The Future of Quayside

As I indicated in a previous post, the regulation of punting in Cambridge is a serious business, with safety problems relating to getting on and off punts, the problems of nuisance punt touting, issues about where punt businesses can operate from, as well as more general concerns about the role of punting in Cambridge tourism.

Keen observers of the Council's meetings schedule will have noticed a Strategy & Resources Special Committee Meeting last Monday, to discuss 'Quayside Property Matters'. In fact, this decision had been deferred from a recent scheduled meeting, and opposition Councillors (if not back-bench Lib Dem Councillors who should also be scrutinising these decisions) have held several meetings with Council officers to clarify the situation.

From the publicly available report:

The Council is currently seeking to register land ownership at Quayside with the Land Registry and is involved in other associated ownership disputes and litigation with interested parties here... A compromise agreement has been provisionally agreed between all of the parties, subject to formal acceptance, that should resolve and formalise the land ownership issues. As well as addressing the land ownership issues, the compromise agreement also addresses issues at Quayside such as health and safety, public access and safe use of the River, providing a long-term formal solution that has not previously existed.

The rest of the agenda item was a 'pink paper' report - not for public consumption. The meeting resulted in a relatively lively discussion involving whether the compromise agreement was in the Council's (and hence Cambridge's) best interest. I know that my Coleridge Labour colleagues on the City Council are very concerned to ensure that I give them full credit for everything they do, so I am happy to report that Cllr Herbert and myself spent a considerable period of time scrutinising the deal on the table, whether the Council could or should have done more to consult with other interested parties, and whether the deal sold the City down the river, so to speak.

Sadly I can't report the outcome as the final deal still needs to be agreed with the relevant parties, but I think this is an important decision for Cambridge, and I will be pressing for full details to be available when the agreement is finalised so we can judge how well the City Council has acted in the past, in agreeing this decision, and what the implications are going forwards.

Taking a Punt

I like punting, and indeed take it very seriously as this picture demonstrates:

I've been looking into various issues related to punting, which plays an important role in tourism in the City, but has its problems. The Council is faced with nuisance issues from punt touts, and health and safety issues such as the serious incident recently reported in the CEN.

Independent punters claim these problems come about because the Council is making it hard for them to operate safely - see http://www.cambridgerivertour.com/developments.html. There are some complex issues involved, but generally speaking I think we need to have some sensible and well regulated competition in the Cambridge punting market. The City Council certainly seems to have it in for independent punters - and there was controversy at the last Strategy and Resources committee over the Council's use of CCTV cameras to monitor their activities on Jesus Green, where the City Council has banned them from operating. Despite partially concealed (if signposted) cameras, and the fact that the Council was aware of the identities of at least some of the people it was spying on, it maintains that the cameras weren't covert, and were directed at stopping unlawful activities not spying on individuals, so didn't need authorisation under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Dubious in my opinion, and certainly enough for me to conclude that a precautionary approach to compliance with RIPA was not followed in this case - I take back all I said about big brother is generally well behaved.

The issues surrounding punting in Cambridge aren't about to go away any time soon, and I'm not sure the behaviour of the Council is helping things.