Mayor of St Neots — July round-up

Director of Neotists Richard Slade was elected as Mayor of St Neots in May 2024 and has been writing a regular column for the Hunts Posts since then. For those who don’t get the paper delivered or subscribe we it thought it would be useful for members to  read about it too.

By Richard Slade

My second month as mayor of St Neots has been quieter than the last. I still had about 14 meetings to attend. These were mostly procedural and where we bring councillors and officers together at various committee meetings to make decisions related to operational work we do at St Neots Town Council.

In one of these meetings, we made the important decision to agree on the council’s climate action plan for the next few years. The plan outlines our priorities to reduce our carbon footprint by using renewable energy across our buildings, moving our fleet of vehicles and tools to electric, exploring how we can increase biodiversity across the town and more vitally working with you, the residents and businesses so we can all get a little closer to Net Zero.

We held our second grants committee of the year, where we decided on the organisations that benefit from public money. We gave grants to a wide range of groups, ranging from gardening and tennis clubs, community and volunteer centres, the Living History Festival which returns later this year and is organised by St Neots Museum and other groups supporting those with mental health and financial difficulties.

I volunteered at the council’s regular Youth Cafe at Love’s Farm House in what I can only describe as a busy two hours of taking orders, cooking food and serving drinks to the 70-plus young people who turned up after school to play games and wind down from their school day. It was a lot of fun but I definitely overdid the waffle orders so the youth officer Hannah and I had to finish the last few.

The mayoress and I attended the most talked about events in civic calendar — the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire’s Garden party and Independence Day celebrations at Alconbury. Unfortunately, they both happened to be on the same day this year. So we started with an eclectic afternoon of rubbing shoulders with mayors, lord lieutenants, sheriffs, police commissioners and more. We then dashed over to the air base in Alconbury to be part of their yearly celebrations which included lots of authentic American food stalls and entertainment. At the end was an amazing firework display that could be seen for miles and enjoyed by those on and off base.

My final duties of the month were to put aside the mayoral chain and volunteer at the amazing St Neots Festival in Priory Park. I’ve been one of the organisers since we started the project back in 2021, a year before I became a councillor. With a volunteer team of 100s and despite the torrential rain the night before, the sun came out and over 12,000 residents came along to enjoy the music, arts and unexpected delights we had promised from the start. The public response since has been lovely with so many kind comments that it has made all the hard work of nine months alongside my council duties so worth it.