Cambridge Northern Fringe East AAP - Issues and Options

Savills Planning Team in Cambridge are instructed on behalf of St John's College, Cambridge to submit responses to the Issues and Options Report on the CNFE having regard to the College's landholdings and land interests at St John's Innovation Park west of Cowley Road and east of Milton Road.

Option A relates to sustainable design and construction and floodrisk at the CNFE. The option suggests that there should be a reliance on Local Plan policies related to climate change and sustainable design and construction. We support such an approach in as much that it should be the Development Plan policies that guide development across the whole of the District. To artificially create a separate policy regime (and a more onerous one at that) in relation to Option B is entirely inappropriate. This is particularly the case where there could be significant costs involved in meeting any of the options put forward within this Plan and the imposition of more stringent policy guidance simply because of a Plan that is now being put forward is entirely unreasonable.

Consequently it is our view that there should be no "special treatment" of sites that fall within the CNFE and in the instance where more onerous policies apply as any legal obligations then the College strongly objects to being included within such a plan area.

Savills Planning Team in Cambridge are instructed on behalf of St John's College, Cambridge to submit responses to the Issues and Options Report on the CNFE having regard to the College's landholdings and land interests at St John's Innovation Park west of Cowley Road and east of Milton Road.

Option B on phasing and delivery approach as set out within the Issues and Options Report seems to suggest that a requirement of a planning application for the first phase of development will need to provide a masterplan for the whole of the AAP area. Firstly it is unclear as to where the first phase of development will take place and we have seen nothing in the plan as published for consultation that suggests there is a phased approach to the development. Certainly the redevelopment options are not phasing plans and therefore it is difficult to understand the logic whereby a developer of any area of land within the Plan area is charged for providing a masterplan for the whole of the area. In our view the AAP as drafted and as expressed within Option A on page 68 of the report, should provide the principles for a development framework against which individual phases of redevelopment should come forward alongside their own detailed planning application. The onus placed on the first developer to set out a Masterplan for the whole of the CNFE is entirely unreasonable and should be resisted.