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A petition calling for a referendum on proposals for a Cambridge road charge has reached the threshold required for a debate by Cambridgeshire County Council.
The petition, launched by the Cambs Against Congestion Charge group, has exceeded 3,000 signatures required for it to come before the full council.
The petition, at bit.ly/3WTnxUW, has so far gathered almost 6,000 signatures. It says the “ill-considered scheme” will cause “untold hardship and inconvenience for the majority of our community” within the city and beyond. All signatories have to be within the Cambridgeshire area for the petition to be considered valid.
A statement released on behalf of the Cambridgeshire Conservative group leaders, Cllr Heather Williams (South Cambridgeshire), Cllr Anna Bailey (East Cambridgeshire), Cllr Jonathan Gray (Huntingdonshire), Cllr Chris Biden (Fenland), and Cllr Steve Count (Cambridgeshire County), welcomed a debate on the charge.
It said: “The current proposal for the Cambridge Congestion Charge is one of the most unpopular and unjust proposals in the history of local government in Cambridgeshire.
“This simply cannot be introduced without a countywide referendum. We will continue to fight against the introduction of this charge and we encourage all in Cambridgeshire to sign the petition and add their voices to help in the fight to stop the charge.”
Anthony Browne, Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, has written to the county council’s Liberal Democrat leader, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, urging her to give residents a referendum vote on any final proposal for road charging by the GCP. The council, as the highways authority, will have the final decision over any road charge.
Mr Browne said: “The public response to the GCP’s proposals to introduce congestion charging in Cambridge has been on a scale unlike anything I have seen before. It is clearly a hugely controversial issue which has provoked very strong reactions.
“If introduced, the congestion charge will have profound financial and social implications for everyone who travels in Cambridge. The GCP is running a public consultation until December 23 and after that, might well come up with a different plan from the current proposals. What they absolutely must not do is assume that any revised proposal will be acceptable to the people of Cambridgeshire.
“The public petition calling for a referendum already has thousands of signatures, and I would encourage people to keep signing it to signal that they want the opportunity to vote on this issue directly.
“That is why I have written to Lucy Nethsingha to ask her and her colleagues at the county council to make a commitment to the people of Cambridgeshire that any final proposal from the GCP will be subject to a countywide referendum. This is the only way to get a definitive answer on such a hotly-disputed question.”