What do the local parties in Cambridge say?

The university city of Cambridge has become synonymous with the government's growth plans, but it is also regularly quoted as being one of the most unequal cities in the country. As voters head to the polls, what do the main national parties say about the issues locally?

Cambridge City Council has been run by Labour since 2014 and the party has a slim majority, holding 23 of the 42 seats.

Fifteen of those seats will be up for election this time around, 11 of which are being defended by Labour. If it loses a small number of those, it could lose control of the administration.

The Liberal Democrats are the next biggest party, followed by the Greens, while the Conservatives and Your Party have one councillor each.

The candidates from the main national parties joined a debate on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's Chris Mann show.

Labour's Cameron Holloway, the leader of the council since May last year, said he was "very proud" of the administration's record.

"We've built 700 modern energy-efficient council homes, we've halved the council's carbon emissions, we're on track for a net-zero council by 2030, planted 4,000 new trees, we give over £1m every year to charities and community groups, we've built new community centres, new play parks and there's so much more."

He said the authority was "promising a further 1,300" council homes in the next decade, as "we know that there are thousands of people who are on our housing register who are in real need of housing".

Holloway acknowledged Cambridge was a "very unequal city", with "very rich people alongside people who are struggling a lot and that is very uncomfortable for any of us to see".

"That is why I've come into politics, to try to change that. In the last year, our long-term rough sleeper numbers have gone from 44 to 34, a 25% reduction," he said.

The leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, Tim Bick, claimed some of the "very basic services like public toilets, street cleaning, antisocial behaviour patrols, fly-tipping actions, housing maintenance, are things that have been cut back or underfunded by the Labour council".

He said he believed the council has "lost touch with those basics, things that people see the moment they walk outside their front door, and those are the priorities that I would like to put right".

Bick said that inequality in the city was "overwhelmingly driven by the shortage of housing and I don't think any politician should escape from that.

"It causes people to live in inadequate conditions, to pay way above the odds for where they live and disadvantages an incredibly large number of people, especially young people."

He said he wanted to see more social houses built, as well as saying it was "particularly disappointing" that a planned development of about 8,600 homes has "stalled because of the government changing its mind at the last minute".

Elliot Tong, the deputy leader of the Greens at the council, raised concerns over the £50m redevelopment of the Grade II listed Guildhall building, which included new work spaces and meeting rooms for council staff.

"Infrastructure across our city is really struggling. We're seeing things like community centres falling apart and this money needs to be put into what matters, not vanity projects that primarily benefit councillors and their colleagues."

He also said he had visited the new housing development Darwin Green where "there are big plots of land with planned supermarket and planned school".

"We want housing but we're not going to put up with low-quality slop," he said.

"We need to make sure that every house has things that people rely on because the homes themselves there are lovely, but people had real concerns about whether or not their child could grow up in that community, and that's totally heartbreaking."

Three years ago Delowar Hossain won the first Tory seat on the council in more than a decade amidst the controversial plans for a congestion charge, which have since been dropped.

The taxi driver said there were currently 12 roads closed to through traffic, such as Storey's Way and Mill Road.

"They close all the connecting roads and divert all of the traffic to main road," he said.

"They want to show the people it is congested, [so] we need congestion charge, but it is the wrong ideology."

He also claimed Labour had "spent money unwisely", questioning the Guildhall redevelopment in the light of local government reorganisation where a different council chamber may be chosen.

Former journalist John McKay, standing for Reform UK in King's Hedges, in the north of the city, said people were "absolutely not" getting value for their council tax.

He said: "I've engaged with people all over Cambridge, especially in the north of Cambridge, where I think there's two-tier government system."

He added that "all the money goes to the people in the city and the student area whereas the people in north Cambridge are left behind and forgotten".

He said those running local government in the city "should be ashamed of themselves".

McKay added that people's main concerns were the cost-of-living crisis, while there were also problems with fly-tipping, transport and closing roads to traffic.

A full list of candidates taking part in the Cambridge City Council elections on 7 May can be found on the authority's website.

Do you have a story suggestion for Cambridgeshire? Contact us below.

Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.