I have seen the new Greater Cambridge Local Plan, which proposes 20 homes to be built on land at the end of The Moor, Melbourn (incorrectly labelled as 'Moor Lane' on the plan) at site S/RRA/ML.
 
This is a highly inappropriate site for more development, especially one that runs directly counter to the Local Plan's stated aims to ""increase nature, wildlife and green spaces"" by building on Melbourn's last paddock.
 
Since [text redacted] 1999, 57 new dwellings have been built here, and another 29 on Moat Lane and Piggotts Close leading off the Moor. The Moorlands has been converted from a small nursing home into 35 independent living flats, and the Melbourn Village College has had new buildings added. I estimate there are over 300 more people living here than there were in 1999, all dependent on infrastructure designed for a school and a dozen houses. As a result the road is usually parked up between the Thatcher Stanford Close and the junction with High Street, leaving only a single lane open, the road is severely damaged from traffic, the pavement is damaged from cars and trucks pulling onto it. There is substantial pedestrian traffic up The Moor; children walking to the school, mothers and toddlers to the Little Hands Nursery and the children's playground, and retired people to the Bowls Club as well as residents of all ages. This combination of crowded vehicle traffic manoeuvring round densely parked cars and over pavements, a narrow and congested junction and heavy pedestrian traffic is already not safe. More houses built will only make it worse. Power cuts are frequent as the infrastructure is stressed (we are on a small 'spur' line), and broadband is very poor as too many connections are channelling down through one small sub-connection.
 
I understand we need more houses. My children are young adults facing the enormous cost of housing in Cambridgeshire. But this is not the place to put them without very substantial investment: installing traffic lights at the junction between The Moor and the High Street, upgrading infrastructure, and repairing the road and improving the pavement along *all* of The Moor, not just at the site of new housing.
 
Ideally, the Local Plan should find somewhere else to put the houses.