I strongly endorse what GCSP says in the section headed “ensuring a deliverable plan - water supply”. I would, however, go further because, as recognised in the 2020 Greater Cambridge Chalk Streams Project Report commissioned by Cambridge City Council and Cambridge Water Company, restoration of the chalk streams is needed. This seems to me to be potentially relevant to planning permission conditions and s106 agreements. Further, the issue of sewage outflows, for example in Haslingfield, needs to be addressed. In addition, it is not clear to me whether the assessments made for GCSP, which underlie its conclusions, take into account potential water usage during construction, including of large infrastructure projects, such as East West Rail and CSET. Finally, I agree with recommendation 13 of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate’s October 2021 Final Report.

There are two other infrastructure areas in respect of which I would expect to see similar assessments and these are education and health infrastructure and, most especially hospitals. Whilst neither goes to the immediate deliverability of functional homes (unlike water) both, like transport, go to “everyday quality of life”. The former, and primary healthcare establishments, are mentioned in the infrastructure delivery plan-related November 2020 evidence base document, but hospitals are not mentioned in it at all. Why?

As the county council’s response to the Ox-Cam Arc consultation makes clear, the precise scope of educational establishments, funding of improvements or new establishments and timing are to a considerable extent, outside their control. This is also true of hospital infrastructure and there are very considerable issues - https://www.bbc.com/news/59372348. In addition, it is clear that every one of the three hospital projects currently proposed by CUHFT will require a very significant element of non-governmental funding and that the realistic scope and timing of each is most uncertain (despite the timing indicated on the websites for the cancer and children’s hospitals and in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus Vision 2050 (“Vision 2050”) - see its page 34, which includes one of the very few mentions of the hospitals in this document, despite their central importance to the community and to the current success of the biomedical campus). Indeed, it is unclear how many of them are realistic.