Draft Greater Cambridge Local Plan for consultation

Object

Representation ID: 211773

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

It is entirely possible to deliver a safe, high quality cycling route between West Cambridge and the Biomedical Campus that would support 20-minute journeys. However, existing routes fail to meet core design principles and are throttled by a small number of critical pinch points. Fen Causeway and Sheep’s Green Bridge significantly limit east-west cycling capacity. Sheep’s Green Bridge, at approximately 1.2 metres wide, cannot function as a strategic active travel link between two major employment centres. Further growth at West Cambridge and the Biomedical Campus is not sustainable without resolving these constraints.

Connectivity between West Cambridge and the Sidgwick Site must also be improved. At present, pressure is concentrated on Burrell’s Walk, which is already operating beyond a comfortable level for walking and cycling. Without additional parallel routes, connecting West Cambridge to Sidgwick Avenue and Barton Road, further development will degrade conditions for all users and undermine the attractiveness of active travel.

The Local Plan currently relies on the future Greater Cambridge Transport Strategy to resolve these issues. However, many of the required interventions are spatial or decision-based rather than purely financial and must be identified and safeguarded now. Without this, the Transport Strategy will be left attempting to retrofit solutions into corridors that have already been constrained by development decisions and without the political mandate needed to deliver the necessary change.

Object

Representation ID: 211774

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Cambourne is one of the most challenging locations in Greater Cambridge in which to deliver genuinely sustainable travel at scale. The Local Plan does not yet demonstrate that this challenge has been fully confronted.

The plan relies too heavily on future public transport investment to meet transport needs. However, even an ambitious mode share for bus and rail will be only a small percent of total journeys and a journey involving rail nearly always includes transport by another mode as well, whether that’s walking, cycling or driving.

Severance is the defining issue for Cambourne. While a range of new crossings is proposed, one including a bus and active travel-only link, there remains a strong emphasis on all-transport mode crossings. This is particularly concerning given the acknowledged shortcomings of the existing town centre, which is dominated by surface car parking and lacks the qualities of a walkable, connected place. Doubling Cambourne in size without fundamentally changing its movement structure risks reproducing these weaknesses at a larger scale.

The Local Plan should:
● Make permeability for walking, cycling and public transport the primary objective of stitching the settlement together, with a presumption against vehicular permeability between the existing and expanded Cambourne
● Require early delivery of strategic bus and active travel crossings across the A428 and rail corridor, tied to clear phasing triggers
● Secure a continuous, protected and legible primary cycle network linking neighbourhoods to the station, town centre, schools and employment.

Object

Representation ID: 211775

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

The Plan also refers to vehicular trip budgets as a control mechanism. While useful, a trip budget is not a substitute for a sustainable travel strategy and remains a car-centric way of framing transport outcomes. Without binding mode share and trip internalisation targets, a clear pipeline of transport interventions, and wider changes to the fabric of Cambourne such as new local amenities, trip budgets risk becoming aspirational rather than effective.

Object

Representation ID: 211776

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Camcycle considers that expanding Cambourne is a way of catering for the growth envisaged by the plan, but only if the Local Plan is honest about the scale of the challenge and willing to embed enforceable requirements that make sustainable travel the default rather than an assumption.

Object

Representation ID: 211777

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Camcycle is particularly concerned that the inclusion of Grange Farm risks undermining the credibility of the Plan’s wider sustainability narrative. Allocating development in locations that require extensive transport mitigation simply to function, rather than directing growth to places where sustainable travel can be the default from the outset, reflects a predict and provide approach rather than a genuinely sustainable spatial strategy. This concern is heightened by Greater Cambridge’s limited track record in
delivering complex public transport mitigation at the scale assumed here.

In contrast, other promoted locations in this part of the city form more coherent extensions of existing communities and align more closely with established and emerging transport corridors, but are excluded largely due to Green Belt considerations. The Plan does not make a convincing case that Grange Farm represents a more sustainable alternative.

The core issue here is strategic. The Plan needs to prioritise locations where sustainable travel can be the default because of proximity and network access, not locations that require speculative mitigation to overcome inherent constraints. This includes being braver about spatial choices, including where appropriate a more honest review of Green Belt sites that could deliver sustainable urban form.

The Local Plan should:
● Remove the Grange Farm allocation from the Plan
● Avoid substituting constrained urban or edge of Cambridge sites with remote or poorly connected locations
● Prioritise development in locations where sustainable travel can be the default from day one, without reliance on speculative or uncommitted transport mitigation.

Object

Representation ID: 211990

Received: 30/01/2026

Respondent: Camcycle

Legally compliant? Not specified

Sound? Not specified

Duty to co-operate? Not specified

Camcycle is also concerned about the transparency and assumptions within individual site assessments in the HELAA.

For example, the West Fields site between Barton Road and West Cambridge (Site ID 115681) has been assessed using very low housing densities and highly conservative assumptions about future mode share. These assumptions are at odds with what is already being delivered immediately adjacent in Eddington. Modelling long-term transport behaviour on this basis risks significantly understating the potential for mode shift and distorting the conclusions of the Plan.