Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020

No choices made

The four big themes are all considered to be important aspects to achieving positive development. All four themes should be used to inform the spatial strategy within the Local Plan in terms of distributing growth and determining planning applications to deliver growth. It is therefore not considered necessary to rank the options in order of preference.

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Response to Question 42 9.10 A combination of approaches to the distribution of spatial growth are considered likely to be necessary in order to allow for sufficient flexibility when considering the locations of new housing and employment development in the Greater Cambridge area.

No choices made

The four big themes are all considered to be important aspects to achieving positive development. All four themes should be used to inform the spatial strategy within the Local Plan in terms of distributing growth and determining planning applications to deliver growth. It is therefore not considered necessary to rank the options in order of preference.

No choices made

Response to Question 42 8.4 No single solution will deliver a sound Local Plan; rather, a combination of approaches to the distribution of spatial growth will be necessary in order to establish the appropriate locations of new housing and employment development in the district. A hybrid approach will be required but should be underpinned by a focus on accessibility to public transport, employment and other daily needs. 8.5 The Sustainability Appraisal must therefore ensure that it includes for a wide range of development scenarios and that these are all taken through the subsequent stages of the Local Plan-making process. This will help ensure that the Local Plan process and its SA support the Submission Local Plan, which is highly likely to contain a hybrid of development scenarios. 8.6 It is considered that an element of village dispersal should form part of a hybrid spatial strategy. Whilst a village dispersal approach should consider villages from across the settlement hierarchy, it should seek to allocate sites for development at locations in villages which are or can be made sustainable. To contribute to this strategy, Gamlingay, a Minor Rural Centre and the tenth most sustainable village in the District, is a sustainable location for future development given the range of services and facilities it contains.

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With regard to the specific requirements identified by TCC for the development of skilled manufacturing and development space to support the Cambridge economy this form of new development should be sited: On the Edge of Cambridge: Green Belt AND on Public Transport Corridors – both of these factors are of equal importance. Skilled manufacture and development operate from larger buildings and cannot readily operate from the stock of offices and laboratories available within the local market. Cambridge Science Park North will provide for the type of space that is being and has been lost from both the Cambridge area and the existing Cambridge Science Park itself due to increasing office and lab values and lost as a result of past and proposed to housing development and allocations. The type of accommodation required to support skilled manufacture and development is not being catered for in Cambridge. Trinity College see a great need to provide for this sector to bolster the Science and Technology cluster within Cambridge. The proposal is for high value/ low volume design and manufacturing of goods and products that are essential for UK export and manufacturing sectors as identified in the Governments Industrial Strategy. Close to Cambridge for clustering, and employers Global trend analysis shows that in order for these developments to be operating at their economic peak, they need to be physically located in close proximity to where the research and development is taking place. Cambridge Science Park North provides an opportunity for this locational advantage to be maximised via active and sustainable modes of transport. Evidence to date would suggest that establishing standalone sites further out of the City do not work, indeed if sites are not available the choice to locate to alternative premises offering research and development facilities linked to skilled manufacturing widens to wider Europe rather than just to alternative locations within the UK. If we do not provide these facilities in Cambridge, these companies may choose to locate operations outside of the UK altogether. For similar reasons dispersal of these types of employment land does not work and are likely to result in change of use applications in future.

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Response to Question 7 Trinity College Cambridge would suggest that all the themes identified are of equal importance, therefore it is almost impossible to rank these in an order of priority. Indeed, it is suggested that the themes are not just of equal importance, but they are also not mutually exclusive. Cambridge Science Park North will be exemplar in terms of all these themes. We have bold plans which address each theme individually and as a part of a wholistic approach to a strategic scale employment allocation.