Today was the County Council AGM. The Chairman, John Powley, was re-elected for a second term which is the convention. It was by a large majority which  was right and proper as John has worked very hard and with distinction. For some reason Lib Dem Caroline Shepherd chose to vote against John. Odd and impolite.

Other committees were confirmed, some minor changes made and I had the opportunity to notify the Council of my recent Cabinet changes.

As it was the AGM much of the business was procedural which  we covered fairly quickly. There were two Lib Dem motions.

The first was from Cllr Nethsingha who was seeking additional funding for the music service. Unfortunately for Cllr Nethsingha, but fortunate for the people of Cambridgeshire, the Cambridgeshire Music Partnership had recently been granted a large sum of money from the Art Council England. This sort of made the whole motion redundant and a bit silly. Never mind no harm done.

The second motion was from Lib Dem Cllr Wilkins who wanted to alert the council to the possibility of companies moving into the Enterprise Zone to avoid business rates. As if we had not thought of that !!!!!

I sit on the LEP board and on the Enterprise Zone steering group which was formed to manage concerns like this. Let me be clear. The EZ at Alconbury is a fantastic opportunity for this area and one that I fully support. Shame the Lib Dems are always so negative about things.

I was more concerned about the impact that the Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert resisting widening of the A14 might have on the Enterprise Zone. Is he the only person in the County who doesn’t want the A14 improving?

Lots of oral questions to Tony Orgee were followed by a question to me from Cllr Hoy asking me for an update on the Wisbech 2020 vision. I was able to tell  Council  about all the exciting things going on.

And then …………………. it was all over by 1245. A bite of lunch and then back to my office to catch up.