Policy S/SH – Settlement Hierarchy

The village of Melbourn has been identified within the emerging Settlement Hierarchy as a Minor Rural Centre with the adjoining village of Meldreth identified as Group Village. Melbourn was allocated as a Minor Rural Centre in the previously adopted South Cambridgeshire Local Plan 2018.

There is however a strong sustainability argument that these villages, which have both grown in population over recent years to around 5000 residents, should be considered jointly as a Rural Centre designation in the new Settlement Hierarchy given the expanding population and level of services and transport links the villages enjoy.
Melbourn & Meldreth (M&M) represent an unconstrained sustainable location for growth of both housing and employment development within and the largest village in the Southwest area of the district. The village has grown over recent years following the delivery of a number of residential schemes in both villages with further growth identified though two new housing allocations in the emerging Local Plan. Melbourn in particular already enjoys a good level of employment development including the Melbourn Science Park.
Villages services include:

• Shops including Coop; Butchers; Farm Shop; Pubs; Post Office
• Melbourn Village College (Secondary Education);
• Melbourn Primary School;
• Melbourn Science Park;
• Saxon Way Business Park;
• Doctors Surgery & Health Centre;
• Library;
• Sports Centre

The level of services is generally greater than many of the other the other Minor Rural Centres identified in the emerging Settlement Hierarchy and equal too or greater than those of other Rural Centre's of a similar population.
Public Transport

M&M benefit from some of the best levels of access to public transport in the whole district which appears to have been overlooked through the emerging plan process

M&M are served by the Guided Bus and National Rail services which include:

• Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Route A between Royston, Cambridge and St Ives. This service provides connections to Cambridge City Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, and Cambridge Science Park. Services run every hour Monday – Saturday daytimes, via Royston Road.
• Thameslink railway services between Cambridge and London King’s Cross. This service was upgraded in 2018 and now operates every half hour during weekdays, every hour at weekends. The service operates from Meldreth railway station, where passenger numbers are increasing.
Cambridge Greenways

Access to district wide cycle links is also available in Melbourn. The Greater Cambridge Partnership is currently working to deliver a network of ‘Greenways’ linking Cambridge with surrounding towns and villages. These are intended to form high quality cycle and walking routes, replicating the success of existing routes such as the cycleway alongside the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Funding has been allocated to deliver a Greenway between Cambridge and Melbourn; the northern part of this between Harston and Foxton has been completed.
Settlement Hierarchy

The proposed settlement hierarchy identifies five allocated Rural Centres in the district and includes two other locations which combine closely related villages; Histon & Impington and Great Shelford & Stapleford.
In particular M&M are very similar in scale to Great Shelford & Stapleford and share a similar level of services. Whilst M&M are further from the urban area of Cambridge, they do benefit from excellent transport links including a rail link into central Cambridge from Meldreth with a 20-minute travelling time and a direct link into London Kings Cross in just over an hour. There is also direct access to the guided bus into central Cambridge which stops on the high street every hour

M&M have a level of services and transport links which generally matches and, in some cases, exceed those found in the other identified Rural Centres. None of the other Minor Rural centres have this level of public transport accessibility or are they located on a primary transport route (A10).

A further advantage of identifying M&M as a Rural Centre is that it is not constrained by the green belt. This will allow both housing and employment growth to come forward without the loss of green belt land whereas three of the other Rural Centres are all constrained by the green belt requiring special circumstances to be identified for any edge of settlement developments. Melbourn in particular is capable of delivering development of a scale which exceeds the proposed 30 dwellings windfall limit for proposed for Minor Rural Centre and has land fronting on to the A10 and which is well suited to employment development without green belt restrictions.