This document outlines Antony Carpen's campaign platform as an independent candidate for Queen Edith's Ward in the 2023 Cambridge City Council elections. He argues that the current governance systems in Cambridge are outdated and not suited to addressing the city's modern problems. He proposes radical changes, including establishing a single unitary council for Greater Cambridge with expanded powers over revenue, public services, and infrastructure projects like light rail and a new concert hall. He also discusses issues specific to Queen Edith's Ward like a lack of community facilities and the impact of multiple sixth form colleges on the area. The document aims to start a discussion on how communities can work towards improving their neighborhoods.

1. Cambridge City Council Elections 2023
“Campaigning not for votes, but to inform and
inspire a change in the consciousness of our city”
Antony Carpen – Independent Candidate for Queen Edith’s Ward
https://cambridgetownowl.com/

2. About Antony & the
Cambridge Town Owl
• Grew up in and around Queen Edith’s Ward 1979-1999
• Graduated with a degree in economics from Sussex Uni
• Joined the civil service in Cambridge after 2 years
completing a post-graduate diploma in post-war
European history from Anglia Ruskin University
• Moved to London as a policy adviser in 2006
• Left the civil service in the first round of austerity
• A local town historian on ‘Lost Cambridge’
• Survived two heart attacks, coping with mental ill-health
and CFS so ‘boomeranged back’ to live with my parents
• Blogs as “The Cambridge Town Owl” – named after the
owl on the Guildhall clock
• Ran the cult Twitter persona Puffles 2010-2020 – which
stood in Coleridge in 2014 & got a dragon slide built at
Coleridge Rec in 2015

3. Do we, the people of
Cambridge…
1. Acknowledge that our governance systems and structures
(which date back to 1974) are broken, obsolete, and not fit for
purpose?
2. Accept that the Greater Cambridge Partnership and the
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority have
not delivered anything like the improvements needed for our
city and county?
3. Recognise that restricting our city boundaries to the ones last
extended in 1935 no longer makes sense given that our
population has doubled since that time?

4. • £Million houses opening out onto potholed streets – private
wealth, collective poverty?
• Traffic jams of fossil-fuelled vehicles in a climate emergency
• Addenbrooke’s A&E the same size as in 2001 even though the
population has grown by nearly 40,000 in Cambridge alone
• Fellow residents with no right to vote even though they pay
their taxes and share community services
• Chronic shortages of workers in essential jobs that cities need
to function
• People in those essential jobs facing in-work poverty and
dependent on food banks and our food hub
Is Cambridge broken?
How do we know? - 1

5. • An electorate with limited collective knowledge of our systems
of governance – not least because we were not taught them at
school
• Few recognised forums to debate issues – those that exist being
poorly advertised and sparsely attended
• Formerly accessible open spaces now locked out – in the midst
of an obesity epidemic
• Arts, sports, leisure, and community facilities not keeping pace
with population growth
• Weak enforcement & compliance on key issues, whether
unlawfully-loud engines to planning conditions on new
buildings
Is Cambridge broken?
How do we know? - 2

6. • Polarisation of opportunities for our children – The Perse Upper
School getting an additional sports centre & swimming pool
while the long-awaited second swimming pool for Cambridge
remains a ‘paper ambition’ dating back from before 2005
• Trees wilting in the summer heatwaves
• Too many cases of poor standards of construction – so many
that MPs have raised this in Parliament
• …And many more. What additional issues
would you add to this list?
Is Cambridge broken?
How do we know? - 3

7. What can we do? Demand
radical local changes
• Abolish the Greater Cambridge Partnership
• Abolish the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
Combined Authority
• Establish unitary councils that cover geographical
areas that match how people live their lives
• The process to start this ***has already been
proposed by the Commons Committee on
Public Administration & Constitutional Affairs
in Westminster***

8. What can we do? Demand
radical local changes
• Establish a single Great Cambridge Council
• Have a London Assembly-style voting system of
constituency and assembly-wide seats so *all
votes count*
• Have much greater and wider powers on
revenue-raising - including progressive powers to
tax the wealth our local economy makes to pay
for essential housing, transport, civic, & leisure
infrastructure (and which bypasses ministers)

9. What can we do? Demand
radical local changes
• Accept that the workload of Gt.Camb councillors
is a full time, demanding role with big
responsibilities, and have them paid accordingly
• Overhaul the system of town and parish councils
that complements rather than duplicates the
work of the unitary GCC – for example Gt.Camb
automatically having seats ‘ex-officio’ (by virtue
of them being elected to the GCC) on parish &
town councils which should *only decide on local
issues* while…>

10. What can we do? Demand
radical local changes
• …being local debating forums for additional
scrutiny of GCC policies that can then be taken to
full council meetings.
• This enables the GCC to devolve spending on
things like neighbourhood centres & decisions
like local level car parking, reducing the GCC
workload
• This enables the electorate to elect part-time
councillors and also express views on GCC
performance halfway through its term

11. What can we do? Demand
radical local changes
• All local public services irrespective of who
provides them (public/private/voluntary sector)
to become accountable to the GCC through
general and sector-specific scrutiny committees –
mirroring Parliament
• Subject areas and themes to be informed by local
history of what councils used to cover, including
health, education, skills, gas, water, electricity,
tourism, local transport, local telecomms

12. What can we do? Light rail
integrated public transport
A light rail for
Cambridge –
starting with
Cambridge
Connect. (But not
stopping there –
instead linking up
with further towns
around Cambridge)

13. What can we do? Link Cambridge
with surrounding towns
Extend the light rail to
link surrounding towns in
a loop to create new
sporting and leisure
facilities financially viable
and accessible to more
people. Eg. Extending
Haverhill to Saffron
Walden, then back up via
IWM Duxford and back to
Cambridge via
Addenbrooke’s

14. What can we do? Build a
new large concert hall
…to reflect our growing population and our historic
civic status as a regional centre & county town
Left: Gordon Logie’s
abandoned plans
from the mid-1960s
as part of the Lion
Yard redevelopment.
History repeated
itself in the 2000s
when Cambridge
station got the
private wealth but
not the civic facilities

15. What can we do? Revamp
the Guildhall front
A revamped guildhall in time for Florence Ada Keynes’ [pictured in 1916] mayoral
centenary for 2032 – one example being this from Graz in Austria, where I visited in 2006.

16. What can we do? Extend
the Museum of Cambridge
Co-founded by Florence Ada Keynes, we could rebuild the old Assizes Court on Castle Hill
(where car parks now are) to provide much-needed exhibition space given recent finds

17. Queen Edith’s – The Three
Queens Plan?
• The plan starts at the grass roots – it involves all of
us
• We are not restricted by rigid administrative
boundaries – communities are made of people &
environments
• Our plan must be informed by our past, influenced
by our present, and inspirational for our future
• What could your role be in creating the plan &
making it happen?

18. Queen Edith’s – Discussion
points: Our history?
• What did the original proposals for Queen Edith’s
say after the Second World War in 1950?
• What did we get and why?
• What did we not get and why not?
• What were the issues at the time and how have
they changed?
• What are the present issues now?
• What are the issues likely to be in the near and
distant future, and how do we prepare?

19. Queen Edith’s – Discussion
points: What do we lack?
• Here and now: Fire off some things that you think
would make our part of town better. (Keep it
positive – no hating!)
• Now read through some of the background
documents in the themes that *you* are
interested in – while ensuring that there is a group
of people covering *every theme*
• How do they compare?

20. Queen Edith’s – The
‘infrastructure deficit’
• This means the gap between what a
neighbourhood of a city like ours *should have*
but does not have – to the detriment of our lives
• A council-run community centre not under the
control of any religious or cultural group, and open
to all
• Accessible open green spaces and playgrounds –
which ones were once open that are now closed
off?

21. Queen Edith’s – The
‘infrastructure deficit’
• The growth of Addenbrooke’s and neighbouring
institutions on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus
has not been accompanied by the essential
civic/sports/arts/transport infrastructure.
• Too many existing facilities are inaccessible to local
residents whether through high pricing or through
membership requirements (eg the Frank Lee
swimming pool)
• Lack of a significant landmark denoting the centre

22. Queen Edith’s – The
‘community deficit’
• Who is missing from the local community
meetings?
• What structures, systems, processes, and
organisations do we have in place to find out how
children and young people see our neighbourhood
and city? (Where are the youth clubs?)
• What long term changes do we need to enable
new community organisations to establish, and
existing ones to grow? People, buildings, funding?

23. Queen Edith’s –
relationship with our city
• What should be our relationship with
neighbouring wards? What things do we host that
they need, and vice-versa?
• What shared facilities do we have and need? (For
example The Junction as a district community
centre for several wards (even though such is the
deficit it effectively serves as a sub-regional facility
for people beyond Cambridgeshire!)

24. Queen Edith’s – the sixth
form colleges
• Long term failures of strategic planning by
ministers and councils has resulted in Queen
Edith’s hosting a disproportionate percentage of
further education places
• Even with the Cambridge Leisure Park there are
not enough facilities to serve thousands of 16-19
year olds
• What is the best outcome for the teenagers as well
as Queen Edith’s? Note* 

25. Queen Edith’s – the sixth
form colleges
•  When the teenagers and students are working
and studying in our part of the city, they are *our
teenagers and students*. We take moral
responsibility for them
• At the same time, we must impress on the
education establishments that staff, students, and
their decision-makers must also accept their
responsibility to our wider neighbourhood

26. Queen Edith’s – the sixth
form colleges
• Accepting mutual responsibility need not be
framed in the negative:
• “Don’t misbehave / don’t be anti-social
• Mutual responsibility can involve people and
institutions sharing resources – whether it comes
from extended research projects on our rapidly-
changing city, to public performances, lunchtime
discussions with local experts, and exhibitions, to
sharing facilities.

27. Queen Edith’s – new parks
and green spaces
• The construction of flats and the densification has
increased pressure on existing parks
Can a new park be
established at the
back of Homerton
College near the old
Rattee and Kett
building, linking it to
Long Road by a new
cycleway? What
safety measures are
needed?

28. Queen Edith’s – new parks
and green spaces
Is a Great Cambridge
Park south of the city
a realistic prospect?
Cherry Hinton Hall
Netherhall
Addenbrooke’s
Wandlebury

29. Queen Edith’s – Climate
emergency
• How to we mitigate the worst of what’s to come? From intense
downpours to heatwaves?
• How do we learn collectively about the changes we need to
make to our homes?
• Where do we learn about asking informed questions about
those changes?
• Where can people who want to re-train on installing
sustainable technologies locally do so, and how can we help
them do so? (Costs of training, time out, child care, and so
on)
• Where do we learn how to use new facilities – eg e-
scooters? What infrastructure changes are needed?

30. Queen Edith’s –
Celebration times?
• The past 15 years have been rubbish for many of us. What are
the big community celebrations that already happen?
• What big community celebrations did we used to have but lost?
• What new annual events could we put on (and where) that
become ‘set piece’ events accessible to all?
• For example could Homerton College keep some of its May
Ball facilities up for an extra 24 hours to host a
neighbourhood afternoon garden party?
• Could Netherhall host an Arts Festival like it used to until
the early 1990s?
• Could the Cambridge Folk Festival be on our community
‘bucket list’?

31. Queen Edith’s – Our wider
city
• Can one of our community values involve supporting the less
affluent parts of our city that have even fewer facilities than
many of us have access to?
• Let’s support North Cambridge in meeting their needs for:
• A north Cambridge swimming pool (which would free up
capacity at Parkside while having a huge positive impact on
children & young people in King’s Hedges & Chesterton
• A North Cambridge Great Park – resisting college demands
for another large science park
• A North Cambridge Arts Centre – a sister institution to The
Junction (mindful Cambridge’s population (within our 1935-
era boundaries) has increased by 50% since The Junction
opened in 1990!

32. Queen Edith’s – Our civic
rights & responsibilities
• Freedom isn’t free, and protecting democracy requires constant
vigilance
• Beveridge Report 1942: Freedom from:
• idleness, ignorance, disease, squalor and want
• What else would you add? Freedom from fear?
• Establish a new generation of civic society courses and
workshops
• ”Ignorance of the law is no excuse” – except at school my
generation was never taught about it!
• Democracy, politics, the law, and citizenship
• Public health, personal health, consent, sex and
relationships

33. Queen Edith’s – Our civic
rights & responsibilities
• Adopt new cultures of citizen learning
• The deal for arts centres is that residents – esp affluent ones,
contribute towards programmes for those with fewer
opportunities – the values of Ludovic Stewart & Brinley
Newton John
• Establish opportunities for both ‘second chances’ to learn a
new arts/craft/leisure/activity – or perhaps the a ‘first chance’,
adopting the values of Cambridge United’s Trust.
• Learning how our city functions – and malfunctions. Think town
planning and Transport Planning.
• Piloting Neighbourhood Agreements (as in Oldham NDC)
between communities and service providers

34. Queen Edith’s – Our civic
rights & responsibilities
• Active bystander training out and about
• First aid training
• Community resilience in the face of existing challenges – eg
high turnover of population
• Community noticeboards at transport hubs and doctors
surgeries
• Events.Onthewight
• Datahack days
• Planning on what integrated local public services might look like
– eg shared buildings for different services. “Go where the
people are”.