Milton Detached

This paper considers how our local councils treat "Milton Detached", the area of Milton parish accessed via Chesterton Fen Road. The statistics relating to this area are:

Milton Parish Council

We spend the money we collect from residents in a number of ways:

Some of these activities do, in theory at least, benefit the residents of Milton Detached. For example there is no reason why they shouldn't avail themselves of any of the facilities we offer, and they can (I assume?) hire the Community Centre at the same reduced rates as other Milton residents. But the reality is that they don't and they can't easily anyway unless they have a car.

In addition we make no effort to tell them that the facilities are available to them. Village View isn't distributed in Milton Detached, nor is What's On in Milton and there is no parish noticeboard in Milton Detached hence it's unlikely that residents are even aware of the things we do.

South Cambridgeshire District Council

I'm not in a position to comment on how SCDC treats our residents in Milton Detached in general, but one specific area should be a cause for concern: there is no polling station in Milton Detached for elections at any level. Hence anyone in Milton Detached who wants to vote has to make their way to Milton, which is difficult unless they are fit or have access to a car. Is it any wonder that few residents bother to join the electoral roll?

Conclusions

I think it's clear from the above that Milton Detached residents get a raw deal three times over:

I think we've consistently failed the residents of Milton Detached over a very long time. The question I have to ask the council is: are we happy for this to continue? And, if we're not, what are we going to do about it?

Paul Oldham


  1. source SCDC finance department: 63 band D equivalents (made up mainly of over 100 band A dwelling). Total number of band D equivalents in Milton 1617
  2. source Cambridgeshire County Council Research Group, based on mid 1998 population figures
  3. source SCDC electoral roll
  4. centre to centre via the shortest route - which is the river in the former case