Cambridge City Council’s vision is ‘One Cambridge – Fair For All’.

In achieving this vision, the Council has set out three key strategic priorities – tackling poverty and inequalities; addressing the climate emergency; and achieving a sustainable future for local services in Cambridge.

Local people in Cambridge are confronting existing and new challenges in the wake of the pandemic. At the same time Cambridge City Council, in common with many other councils, has identified significant and growing financial pressures on its services. Council leaders, recognised a pressing need for significant change to ways of working in order to improve the experience of services and outcomes for both local communities and staff, whilst also delivering investment and sustainable returns for Cambridge.

We are working closely with council leadership and in-house teams to co-develop the Our Cambridge programme. The Our Cambridge programme is designed to transform ways of working, embedding collaboration with communities and local partners. The aim is to put people at the heart of everything the Council does, creating a prosperous, sustainable and fair future for everyone in Cambridge.

In the last year our team have worked to model costs and benefits and to develop a multi-year framework for the council to ensure that the £4.1m business case will deliver meaningful and sustainable change against each of the three strategic priorities. The programme now covers three key workstreams that touch on every aspect of the Council’s work.

Following approval of the overall plan and business case, we have worked closely with colleagues from across the Council to enable rapid programme mobilisation. This has included developing projects and supporting initial service reviews in priority areas, as well as organisational development aimed at engaging staff around the change and facilitating a dialogue with key stakeholders throughout the programme’s development.

We are proud to have played a part in helping Cambridge to develop its ambition for ‘One Cambridge – Fair For All’ into a living programme of activities and work, co-designed to benefit all communities in Cambridge and to deliver a better future for all.