Wednesday, July 9, 2008

County Initiatives set to help Coleridge

At a briefing yesterday for Councillors in the City from the Conservative run County Council, a couple of initiatives were mentioned that should be good news for Coleridge.

The first is that following a pilot scheme in St Neots, the County Council trading standards department in association with the police has launched a Community Alcohol partnership in Cambridge to tackle underage drinking, and Coleridge is one of the three wards set to benefit. The aim is to get the various parties tackling underage drinking to work together to stop the problems. There will be work with retailers to stop under 18s buying alcohol. However, it was shocking to discover that many underage drinkers discovered by the police get their alcohol from adults and even their parents. So as well as involving the police to crack down on underage drinking in public, the the new campaign also involves education in schools and communication of the problems to adults.

The other initiative of interest was the suggestion that the Council could support community anti-speeding groups, who can hopefully monitor problem roads, identify drivers going to fast, which could either result in advice being issued by the police, or more targetted police enforcement action. I have long been disappointed with police response to the problems of speeding on various roads in the ward, and the inflexibility and cost of many of the proposed solutions to the problem such as traffic calming or fixed cameras - a community based approach could encourage more drivers to behave responsibly on their local roads.

Both these initiatives should have the ability to target action on those who aren't being responsible and are causing problems, and I fully support them.

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