Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020

There is a feeling that community responses are ignored in consultations. If there are a lot of complaints about a location please take them seriously. Take the new school site Buxhall farm, Histon beyond the general objections – the access and safety of access has not properly been dealt with. Could you not have found an extra 5m swathe around the perimeter to plant trees? The issue of parents double parking hasn’t been resolved but at the same time access for cyclists and walkers will not be good enough and perceived as dangerous. In France they were building zebra crossings every 25m down high streets in some village locations – doing that in Histon would be a game changer particularly along the B1049 in conjunction with the High Street and Station Road. Those who are most impacted upon a new development deserve to be treated better. So when you get money from the developers for the community perhaps the first question should be can we spend some of this money on the people most impacted by this development. Communicate, communicate, communicate. How can we make it better? What specific aspects of this concern you? All of this takes time and money and communication but that is the only way to take people with you if you are contemplating significant development and change.

Question 3: Please submit any sites for green space and wildlife habitats you wish to suggest for consideration through the Local Plan. Provide as much information and supporting evidence as possible. Q3 Response: This is not my space however there is a small green paddock at the end of Cambridge Road, Impington. It is directly beneath junction 32 of the A14 opposite 76 Cambridge Road, for air quality and other reasons this would be a brilliant space for rewilding I would love to see this space planted with trees. There is another paddock maybe 20 metres further up on the same side of the road this would also be a good spot for rewilding. Developing the site right next to junction 32 for housing would be an awful decision in particular for the quality of life for the new home owners. Building here would be in an air quality management area and also somewhere with horrific noise pollution which is proven to have serious long term health consequences. Planting this space with trees could turn this around and make a real difference it also provides some of the green gateway to Histon and Impington. Land registry reference file:///D:/Users/ed/Downloads/RegisterCB294047.pdf

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Agree

Yes – whatever date you take is arbitrary but seems sensible enough.

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I think so see answer below

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I think you’ve missed some things as almost all of the way people live is essentially connected and determines the decisions they make. I speak as a parent of a young family so that skews my priorities accordingly. -wrap around childcare seem to be absolutely critical to a parent’s ability to work and get to and from work. I genuinely believe better, more flexible wrap around care for children would lead to fewer car journeys. Without it you find yourself needing a car to be able to juggle your life. Sort this out and you could ease things. When my daughter was at nursery the only space was in the neighbouring village. If I had to take my two older children to pick her up we had to drive. Sort out child care and you take loads of unnecessary journeys out of the equation. Solutions can be cost neutral but need leadership and support. E.g. if the school laid on a breakfast club I’d happily pay a small sum and happily volunteer to help say 4 times a month. Things can be cost neutral but if I suggested it to my school I’d expect to get a flea in my ear and a humiliatingly negative response. The council can lead these things, find ways of setting up these schemes, encourage them. They don’t have to have a cost or organisational impact on the school but the school does have to be receptive and prepared to support such initiatives, identifying problems and supporting community lead solutions seems to be a good way forward when there isn’t loads of spare money. -food and shopping. A friend works for Waitrose they tell me Waitrose makes no money out of home delivery this tells us that home delivery as it is is not sustainable. How are people going to eat in the future, not just where is the food grown but how is it going to get to the consumer over the coming decades? Do we need food lockers on our streets – do they need power? Please speak to the big retailers and see if there are intelligent solutions which would work for everyone. Industry can solve the problem and will pay for the solutions but councils have to be receptive and supportive. I don’t see this happening at the moment. -what are we going to do in our leisure time? If you want your children to learn to swim is there a swimming pool within cycling or walking distance? Why was Cambourne built without a swimming pool – this would never happen in France? Learning to swim is a big thing so there need to be more swimming pools, I know this seems unrelated to sustainability but it is all part of the same argument we have to think more broadly about how we live and what are the critical requirements. We have to travel less to reduce our footprint the key to this has to simultaneously be us finding more to do locally, are there spaces reserved for this? Are they affordable? Do new developments have pubs? Orchard Park doesn’t. Do the buses travel late, can you get between villages by bus? All those considerations determine if you need a car or not and what the carbon footprint of the way you live is.

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Question 7. How do you think we should prioritise these big themes? Q7 Response: Environment should be at the front and centre of everything. Bearing in mind how much we have known about the consequences of global warming for such a long time it is astonishing what terrible retrograde decisions have been made in recent history. We have to fundamentally change how we live. I keep on banging on about childcare but every single decision should be viewed primarily through the context of the impact of climate change and decisions should be formulated on that basis. I don’t see that planning for childcare has ever been thought of in terms of environmental impact it needs to be and so does everything else.

Fundamentally change how we live. We need to live in a part of the world where driving is a pain in the arse and jumping on an affordable bus or cycling are always the cheapest, easiest, quickest, safest options. We need to look at community schemes for retrofitting current housing stock. Developers money does not always have to be spent on new playgrounds or glittering new things – why not community heating schemes, wind turbines? Lets really get knowledge about retrofitting and air source heat pumps out there.

I think you’ve considered the big decisions such as housing, jobs, transport and economy but the detail of how other decisions play into those things is not considered. So there is no point locating new jobs on great public transport routes if there is no childcare locally and people have to drive to sort out childcare. Similarly if older people feel that the key things they need to access like healthcare etc cannot be reliably accessed by public transport they are less likely to give up cars. Personally I would like to stop driving and get rid of my car when my children leave home (or earlier) that is not a bad aspiration but if I don’t feel I can access the critical things I won’t give up the car and once you have a car it is almost impossible not to get lazy and use it too much. My husband wouldn’t give up a car because you can’t access the (council run) tip on foot. Also there are no car share schemes here in my village that I know of.

Yes, strongly agree

Yes building on flood plains is absolutely stupid but I don’t see it stopping. You can build houses on stilts or floating houses – lets build like we’re in 2040 and there is more flooding and look at far more creative ways of doing things. Look to Holland see what they do, houses which double as boats when the land floods. There are brilliant solutions out there lets not build like we always have done but look to the future.

The cycleway from St Ives floods when it rains – what are cyclists supposed to do when that happens? So people living in St Ives working in Cambridge can’t get rid of cars. Lets talk to cyclists and establish what they would need to be able to get rid of their cars. Loads of people in London just rely on zip cars – but in Cambs infrastructure decisions are made which make it impossible for cyclists to get to work as they know if there’s a problem they will be left high and dry (literally). You could buy a trailer for the busway so that when the cycle path gets flooded a trailer will take the bikes through the flood on the busway. In London they have bike lockers you apply for these and they are much more secure than other bike storage – we need cross community planning. Impington doesn’t really seem to need bike storage for locals but having some bike storage here might be a game changer for folks from St Ives as they could then get the bus part way and cycle the rest of the way, lets plan across communities. Moving around our communities. Histon and Impington is large and sprawling. There is one shop to the south of the village none to the east. Many people drive within the village, look at other ways of moving around the village and encourage those. For example can we support small electric buggies – I know this sounds crazy but you don’t need a massive great 4 by 4 to go to Tescos but we’re not set up for anything else at this time. Replace some of the car parking space with secure electric bike and cycle storage. Design the space to change how people think. It will have to be done gradually but start early as car drivers seem to go crazy at the slightest change or perceived loss of rights. Safe bike storage at stations, in Cambridge and in surrounding communities is absolutely critical. We have to support our cyclists. Electric bikes are an important part of the picture and safe spaces to lock them up is critical. Childcare as above. Make retrofitting a thing here, make sure everyone knows about available grants also get communities working together to help each other.