Draft Greater Cambridge Planning Obligations Supplementary Planning Document Consultation

It is accepted that planning proposals should mitigate their transport impacts and that this could include for planning obligations to deliver financial contributions or physical infrastructure as may be required to mitigate the development’s impacts, set against the normal CiL 122 tests to be necessary, directly related to the development and fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development. This is confirmed by paragraph 10.1 of the draft SPD ‘…. to mitigate the direct impact of the development scheme on the transport network and to make the proposed development acceptable in Highways terms’. It is a site specific matter to mitigate its specific impacts.

In parallel to the emerging SPD the County Highway Authority, at its 16 January 2025 ‘Environment and Green Investment Committee’, endorsed its own prepared ‘Transport Position Statement’ for the emerging larger boundary for the North East Cambridge Area Action Plan (NECAAP). This document has not been subject to public consultation and none of the background evidence documents to support its content and conclusion are included for scrutiny. An objection is lodged to any suggested link between the non-consulted and non-evidenced Transport Position Statement and the emerging updated Greater Cambridge Planning Obligations SPD. Furthermore, the Transport Position Statement asks for financial contributions towards strategic infrastructure to support an enlarged action plan area that itself carries only very limited weight because its enacting policies are held in the emerging Joint Local Plan and emerging NECAAP which are still in the early stages of the plan-making process.