City Council Update January 2026

In this update:

Services Climate and Communities Scrutiny Committee (SCC)

• Community Wealth building
• Litter Bins
• Recycling contract with Re-Gen

Planning

• Land Adjacent to 49 New Square
• Land at Bateman Street

Housing Advisory Board

• Performance reports
• Regulation inspection grading
• Rent Regulation
• Housing service improvement plan

Performance Assets and Strategy Scrutiny Committee (PAS)

• Cambridge Growth Company

Cabinet

• Biodiversity
• Biodiversity duty reporting
• CPCA Local Nature Recovery Strategy
• Council tax reduction

Joint development management committee

• Cambridge Business Park, Milton
• Darwin Green phases 2 and
• Former NIAB HQ, Huntingdon Road

Licensing

• 103 Cherry Hinton Road.

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Services Climate and Communities Scrutiny Committee (SCC)

Community Wealth building

The SCC looked at the Community Wealth Building Strategy which is being developed by the City Council and will be finalised later this year. Essentially this is using any possible lever that the council has, to support those on lower incomes. We discussed:

• The Social Value Policy. This is now a legal requirement under public procurement law and ensures that the social value of any purchase is considered when the Council buys something. Some activities have inherent social value such as health services. Others, such as say IT services, do not, but an IT company can potentially provide IT advice to the public to a certain value without much cost to them in addition to the main service being provided. The SCC considered how much value to place on the social value proposals when deciding on who is awarded the contract. The SCC recommended a 10% weighting on making procurement decisions.
• Community grants. These are direct grants to community organisations. The SCC recommended multi year grants to organisations that the council supports every year such as the Citizens Advice Bureau.
• Meanwhile use of assets. A good example of this is the tennis table venue set up temporarily in the Grafton Centre. The location was empty while the process to rebuild the centre was going on and could be used for community purposes on a temporary basis. This was generally supported by the committee but officers were asked not to spread themselves too thinly and consider the best use of their time and financial resources to run such arrangements.
• Performance measures were also discussed and it was noted that several factors affecting community wealth were outside the Council’s control.

Litter Bins

The council has been looking at the litter strategy and considering how to best manage bins in the city, e.g. where they should be, what type of bins should be there and how often bins outside the city centre need refilling. Bins in the city centre are all much used and need emptying regularly. Officers have been using sensors inside the bins to measure how used the bin is and how full they are and therefore how often they need emptying. Officers have been able to improve the efficiency of the bin emptying rounds already.

It became apparent that there were unnecessarily duplicated bins – dog waste bins which were much smaller and needed more frequent emptying being right next to general waste bins. Dog waste can go into general waste bins but the public will need educating on this point. Also recycling bins and general waste bins next to each other. It seems that the public is not discriminating in which bin to use and often the recycling bin is contaminated by non recycling waste and has to go to landfill anyway.

SCC agreed that the sensor data should be used in determining where and what type of bins should be and whether to approve new requests for bins. Officers will come back in spring 2026 with proposals for bin rationalisation.

Recycling contract with Re-Gen

The SCC received an update on the running of this contract to dispose of recycling waste. Highlights of the discussion were:

• The percentage of recycling waste that could be sorted into usable components has risen to 96%, a 16% increase
• High prices were being achieved for the sorted components
• No news yet on the move of the material recovery facility (MRF) from Northern Ireland to the mainland.

Planning

There were the following planning applications considered at committee:

25/03078/FUL and 25/03079/LBC Land Adjacent to 49 New Square. These were both for one storey dwelling on the site but were both refused due to harm to a neighbouring listed building.

25/02831/FUL Land at Bateman Street, Cambridge. This sought improvements to the access area to the building. The decision was deferred pending a heritage and ecological report.

Housing Advisory Board

This is a non decision making body that advises Cabinet and includes tenants of the council so that their voice can be heard.

Performance reports

There are acknowledged problems with existing council housing. Many have not been inspected to see whether they comply with the newly introduced Awaab’s Law which seeks to ensure houses are not damp and mouldy. The council has implemented an accelerated inspection strategy to deal with this problem.

The performance report contained many measures that are ‘unverified’ reflecting this lack of knowledge of the state of council housing. There are many performance measures in the report so to give an indication of some of them:

• Active damp and mould claims 166 –  2.18% of stock
• Number of disrepair claims 13 1.7 per 1000 properties

Such claims are being actively managed through weekly contractor meetings.

Tenant satisfaction with new homes is 74% for Q2 which is under the target of 90%. Satisfaction with most recent repairs is also 74%.

Regulation inspection grading

The housing regulator has confirmed a level C2 regulatory judgement . This means that the council is compliant with Consumer standards but there are some areas that need improvement. These are:

• Stock condition survey coverage – as mentioned many properties remain uninspected.
• Medium fire risk actions are overdue. The council has been responding to the high risk items for the past 18 months.
• Concerns about the accuracy and storage of key compliance data.

There have been substantial improvements in other areas: compliant repair service, EICR, asbestos, tenancy management, Council now meets the rent standard.

Rent Regulation

There was an administrative error that meant that tenants were overcharged. The tenants have now been categorised (those receiving housing benefit, universal credit or none etc.) and group 1 of 4 have been contacted and refunds are being processed. The project is proceeding.

Housing service improvement plan

There are many actions being undertaken to improve services e.g. speeding up the reletting process so that void periods are reduced. Progress on these actions was reported.

Performance Assets and Strategy Scrutiny Committee (PAS)

I have already reported on this committee which had one sole agenda item which was the Cambridge Growth Company. See here: https://karenyoung.uk/2025/12/10/cambridge-growth-company-3/

Cabinet

Biodiversity

The council has a biodiversity strategy for the years to 2031 here: https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/biodiversity-strategy

The council promised to undertake a 5 year review and have produced a revised strategy which they are putting out to consultation. This takes into account the new Biodiversity reporting duty, the draft Urban Forest Strategy and the CPCA’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy and other initiatives.

The original 7 objectives are retained. These are:

1. To secure a measurable net gain in biodiversity
2. To ensure designated sites and priority habitats are in good / favourable  condition and connected
3. To promote awareness of biodiversity and wellbeing,
4. To ensure that biodiversity is considered by all council service functions
5. To maximise the potential of our buildings, parks, open spaces, allotments and community gardens, watercourses and tree stock to support biodiversity
6. To harness the wealth of local professional and amateur knowledge and experience in identifying and solving local issues.
7. To establish long term, species and habitat surveys to monitor the impact of activities

Here is the link to the consultation. Please take a look and give your comments. https://engage.cambridge.gov.uk/en-GB/projects/biodiversity-and-urban-forest-strategies

Biodiversity duty reporting

This is a new requirement under the Environment Act 2021. Councils must report their actions and plan to comply with their biodiversity duty. This is an excellent report that pulls together all the various strategies and partner organisations involved with this process. There is lots in the report and so some highlights are:

• Key objective to double the area in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough of rich wildlife habitats and green space from 8.5% to 17%
• Herbicide reduction plan
• Cessation of the use of peat in landscape schemes
• Nature reserve and commons management.

The report is worth a read and is here:

https://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/documents/s71314/Cambridge%20City%20Council%20Biodiversity%20Duty%20December%202025.pdf

CPCA Local Nature Recovery Strategy

This strategy has been developed by the CPCA and approval was required also from the City Council. The consultation with the public was positive. The practical result of this plan for the City is outlined in the biodiversity duty reporting.

Council tax reduction

The council has a reduction scheme for those on universal credit or in receipt of other benefits which needs an annual uprating to keep the figures aligned. Reducing the benefit of this would result in many households with small amounts to pay which are extremely difficult to collect and are not worth the effort which would be distressing for all concerned.

Joint development management committee

This committee looks at pre-application developer briefings and provides guidance to developers. The following were considered in December:

1. Cambridge Business Park, Milton Road – low carbon development for mixed “cleantech” innovation employment uses, residential and associated uses in accordance with a site-wide masterplan. (Second briefing by the Crown Estate)
2. Darwin Green phases 2 and 3 – primary road and associated green and blue infrastructure,
3. Former NIAB HQ, Huntingdon Road – Approximately 600 residential units comprising Build to Rent, co-living and student accommodation

Licensing

This hearing considered an alcohol off-licence application for Neluxa Sparkle on 103 Cherry Hinton Road. The application was refused.