, residents, partners, communities and businesses to lead Huntingdonshire into the future with confidence.
The Corporate Plan outlines our three key priorities:
- Improving the quality of life for local people
- Creating a better Huntingdonshire for future generations
- Doing our core work well.
To keep us on track, we are measuring our performance in a way that has not been done before. In November last year, we adopted a new Performance Management Framework that sets out how the council manages, reports on, and scrutinises performance. Every Corporate Plan outcome has key performance indicators, and we report on those not only at overview and scrutiny but publicly so everyone can see them. By holding ourselves to account in this way, we strive to do more. And over the last year, we have certainly done more.
Let's look at what has been achieved.
We want the highest possible quality of life for the people of Huntingdonshire. Based on the foundations of personal independence, prosperity, social connection, community and good health, we want Huntingdonshire to be a place residents are proud to call home.
To that end, we have provided more support for people who need it most with the Council Tax Support Scheme adopted last year. The scheme offers increased support of up to 100% of the Council Tax bill for households on the lowest incomes.
We want everyone to live in a safe, high-quality home regardless of health, stage of life, family structure, income and tenure type.
We have made remarkable achievements towards this aim. Over the last year, we have completed 703 affordable homes-494 specifically for affordable and social rent-offering much-needed options for our community. This has also helped us with our housing waiting list, prevented excessive use of temporary accommodation, and supported asylum programmes.
Through the Homes for Ukraine programme, our Communities and Housing teams have ensured that no families presented as homeless, rematching was successful, and some super hosts supported two or three families. While some families and individuals have moved back to Ukraine, 73 families have moved into their own accommodation through private or social rentals.
Through our Disabilities Facilities Grants, 185 people were able to live at home safely and prevented from requiring care or a long-term hospital stay.
Our One Leisure Active Lifestyles and Sports Development programmes are continuing to see high attendance. These programmes offer preventative interventions targeted at specific health conditions and the wider population.
Our Community Health Prevention Project, which saw us receive £250,000 from the Integrated Care System, enabled us to roll out free physical activity courses to help prevent cardiovascular disease. Led by Active Lifestyles, the funding also supported the ESCAPE Pain Pilot Scheme, a group rehabilitation programme for people with chronic joint pain that integrates educational self-management and coping strategies with exercise. The first cohort is up and running and focuses on referrals from GP surgeries.
More people are staying more active, more often, as our One Leisure Facilities in Huntingdon, Ramsey, St Ives, and St Neots saw over 1 million admissions recorded. This is a testament to the great staff and facilities they have to offer and goes to show how valued our leisure offer is when we think about the challenging economic climate we have been operating in.
Good employment also plays a vital role in improving people's quality of life.
Local people should be able to develop their skills to take advantage of opportunities, and businesses and education providers should work more closely together to deliver an inclusive economy.
That's why, in May, we were delighted to celebrate the opening of the East Anglia Energy Academy in St Ives. This academy will bring new jobs, skills, and investment to the district.
With a focus on renewable energy, The Academy, a joint venture between Reed Environment and Oxford Energy Academies (OEA), aims to attract more young people to the trades skills career path and encourage established tradespeople to upskill. The phenomenal support of our Economic Development team enabled Reed to win significant local contracts that accelerated their timeline. As a result, the Academy will support 150 apprentices and 400 adult learners by September 2025.
This will help give local people a route into high-quality jobs with growing opportunities and provide the skills our economy needs for our houses and businesses to transition to net zero. This protects our environment for the future while reducing our energy costs and making homes more comfortable to live in today.
We want our local economy to be a place where businesses choose to start up, grow, and invest in high-value jobs so they, our residents, and our high streets can thrive.
Our Shop Front Grant Scheme, which provides grants of up to £10,000 to local businesses and is funded by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, has gone from strength to strength. After being initially rolled out in Huntingdon and St Ives, it was extended to Ramsey and St Neots and on 1 July, a District-Wide Shop Front Grant Scheme was launched. To date, we have awarded 31 grants, with a committed total value of £136,894.
We also recognise the unique challenges faced by rural enterprises. That's why we have secured £350,000 of funding from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to support the growth of rural businesses. The funding will enable businesses, including farms, to diversify income streams and help create positive change, innovation, and growth for the district.
Working with local partners and people, our Market Towns Programme, an ambitious programme to renew and reshape our town centres and high streets for the future, continues at pace.
At the beginning of this year, work started in St Neots town centre to ensure it is fit for the future, more accessible, and can respond to a growing population and the number of people who live and work in close proximity.
The improvements to the Market Square will make it a fantastic space for all who visit. It will be a more attractive environment, and the town centre will continue to be successful with regular activities and events in the Square.
Our investment in the Priory Centre will make it a much more attractive and exciting venue for amateur dramatics, touring shows, and community events. It will also be a great place to sit and enjoy the beautiful river setting.
In Ramsey, we are also working on improving the Great Whyte area by redesigning and enhancing public spaces and developing new, low-cost opportunities for independent traders to sell goods and services in the town centre as part of the 'Market Produce Hub' initiative.
We are also continuing to take positive action to reduce carbon emissions and become a net zero carbon council by 2040.
We have conducted a trial using hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) fuel in our refuse vehicles and some of our vans, sweepers, tractors, and mowers. This is significantly better for the environment than regular diesel or bio-diesel.
We have also teamed up with Cambridgeshire Police and Cambridgeshire Fire as part of the trial, and the HVO used by HDC, police, and fire service vehicles has already reduced the combined services' carbon footprint by 72 tonnes of CO2 compared to standard diesel. This is a great example of HDC influencing and collaborating with others to do the right thing and follow our lead.
Thanks to our Biodiversity for All programme, we are continuing to enable and encourage local people and businesses to reduce carbon emissions and increase biodiversity across Huntingdonshire.
We hosted our first-ever Climate Conversation events in November, which provided a space for residents, community groups, business owners, farmers, town and parish councils and environmentalists to learn and share ideas when tackling climate change.
Our ongoing efforts to tackle the causes and effects of climate change have seen the council climb the ranking tables in the Climate Emergency UK (CEUK) scorecard results. According to the scorecards, we are now positioned around the national average at 96th out of 164 districts with a score of 27% up from 0% in 2021.
Our essential services form the basis of our everyday work, whether that is keeping green spaces clear of litter, collecting household waste, preventing homelessness, carrying out environmental health inspections, or clearing up after fly-tipping; around 80% of our resources are aligned to business as usual and must set an excellent example to our community of the standards we expect for our residents.
As of the beginning of this month, nearly 43,000 households have successfully subscribed to the Garden Waste subscription service. Behind the scenes, many services across the council have worked hard to ensure a smooth transition and implementation.
Some of our day-to-day work over the last year has seen us collect 97% of council tax, of which we only keep 7p every £1 collected and 99% of business rates. We have administered over £250k of Energy Bill Rebate support payments to 885 applicants to help people deal with the rising energy price. We have been awarded Green Flag status at Paxton Pits and Hinchingbrooke Country Park for the seventh year in a row and at Priory Park for the eighth, and, in breaking news, at St Neots Riverside Park for the first time. This is where I want to give a big shout-out to our volunteers, as we couldn’t do this without you - thank you!
Our financial stability is vital to all we have achieved over the last year.
As more and more councils across the country face financial difficulty, I am proud that we are delivering on our promise of long-term financial sustainability. While the decisions that have been made may not always be universally popular, they have been prudent to ensure that we continue to be here for our residents and provide the services they need.
We have set a budget that is balanced, does not spend reserves, and, importantly, protects frontline services. All this at a time of decreasing government funding, rising costs and inflation, greater pressure on our services, and when others declare they are no longer financially viable, issuing S114 notices.
By building solid financial foundations, we can plan and enhance the council in accordance with the things that matter most to people. We can build a future based on outcomes and the protection of services for our most vulnerable people so individuals or families avoid falling into crisis.
While much has been achieved, we can always do more. So now let's look ahead.
We recently participated in a Local Government Association Corporate Peer Challenge because we are committed to continuous improvement.
We have also welcomed external support to help identify areas for improvement and learn from others. We have taken part in an Audit Peer Challenge and a Governance Peer Challenge. Later this year, we will be taking part in a Planning Peer Challenge. By welcoming our peers to give us feedback at a time when many don’t, we constantly challenge ourselves to do even more - this is a sign of a mature organisation.
We have just introduced a new Contextual Outcome Measures Dashboard, which we are sharing with the public on our website. It shows how we perform against our peers and enables us to benchmark our performance. We are one of the first authorities to do this and to transparently share this. This will underpin the work we do this coming year.
The new Productivity Plan, which goes beyond the basic requirements, now sits alongside a new Continuous Improvement Delivery Plan. That continuous improvement plan will focus our attention over the next two years to ensure we never stop striving to be as efficient and effective as possible.
Over the coming year, there will be much to look forward to.
We will progress with the delivery of Civil Parking Enforcement across the District to enforce on-street parking activity.
We will be working on preparing to deliver a weekly food waste collection service, enabling households that cannot compost to have a curbside collection. We will continue to encourage everyone to reduce, recycle, and reuse wherever possible we want less waste to collect, as that’s better for the environment and family finances.
We will continue to update the Local Plan, which sets out how the district will grow over the next two decades and is key to delivering the long-term ambition of the Huntingdonshire Futures Place Strategy.
Through our Huntingdonshire Futures grants, we will provide local organisations with funding of £500 to £2,500 to enable groups to put on events or activities that support the Huntingdonshire Futures vision, such as improving physical and mental health, protecting and supporting our environment and celebrating our sense of history and place.
We will deliver a Community Health and Wealth Strategy that links broader social determinants of health with a Community Wealth-Building approach. We will develop this strategy using a 'deliberative democracy' approach.
We will continue to provide a wide range of existing statutory and important services, seeking to improve their efficiency and effectiveness through our Customer Change programme. Key to all this is our staff.
We are fortunate to have loyal and committed staff to both the council and the place. Following extensive engagement with staff, a new Workforce Strategy, focussing on attraction and retention, engagement, and wellbeing, will be rolled out over the coming year. They are our biggest asset. I want to thank every member of the staff team for what you do to ensure Huntingdonshire is the best place possible.
Do, Enable, Influence continues to be a crucial phrase for us as we look to play a more enabling role, use partnership working more, and empower people to reduce demand for traditional public services.
Our role is to help residents and businesses thrive, but that is not something we can do for people. Only by working with people can we ensure that Huntingdonshire is a place where people can have a good life and take advantage of the opportunities that benefit them.
We will continue to work constructively with the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, Cambridgeshire County Council, and health colleagues. This will allow us to proactively influence and contribute to creating a Devolution 2 deal for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
Over the last year, we have grown positive and productive relationships with local town and parish councils, other public bodies, business partners, and the third sector. We will continue investing in these critical relationships to stay as close to our communities as possible. We will continue our commitment to involving partners at every opportunity, and a new Communication and Engagement Strategy will underpin this approach.
I want to thank my fellow councillors. Whilst we put ourselves forward to represent our communities and willingly give hours of our time to make a difference to those we serve, the collective will in this chamber enables us to come together to put Huntingdonshire front and centre. We have repeatedly demonstrated that we can work across party boundaries, valuing different opinions and treating each other respectfully. I hope tonight you will be proud of what your Council delivers for Huntingdonshire.
As I said at the beginning, 2024 marks a significant milestone for us as we celebrate the council's 50th anniversary. This council has achieved an awful lot over the last 50 years. As we look ahead to the next 50 years, we continue laying the foundations for a prosperous future that will deliver a greener, fairer Huntingdonshire for all.
Thank you.