The Council has proposed to provide the vast majority of its new housing through strategic urban extensions to the City of Cambridge and new settlements. Whilst this approach has its merits, the approach would contribute towards a notable loss of Green Belt land and undeveloped greenfield land. The Green Belt is fundamental to UK planning and is in place to ensure that urban sprawl from major settlements is contained, and to encourage brownfield development (para 138, NPPF).

Development on Green Belt land should be viewed unfavourably by the Council and should only exceptionally be pursued after the authority has fully examined all other reasonable options for meeting its identified need for development (Paragraph 141 of the NPPF).

The above factors identify that there is a clear need for the Council to consider a wider range of options that can help meet a full range of housing needs. It is proposed that the council should allocate a larger amount of housing to rural areas through the redevelopment of windfall sites, which should include farm buildings that are contiguous to settlements. Such opportunities, which should be logical and positively enabled through the Plan, are needlessly curtailed through the existing approach.

On the one hand, the draft Local Plan recognises the value of windfall sites to help contribute housing need. However, under the current proposals, the Plan approach is failing to identify and optimise some windfall sites and the housing yield that can be achieved through them, due to the combination of excluding farm buildings/sites from settlement boundaries and applying low development thresholds to rural settlements, some of which like Meldreth, are highly sustainable and suitable locations for development. The Plan should therefore include Farm Buildings/sites that lie within or are contiguous with settlements to help ensure that the delivery of rural housing can be achieved through Windfall sites, whilst the present restrictions on development size at rural settlements should be reviewed and increased. Windfall sites should be maximised by the council, as they can help improve the sustainability and quality of rural environments, whilst reducing the loss of Green Belt and undeveloped greenfield land. Furthermore, developments can be focussed where suitable infrastructure exists, to ensure that these vital assets are not underplayed and ensure that the Council's Vision and Aims to create sustainable transport patterns can be comfortably achieved.