Liberal Democrat Manifesto '99
Leisure and the Arts
Liberal Democrats place a high value on the Council’s activities in leisure and the arts. Our strong preference is for spending on schemes that have a social benefit beyond the private benefit enjoyed by those who take part in or attend events. That means that we value events linked to education, such as the Children’s Festival, to economic development tourism and the future of the city centre, such as the Arts Theatre and Cinema, and to health and safety, such as swimming - especially for young people. We confirm our intention to provide free swimming for all young people. We will restore the council’s contribution to school swimming. We will also institute free swimming for for carers accompanying people with disabilities.
We also recognise the value of arts, sports and leisure activities in helping to divert young people away from anti-social or criminal activities. When young people complain that there is nothing for them to do, as in East Chesterton where we support strongly the idea of a community centre, the Council has a pressing social reason to intervene. Although it is right to emphasise the benefits of arts, sports and leisure spending for young people, we also recognise the social benefits, especially educational benefits, of such spending for the community as a whole. And although we strongly support locally based projects - including the upkeep of recreation areas and play equipment - we also recognise the importance of larger arts venues for economic development, for promoting overnight-stay tourism and for encouraging a wider sense of community.
Recent decisions by the Labour-controlled council have caused a crisis in the arts in Cambridge. Massive cuts in the funding of local arts and sports groups have accompanied the cutting of the Children’s Festival. At the same time, Labour has increased the City Council’s bureaucracy. Worst of all, the combination of Labour’s philistinism and parochialism contributed to the threats of closure to the Arts Cinema and Theatre.
Our immediate priorities are therefore:
- To restore good relations with the Arts Theatre
- To make sure that the Arts Cinema’s successor maintains the highest standard of educational and artistic programming
- To restore the Children’s Festival
- To restore grants to local arts and sports organisations
Beyond the sphere of the Council’s own spending, local government can have a useful role in encouraging the private development of leisure facilities in appropriate places, and it can use its planning powers and its own land-holdings to good effect. We support the development of mixed leisure facilities at the Cattle Market site (though we welcome efforts to minnimise the schemes impact on traffic). We are also pressing for some of Cambridge’s other obvious gaps in commercial leisure - an ice rink for example - to be filled as part of the future development of the Chesterton Sidings site.
We have never been impressed with the administrative expense attached to the leisure card or with its use as an excuse to cut off from funding educationally important bodies such as the Botanical Gardens. We are even less impressed with Labour’s doubling of the cost of the card for the neediest citizens and their attempt to make students pay the higher non-concessionary rate. We will completely overhaul the scheme.
The City Council’s leisure function, along with its role in public health, gives it a role in promoting health. We support working with the Health Authority to establish a Healthy Living Centre in Cambridge, possibly at Manor Community College.
Safe enjoyment of our recreation grounds by both young and old can be enhanced by the presence of trained council staff, combining the overt monitoring role of the park-keeper of yore with the covert roles of play leader and youth worker. We were glad to see a positive outcome from the pilot scheme for these Park Rangers and will provide funding to cover more local play areas and parks.
The Council’s powers over allotments are important for many people. We support the government’s decision that allotment land should not be alienated unless councils can show that they have made good faith efforts to market it as allotment land. We do not believe that the present Labour-controlled council has made such efforts.
The Parkside Pool and the Arts Theatre clearly illustrate Labour’s approach. Instead of refurbishing Parkside Pool, Labour first did nothing and then blew £4m of the council’s capital reserves on a new building which will contain a swimming facility not much improved from the old one.
On the Arts Theatre, Labour refused all calls to help the Arts Theatre Trust to clear its debts and forced the Arts Theatre Trust into a fire sale of assets, including the sale of the Arts Cinema, threatening the future of both institutions.