Cambridgeshire Mayoral Elections May 2017

[LocalEditorCambridge]

On May 8th people across Cambridgeshire will get the chance to vote for the first Mayor for the new Combined Authority for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.

The decisions this mayor takes will inevitably impact the lives of families across the region - and so we thought it would be helpful to start a thread here to raise awareness of the candidates, their policies and their remit.

Also, if you are interested in asking them anything directly let us know - we could contact the candidates and see if they are interested in joining us for a Mumsnet webchat.

The candidates are:

James Palmer - Conservatives
Julie Howell - Green Party
Rod Cantrill - Lib Dems
Kevin Price - Labour
Paul Bullen - UKIP
Peter Dawe OBE - Indpendent

The Lib Dem candidate is proposing a daft 'light rail' scheme that looks very like the disastrous guided bus plans featuring in the city deal bus way scheme. Upon emailing to enquire if he supports the busway (and the destruction of coton, the west fields and the whole coton corridor) we have had no reply.

The Tory candidate featured on a very glossy leaflet with Heidi Allen and when we emailed to ask if he supports the busway, we had a personal reply at around midnight saying that he did not.

Coupled with how he turned around east cambs council, I shall probably be voting Tory...

Not impressed by any of the mayor candidates in the latest combined leaflet. I would not vote for any of them - except that of course it's even worse to not vote at all.

Tories took Cambridgeshire.

Has the mayor been announced yet? Can't find it.

It's being counted now. Results were forecast for about 5. Maybe earlier. Apparently there was less than 35% turnout

First round results indicate big split in both turnout and voter preferences between city/south cambs and the wider county. No surprise there. It just confirms what a complete nonsensical fudge the creation of the office of mayor is.

Tory mayor

The elections returned both a Tory mayor and a Tory majority on the County Council. This is clearly at odds with the voting preferences in Cambridge, which has not a single Conservative City or County Councillor. Local government arrangements around Cambridge leave us high and dry.

Exactly