Author: Sarah Nicmanis

Continuing his series of Election Interviews, Julian Clover is joined by Cambridge Green Party candidate, Sarah Nicmanis. Listen here.

But campaigners believe development plans for St Thomas’s Square Play Park were axed by Labour for the wrong reasons

Greens and local residents are relieved after the Labour-run City Council dropped plans to build over St Thomas’s Square Play Park.

The much-loved protected green space in Coleridge ward was under threat from proposals to construct seven non-social houses.

But while campaigners welcome the news, they believe the city council has axed the plans for financial reasons rather than in order to preserve access to open space for residents.

Jacqueline Whitmore, Coleridge resident and Green Party member, said: “We wish the reason the plans have been dropped is because the Council and its Coleridge councillors listened to its residents.

“However, I’m very relieved that Labour have seen sense and dropped the proposals, so myself and other residents can now feel reassured that our park is now safe.” 

St Thomas’s Park is a green space rich with biodiversity, visited daily by local families for the well-resourced play area and local dog-walkers to enjoy the open green space nearby.   

Greens have supported the understandable concerns of the Friends of St Thomas’s Park since last summer, defending the park at a local meeting and spreading the message of their campaign in their local newsletters.   

Sarah Nicmanis, Green candidate for Coleridge Ward and Green Party parliamentary candidate, said: “I am pleased Labour have given up their plans to build over St Thomas’ Park, and that residents can continue to enjoy their park, a protected space which must continue to be truly protected, and not be subjected to intrusive works.” 

Beehive Redevelopment Greens defend unhappiness and anxiety about loss of shops and further gridlock on Newmarket Road

Cambridge Greens have written to Railpen and attended the in-person development consultations making their discontent with the proposals known.  The Greens believe that residents who survive on low and fixed incomes and depend upon the discounted and more affordable shops such as Asda and B&M will be negatively impacted.  Asda is particularly valued by shoppers in the Abbey, Coleridge, Romsey and Petersfield areas.  Shoppers from these areas are likely to be on foot or on a bicycle even for the main weekly shop so not only are they anxious to retain Asda but also to retain it at its current convenient location.  With the current cost of living crisis, more and more local families are worried about feeding their families affordably. Sarah Nicmanis, the Cambridge Green Party Parliamentary Candidate, says: “In our worryingly unequal city, we need to be very careful not to make matters even worse by removing affordable and accessible places for Cambridge people to shop. As we go deeper into the cost of living crisis , that care needs to be doubled.”

Greens state that not only is the Beehive an essential Cambridge resource in terms of affordability, but it is provides the only retail outlet that many disabled residents can access comfortably – or at all.  Our historic city centre is sadly regarded as a no-go zone by many disabled residents.  Listed buildings that are not adapted for disabled access, narrow streets, poorly designed car parks and noise are all problem factors.  Whereas the Beehive Centre offers lower noise levels and Asda provides an Autism Aware Quiet Hour as well as providing wide aisles for wheelchair users free from obstruction with bargain displays and provides wheelchair-accessible payment points.  

Greens also warn that the proposed Beehive redevelopment will worsen congestion on Newmarket Road, already one of the most heavily-congested roads in Cambridge, due to staff attending the site being priced out city’s housing stock.  It is understood that the intention is to build more lab/office space to capitalise on the talent produced by Cambridge University, renowned for its STEM departments.  However the city’s exorbitantly high rents will push those who have only recently entered the labour market into the outlying areas and the Beehive Centre site is poorly served by transport links suitable for commuters.  Dr Hannah Copley, Abbey ward councillor and Green and Independent Environment Spokesperson says, “We are really concerned about thousands of jobs being created without the transport links and homes that several thousand new workers in the area would require, especially as the Beehive centre is proposed to deliver only jobs but no homes when there is a housing affordability crisis in Cambridge. It is already very clear that the city’s relentless growth drive is straining finite water supplies and sewage works capacity and that continuing this level of growth is far from sustainable.”  

Newmarket Road is already considered an accident blackspot and many otherwise confident cyclists refuse to cycle on it.  There is no direct public transport from the nearest rail station, Cambridge North.  There are buses from the main Cambridge station but they go through the historic centre.  At peak times this adds close to an hour to the commute.  This would double the average commute time and make it harder to recruit and retain employees.  Elliot Tong, City Councillor Candidate for Abbey Ward, said; “Local people are being asked to give up something they rely on for a speculative development that will strain overloaded transport links and put even more pressure on housing affordability. How viable can this development be if it prices the essential workers this development relies on out of Cambridge?” 

Local Green Party responds to lapsed Making Connections plans

Sarah Nicmanis, Cambridge Green Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate has criticised Labour and Lib Dem politicians, saying that they backed out of the plans for a congestion charge put forward in the Making Connections consultation for the wrong reasons. “The right reason would be because they had listened to the people during the consultation process, not because they think they would lose votes in the next election.”

The Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party (CSCGP) has now published its position paper confirming its views on the possible new directions of the Making Connections plans.  The party holds that bus network and active travel network improvements must be delivered soon, and well.  In order for this to happen in parallel with the wishes of the public, a large programme of communication and engagement needs to be quickly put into place to consult on new ideas of how the funds for the bus and active travel network are going to be put into place.

Sarah Nicmanis said “The most important thing now is that bus network improvements are delivered soon, and well. This will require a large programme of communication and engagement with the public. There must be no funding mechanism imposed until significant improvements to the bus network have been rolled out and shown to be a success.”

She noted that the idea of the Workplace Parking Levy, now one of the few remaining options being looked at, had long been put forward by the Cambridge Green Party. “In both the 2021 and 2022 consultations, we Greens suggested that a Workplace Parking Levy would help to ensure that large companies based here, which benefit enormously from Cambridge’s buoyant economy and international reputation, contribute fairly to the support and development of the transport system so urgently needed.

In addition to the Workplace Parking Levy which the Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party understands would not bring in enough revenue alone, the party also encourages consultation on what the public thinks about a council tax precept that our local Green Councillors have spoken in favour of which would be a small addition to council tax, under £200 a year for a Band D property, which is a more fairly charged tax than the originally proposed congestion charge which was a regressive, ‘blanket’ tax.  As an additional measure, a tourist/visitor tax which could either be collected via Cambridge Business Improvement District (Cambridge BID) at a £2 per night occupancy.  This could effectively be named a ‘stressed-resource tax’ to recognise the use of water in our water-stressed region that is supplied via the chalk aquifer.  

It is possible to read the party’s full position paper by visiting https://cambridge.greenparty.org.uk/news/

Mowing of young Jubilee tree and wildflower garden on Coleridge Road: the Council continues to ignore its own No-Mow May pledges

There is yet more evidence of the Council ignoring its own advice during No-Mow May.  Last Monday, Di King and Sean Rock of 119 Coleridge Road were shocked to discover that plants in front of their house, including a young sapling planted for the Queen’s Jubilee and nurtured for the last year, have been totally destroyed by operated machinery supplied by the Council.  Sarah Nicmanis, Cambridge Green Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, who met with Ms King and Mr Rock, said “The council’s disorganised approach is making a joke of their biodiversity pledges but no one is laughing.  Staff who are used to making grass neat, short and tidy and applying weedkillers need to be retrained to stop this destruction of our local nature.  After all, wilder areas are just as attractive for recreation as mown lawn.  This week, a fellow Green colleague told me they saw a child walking on the mown area at Cherry Hinton Hall, then stopping and purposefully moving to one of the wilder areas to walk through the long grass!”

Not only did contractors assume it was ok to mow grass verges, effectively ridding Coleridge of its shared public pollinator flowers, but they also failed to recognise that the plants in front of Ms King and Mr Rock’s home were on their own land hence why the plants and the tree had been planted there. 

Di King said: “We provided the plants to benefit us and passers-by and to benefit nature, and the tree was planted specifically for the Queen’s Jubilee last year and the Canopy appeal, and we’ve been nurturing it throughout the drought, saving the cold water that we use before we shower and using that to keep the tree alive through last year’s awful hot summer.  It flowered for the first time this year which we were very pleased about.  There were bulbs in there that have had their heads cut off and shrubs that have been shredded.  I am also concerned that the perennials won’t recover as they have been cut right back.  Now it looks dreadful.”

Her partner, Sean Rock, added: “It just seems to be reckless, thoughtless, damaging and unnecessary. We need to be respecting nature: what nature does for us, what nature does for the planet, how people get a lot of joy and pleasure from it and how it benefits mental health.  Then someone has just come along and used a mechanical machine to chop it down.  Lots of effort, love and nurturing was put into that area and it was destroyed in a matter of seconds on private property.”

“It seems to be part of a much bigger issue of a lack of coherent policy and practice on managing the environment,” Di King added, “There doesn’t seem to be a working relationship with Plant Life (the Council’s partner on biodiversity) and there is a lack of following through into practice.”  

Sarah Nicmanis agreed with Di King, and said:  “In a climate and biodiversity emergency, there must be joined- up thinking between council bodies so they can deliver on their publicly-declared pledges to nature.  Also, I am wondering why all this mowing is being done when the Council is strapped for cash?”

Contact sarahnicmanis@gmail.com for more information. 

The Fanshawe Road re-development has forced residents to leave their homes and raises questions about the affordability of the new homes being built

Later this year Cambridge City Council will be seeking planning permission to replace 32 homes in Fanshawe Road with 93 units. 44 of these are said to be for ‘affordable rent’ although we know from bitter experience that developers often manage to scale down the number of affordable homes during the building process.

Amazingly, the majority of the residents have already been persuaded to vacate their homes. Many who had settled in Coleridge, some with children at local schools, have moved to the outskirts of Cambridge – not being able to afford the offered City Council’s alternative accommodation. Sarah Nicmanis, Green Party City Council Candidate for Coleridge, was shocked to learn that the council normally encourages residents to move as soon as the Council’s Housing Scrutiny Committee gives outline approval for a development and even before planning approval is sought.  This is because our planning system favours developers, so that the Council can take this step knowing that planning permission is likely to be granted.

There is no guarantee that the rents for the 44 flats will be truly affordable. Replies from Coleridge residents to the Green Party newsletter informing them about these changes showed that there was confusion about the difference between social and affordable housing.  It is confusing!  This rent is worked out by a Rent Officer according to a tenant’s circumstances and is assessed every two years. The deceptively named affordable rent was introduced by the coalition government a decade ago to enable social housing providers to charge up to 80% of market rent levels for letting homes. In the exorbitantly priced housing market in Cambridge this is simply unaffordable to most people. Lewis Herbert, Coleridge ward councilor, ex-leader of the City Council and inaugural chair of the Fast Growth Cities group, stated last summer that there was a “real need” to increase the amount of council housing in the city promising that there would be 44 “affordable homes for council rent”, in Coleridge.  Unless there is a firm commitment to make these social or fair rents it will do nothing to alleviate the excess of 8000 households who are on the housing waiting list. And we know too that a commitment to build social rent houses or flats itself means little for reducing the housing shortage for families on low incomes unless these are funded in such a way as to prevent them disappearing into the housing market after a very few years.

So, on Fanshawe Road the promise to provide “affordable housing” caused 22 households to be forced out of Cambridge and lose their fairly-rented homes.  Sarah Nicmanis will campaign against this unfair development in the run up to the planning decision in November this year.

Contact sarahnicmanis@gmail.com if you would like to get involved.

Sarah Nicmanis, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate and Green Party City Council Candidate for Coleridge, Naomi Bennett, Green Party City Councillor in Abbey, and Jacqueline Whitmore, Green Party City Council Candidate for Queen Edith’s ward, met with Junior Doctors striking at Addenbrookes on Friday morning.  

Junior doctors who currently make up about half of the medical workforce [1] have seen a fall in their pay since 2008, which simply does not match up to the intensified demands of the job today.  Greens understand that, like with our teachers and our nurses, life has become increasingly more difficult for the junior doctor which has led to them striking with heavy hearts.  However, the brave commitment to see this change through is necessary to prevent further damage to our precious NHS by our government. 

The Greens talked to the junior doctors at the picket line who said they are striking for the following reasons: due to staff shortages, it’s difficult for them to have annual leave approved; often during a 12 hour shift of constant firefighting, junior doctors do not even get a single break; many shifts run well over the contracted 12 hours; and many have over £250,000 of debt from the student loans incurred during the six years of training and lost earnings which the current pay starting at £14 an hour does not do anything to address if you take the expensive cost of living and the exorbitant rents in Cambridge into account.

Tanmay Anand, a key member from the local British Medical Association membership and a Junior Doctor, pointed to what this lapse in investment means for patients: “What I worry about as a junior doctor in training is that the quality of healthcare that you provide to society is impacted on how good that system of healthcare is.  When it comes to those complex cases, the opportunity to train up consultants to be completely competent and capable in handling those worse case scenarios is slipping.  One of my biggest fears is that after all of these years, this immense investment in time, in money, in higher education, in debt, in how we live our life – at the end of it, we won’t have the main thing we want to show for it which is that expertise and that competence as fully qualified consultants to deal with whatever comes through the door in the hospital and deal with it in a way that we can feel proud of.”

Sarah Nicmanis, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Cambridge Green Party said:

“The junior doctors are doing a humanely wise thing by striking and bringing the British people’s attention to an NHS in crisis.  Junior doctors must be valued so that this caring profession can continue to function. Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party stands firmly with our junior doctors to prevent further decimation of our beloved NHS.”

The Green Party is committed to properly funding our NHS and would raise funding by £6bn a year until 2030, with a further £1bn per year for nursing higher education. 

We must all face up to the reality of worsening climate catastrophes

I thought I knew all about the dangers of climate breakdown, but I was in for a shock when I attended Bill McGuire’s talk about his book, ‘Hothouse Earth’ on the 30^th March. I had lulled myself into thinking that we had time to put things right so that my son would be spared a future of unstoppable environmental catastrophe. But that danger is still very much alive. Bill McGuire writes: “this is the hothouse earth we are committed to living on; one that would be utterly alien to our grandparents…A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world than its grandparents.  Compared with someone lucky enough to be born in 1960, one study estimates that – on average – they will experience seven times more heatwaves, twice as many droughts and three times as many floods and harvest failures.  The reality could very well be far worse, and it will be for the billions of vulnerable people living in the majority world.”

Bill McGuire represents a scientific consensus that keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees centigrade is now very unlikely – in fact, probably, this point will be passed within the next decade. So, very rapid action is needed to limit the severity and regularity of the catastrophes already upon us. Every fraction of a degree above 1.5 matters so we have to try to all act with urgency to do things differently. I should have already faced up to the implications of the flooding in Pakistan, leaving a third of the country under water and the fifty-degree temperatures last summer in both Pakistan and India. I should have absorbed the implications of the trend here in Cambridge with temperatures of 37 degrees and 40 degrees in the last three years. Bill McGuire pointed out the added complication that 2023 is an El Nino year so the temperature rise will be speeded up. In Cambridgeshire and all the low-lying areas around the world there is the added threat and promise of sea level rises. A massive change in our coastline is inevitable by the end of the century given the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere and this may be much sooner because of the worsening rate at which ice is melting in Greenland and Antarctica.

The talk was hosted by Friends of the River Cam who campaign against the killing of our precious river through over-abstraction, pollution – including the regular illegal dumping in it of raw sewage by Anglian Water and the massive unsustainable growth of our City which compounds both the water shortage and the pollution of the river.

A couple of days before the talk, Cambridgeshire County Councillors voted to support the Cambourne to Cambridge busway so seeming to turn away from our dire predicament. Jean Glasberg, Green Candidate in Newnham has called the proposal: “environmental vandalism”. If it finally goes ahead, this busway will involve pouring millions of tons of concrete – embodying high levels of CO2 in its production – and plough through our precious greenbelt, cutting down 800 carbon-absorbing trees in one of the oldest traditional orchards in the country. Cllr Hannah Copley argues that the alternative proposal from Smarter Cambridge Transport and Cambridge Past, Present and Future, which involves relatively minor changes to existing roads to deliver excellent bus connectivity without huge embodied emissions makes much more sense. It will not only save the cash-strapped councils around £200 million but will preserve biodiversity and the green spaces that we so desperately need.  Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party oppose this scheme and stand with the many Cambridge residents who reject it and made their feelings known during a flawed consultation process which packaged the busways along with other transport proposals. We Greens oppose all the Council proposals for busways as well as the road expansion happening in our area. All this is to provide connectivity for development which feeds an addiction to unsustainable growth. If our planet is to continue to sustain life, then we must radically revise our approach to building and infrastructure.

It can only be positive to spend time with others, facing the reality of climate breakdown and discussing what we must do to limit it. We should all seek out the openings that are available to do this in our workplaces, unions, friendship groups, and political parties. I feel even more determined now, to campaign for policy change locally and to join with others in London on April 21^st at the “Big One” as we carry the message to central government.