Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020
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New searchCoton Countryside Reserve, Coton, Cambridge CB23 7PZ
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Farmland and Countryside Reserve
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Planning application to create Countryside Reserve (car park and suds scheme)
Greenfield
Other - Water quality wetland schemes Description of your proposed green space (please be as full as possible in describing your proposal) In the 1930s, with financial help from Professor George M Trevelyan, we were able to acquire 300 acres of farmland near Coton village on the western edge of Cambridge. We bought this land specifically to prevent urban sprawl but initial steps were taken to improve the landscape by planting trees. Work was halted by World War II and afterwards by the need to save the Gog Magog Hills and create Wandlebury Country Park. During this time the land was managed as a mixed farm with arable and livestock, providing an income for the charity's work. In the 1990s, we began to ask how we could improve the farm holding for nature and to benefit the increasing population of the Cambridge area. In 2003 we finalised an ambitious long-term proposal for a new Coton Countryside Reserve on some of this land, which would combine nature, public access and a working farm. Funding was secured from central and local government, grants, donations and legacies. Work got underway in 2004 to create new paths and entrances, picnic spots, new ponds, information boards and car parking. With the help of the community we planned and planted several new orchards, as well as new hedges, woodlands and meadow. The concrete “spine route” through the reserve provides easy access for walkers, cyclists, horse-riders and wheelchair users. We officially opened this path and the new reserve in 2008. The farmland on the Reserve is managed sensitively for wildlife by our tenant farmer who is supported through a Higher Level Countryside Stewardship grant. Coton Countryside Reserve is long-term project and we are still working to try and realise all our plans. The charity would like to take more land out of agricultural use for the benefit of the environment, nature and people.
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Yes there is access from Grantchester Road (already a car park). There are currently overflow parking bays that would need to be surfaced if the park was to be expanded.
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Water main and other services. These are known and would not be a constraint.
There is some land which would be suitable for ecological enhancement which is available now. Farmland is within a FBT and sufficient notice would need to be provided to tenant. The farmland is also in Countryside Stewardship, exit from which would need to be negotiated with NE.
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The land is already in our ownership. The only constraint for further development as a “green site” is the requirement to offset the loss of income generated from the lease of farmland. In other words the land would either have to be purchased or leased from us for use as a green site or there would need to be an ongoing compensatory payment.
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One scheme that we are developing is an integrated wetland treatment system which would treat sewage water from Coton Water Treatment facility in order to meet Water Framework Directive for water quality in the Bin Brook. This scheme would involve creating a series of 5 large pools which would also provide wildlife habitat and public access. Funding will be sought from Anglia Water and other funders. This scheme would also involve a diffuse pollution treatment wetland which would further improve water quality and also address flooding, we are approaching Environment Agency for potential funding.
Evidence might include: • Habitats and / or species site designations • Biodiversity survey of the existing site • Evidence of how the proposal connects with the wider green spaces network • Evidence of any benefits provided by the green space proposal • Evidence of costs and delivery mechanisms • Evidence of support for your proposal from third parties You can find out more information at https://www.cambridgeppf.org/Pages/Category/coton-country-reserve
Our proposal does not involve a development. We are offering our land as a site to convert farmland into other uses to benefit nature and the local community, providing that sufficient funding is available to offset the loss in rental income that we receive for this land. We have not worked a proposal up in detail b/c there is no associated development. If the LPA was interested in considering Coton Reserve as a future green site then we would work up proposals accordingly. We are working us a scheme for the integrated wetland, the feasibility for this project is being funded by the Environment Agency and is due to be completed in autumn 2020 at which point we can submit it as evidence. We estimate this scheme may cost in the region of £500k to deliver and operate for 20 years.
Farmland at Balsham (“Little Field”), Down track off West Wickham Road, Balsham CB21 4DZ (Grid ref TL 592 497)
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Farmland
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Greenfield
Description of your proposed green space (please be as full as possible in describing your proposal) Currently farmland but is adjacent to Balsham Wood SSSI. Would be ideal location for new woodland creation as it would expand the SSSI, in line with government 25 Year Env Plan – making existing designated sites “Bigger, Better & More Connected”.
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Yes there is access, no access does not need to be improved.
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Currently in a FBT so would need to give tenant notice
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The land is already in our ownership. The only constraint for further development as a “green site” is the requirement to offset the loss of income generated from the lease of farmland. In other words the land would either have to be purchased or leased from us for use as a green site or there would need to be an ongoing compensatory payment. Create a new area of native broadleaved woodland adjacent to Balsham Wood SSSI
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Evidence might include: • Habitats and / or species site designations • Biodiversity survey of the existing site • Evidence of how the proposal connects with the wider green spaces network • Evidence of any benefits provided by the green space proposal • Evidence of costs and delivery mechanisms • Evidence of support for your proposal from third parties
Our proposal does not involve a development. We are offering our land as a site to convert farmland into other uses to benefit nature and the local community, providing that sufficient funding is available to offset the loss in rental income that we receive for this land. We have not worked a proposal up in detail b/c there is no associated development. If the LPA was interested in considering this as a future green site then we would work up proposals accordingly.
Some Key Issues Not Addressed by the Consultation: In seeking to formulate our responses, Cambridge Past, Present & Future believes that certain fundamental issues have either been ignored or assumed. As these have an influence on the strategic thinking behind any responses, we feel the consultation is deficient in that it gives little or no recognition to the importance of these issues. 1. Lack of any Clear Vision of the Future: The consultation fails to set out any clear vision for Greater Cambridge for 2040 and beyond. What sort of place do the Councils want Greater Cambridge to grow into over the next two decades? How do they envisage Greater Cambridge looking for residents at the end of the Plan period? Without any vision of the future, it is difficult to judge the merits, or failings, of the various options for the spatial development of the area. For example, how can we assess the relative merits of development around the City fringe as opposed to development along Transport Corridors or beyond the Green Belt in South Cambridgeshire if there is no clear statement of what sort of city Cambridge is expected to grow into? It is our belief that the consultation should have opened with a question about what sort of future the respondents want, rather than inferring this indirectly through the responses. A question asking whether Cambridge should continue as a compact city or significantly expand into a much larger urban area, would help the Councils determine their spatial strategy. Instead, responses are being solicited in a strategic vacuum. The statements presented in Section 2.4 are not visions so much as political slogans which provide little context for spatial planning. One way of provoking debate about a vision would be to publish for consultation the Centre for Science and Policy’s report “Visions of Cambridge in 2065”. This report (referenced by the City Council in the draft “Making Space for People” consultation) has never been subject to the public consultation which was originally mooted. 2. Lack of any clear understanding of Cambridge’s national and international significance as a historic city and “one of the loveliest cities in Western Europe” (David Attenborough). Cambridge meets four of the Outstanding Universal Value criteria for World Heritage Site designation (see our response to question 22), and its historic environment should be valued accordingly. It is this historic environment (man-made and natural in combination) which makes Cambridge such an attractive place to live, work, study in, and visit. “Cambridge” in this context includes the historic riverside setting all the way from Byron’s Pool through Grantchester Meadows and the city to the course of the rowing races out past Fen Ditton to Baits Bite. This Plan is an unprecedented opportunity to consider Cambridge and its historic landscape setting together, but this is totally unrecognised in this consultation. 3. The Environmental Limits to Growth: The document gives the impression that Greater Cambridge has the capacity to absorb a massive increase in human population and housing with little or no enhancement of the resources and services on which the additional people will depend. The belief that up to 66,000 more homes can be built in the area over the next two decades, an uplift of some 50% on the current housing stock, without a massive investment in infrastructure and resources is, in our opinion, highly irresponsible. Yet the document gives no indication of any awareness that resources might very soon limit the capacity of the area for further growth. Take, for example, our water resources: in May this year, the River Cam recorded its lowest flows for that month since records began in 1949. Our chalk streams are in crisis, they are drying up because the water in the chalk aquafers is declining due to a combination of climate change and increasing abstraction caused by a growing population and economy. Yet, without any recognition of the water crisis we currently face, the Councils seem to be proposing that up to 66,000 more homes can be built in the area. Unless the document shows awareness of the issue and what might be done at the regional level to mitigate it (like a new reservoir), the public will feel that the whole exercise lacks credibility. Similarly, what provision is to be made for upgrading the electricity supply and the waste management system? Presumably the Councils are aware of these potential limitations and have therefore commissioned research to analyse the limits to growth of the Greater Cambridge area, in which case we would like to see the evidence-base that some of the levels of growth proposed in the consultation are genuinely achievable in a sustainable way. 4. Impact on Quality-of-Life: Inevitably, the document focuses mainly on the planning of future developments, so what’s in it for existing residents? Residents are understandably worried that their quality-of-life is likely to be negatively impacted by the massive scale of new development but this is largely ignored. People are worried about issues like education and the availability of places at schools of their choice, medical services and the ready access to see a doctor, or be able to book a recreational activity without it being over-subscribed – all these are fundamental to the quality-of-life and need to be given greater recognition. 5. Investment Deficit: It is clear that infrastructure investment in the UK lags behind the growth of housing and business. By infrastructure we mean utilities, medical facilities, schools, green infrastructure, etc as well as transport. This means that rapidly growing areas such as Cambridge are constantly lacking sufficient infrastructure. By the time new infrastructure is provided more is already needed. This situation would only get significantly worse with some of the growth options proposed in the consultation. Potentially doubling the number of dwellings over the next two decades cannot be seriously considered without a substantial investment in the local infrastructure – or it will have an unacceptable impact on the qualityof-life of residents. Yet there is no obvious awareness in the document of this problem. Where is this investment to come from, especially now that Government has turned its attention to the North?
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The Councils should make every effort possible to get people involved in the process – the lack of public awareness was a serious failing of the 2018 Plan. Clearly Councils do not have unlimited resources, so we suggest some options that might be given priority: • It is essential to manage people’s expectations if they are asked to contribute. Too often people are consulted, they give their views, but their views are not acted upon. This can leave people feeling angry/ignored/cynical/suspicious rather than involved or engaged (that often includes us!). Consultation and engagement activities ought to make clear the extent to which people’s views will (or will not) be acted upon. The nature and types of questions asked should allow people to genuinely influence an outcome. It is also essential that people who do make the effort to respond have this effort recognised by a letter of thanks and by keeping them actively engaged by email in the process as the Plan evolves. • The Local Plan is a large, complex, and legalistic piece of work. As a result, much of it is impenetrable to anyone but a planner. We feel that the majority of people will only be interested in a small number of key policies and spatial issues, as well as spatial issues that directly impact their neighbourhood. We feel that identifying these issues is vital as the basis for wider public engagement, which could then be carried out in user friendly ways (for example the use of easy to understand language, images, etc). We are pleased to see the use of images on the website that has been set up for the Local Plan. • The use of ‘planning for real’ and other hands-on public friendly engagement techniques can be a good way of engaging the wider public in the complex issues associated with planning and we would support the use of these in Cambridge. • Exhibitions or consultations in communities that will be directly affected by new plans, especially those locations where new development is earmarked. • Efforts should be made to engage with “hard-to-reach” groups. We would suggest through door-door research in certain neighbourhoods, as well as through face-face discussions with the representatives of these groups. • At the other end of the spectrum, there are well informed community groups and stakeholders, such as CambridgePPF, that will want to examine the detail. For these groups, getting easy access to information is important. We are pleased to see a website specifically for the Local Plan and that this has a “further reading” section. We would like this developed further so that it pulls together all the published documents and evidence-base relating to the Local Plan, including decisions/minutes from relevant Council meetings (or at least web-links to them). We need a one-stop-shop – as will Councillors and officers. • The relationship between the Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plans (NPs), both adopted and emerging, needs clarifying. Neighbourhood Plans have to comply with the Local Plan. Therefore, it is possible that changes to the Local Plan could require consequent revisions to a Neighbourhood Plan. Neighbourhood Plans are usually heavily consulted upon and have been created by the community. We would recommend that the Council engages at an early stage with those communities that have created, or are in the process of creating, Neighbourhood Plans.
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Question 2: Please submit any sites for employment and housing you wish to suggest for allocation in the Local Plan. Provide as much information and supporting evidence as possible. Q2 response: Within Cambridge there are significant areas that are currently wasted as surface-level car parking. At a time when efforts should be made to reduce car use and improve air quality, we suggest that some of these car parks should be re-used for development. • Cambridge Retail Park on Newmarket Road. This area includes some 25 acres of surface parking. If a multi-storey car park was built on a small portion of this land, some 20 acres could be released for development. CambridgePPF submitted an outline proposal for the redevelopment of the car parking area on both sides of Coldhams Lane during the public consultation for the 2018 Local Plan. This showed how the site could accommodate 1200 dwellings with only a marginal loss of car parking space through the provision of a multi-storey facility and by allowing parking beneath the residential blocks which were raised on columns. Because Cambridge has such a dearth of possible brown-field development sites, we believe this site could provide valuable residential use, and must therefore be given serious consideration.
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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: CambridgePPF owns and manages land in and around Cambridge, some of which we would like to put forward for consideration. These sites include: - Wandlebury Country Park This 60ha country park has been expanded over the decades by converting agricultural land into meadows and woodlands with public access. It is a County Wildlife Site that provides a green lung for Cambridge, with over 60,000 visits a year. As the population of greater Cambridge is growing, so is the pressure on the park, its habitats, heritage and infrastructure. We would like to explore opportunities for further expansion of the park as part of a Nature Recovery Network for the Gog Magog Hills. - Coton Countryside Reserve We own over 100ha of farmland and semi-natural habitats around Coton village, which makes up Coton Countryside Reserve. We would like to include the farmland for consideration as part of a Nature Recovery Network. - Land at Balsham We own c15ha of farmland to the southeast of the village of Balsham, close to Balsham Wood SSSI. We would like to include the farmland for consideration. • In our answer to question 12 we have proposed the creation of 5 nature recovery networks (NRN). We will be carrying out work through 2020 to identify land that could become future habitats or green spaces within these NRNs. We intend to submit these to you later in the year for consideration.
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CambridgePPF would not want to see the Local Plan go beyond 2040. The 2018 Local Plan has proposed a significant amount of new development and a substantial increase in population. It will not start to become clear until 2025 and beyond what impacts this growth will have – for example, traffic congestion, overcrowding in Cambridge City Centre, or water shortages in our chalk streams. Therefore, it would seem to us to be unwise to continue to extrapolate growth to 2040 (or beyond) until the impacts of the ‘in-pipeline’ growth are better understood. • Any future Local Plan must be flexible and allow for continuous review in response to changing circumstances. Advances in technology and the effects of climate change are two obvious factors that could have a profound impact on Greater Cambridge, even in the relative shortterm. A fixed and rigid Plan could become a hindrance in addressing future change. It would also be very difficult (maybe even impossible) to suggest that growth levels be lowered if it turns out that significant growth cannot be achieved without unacceptable adverse impacts. How is the necessary flexibility to be built into a Plan that has a 20-year horizon? It is much easier to increase housing targets than to reduce them because it could have serious financial implications. This should argue in favour of the “precautionary principle” in target setting and our preference would be for the new Plan to provide housing requirements to 2035 and to give only an indication of future growth beyond that date. • In the UK we are reliant on census data to inform us of changes in our society and to inform future planning. The last census was nearly 10 years ago, yet Cambridge is changing rapidly. The next census will take place in 2021 with data available in 2022/23. This will clearly create a problem for the creation of the greater Cambridge Local Plan – with the possibility that census data could require changes to the plan once it is at an advanced stage. Has this been considered by the Councils? If so, is the proposed timetable sensible or would it be wiser to put back the process in order to be able to plan, based on new census data? • Any future Local Plan must also take account of National Statutory and Interim Climate Change targets (2050 Net Zero and 2030 Clean Growth Strategy respectively) including those for all existing buildings.
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CambridgePPF disagrees: • London is the elephant in the room. Although the London Plan sets out that housing needs can be met, in reality high land values, house prices, and rental rates mean that a substantial number of new London workers will commute from outside. Cambridge already has a significant number of London workers and has been identified as providing opportunities for outward migration from the London area. This situation will be exacerbated by the opening of Cambridge South Station and new development close to Cambridge North Station. In London there is no political appetite to build on the Green Belt in order to address this situation. To what extent should Cambridge provide housing for London commuters, especially if this means building on Cambridge’s Green Belt? It would seem unacceptable to us if Cambridge were to sacrifice its Green Belt because London refused to build on its own. This is an issue that we feel should be given much greater prominence in the Local Plan and discussed with local communities. • Anecdotally, we are aware that many people moving into housing around Cambridge which was previously green belt, such as Nine Wells and Great Kneighton, are London workers. If the Councils have not already commissioned research into the scale of London workers occupying new Cambridge developments then we suggest that this should be done as part of the evidence-base for the Local Plan as it has a critical bearing on who we are providing housing for. • Cambridge now has a very large commute-to-work area, which extends beyond the neighbouring Cambridgeshire districts. We believe that the commute-to-work area should form the basis of cross-boundary engagement. As an example, one of our employees commutes from a new development in Norfolk. • The Local Plan must identify where there are cross-boundary planning issues and incorporate the tools and mechanisms within the Plan to deal with them if they arise during the Plan period. This will avoid a repeat of the situation which has emerged in the A1301 corridor where the planning authority has been largely powerless to manage large-scale piecemeal development (Agritech at Hinxton Grange, Wellcome Trust expansion, Great Chesterford Business Park, and the Uttlesford ‘Garden Village’). The Local Plan should also have the flexibility to require Area Action Plans/Masterplans/Supplemental Planning Documents when unplanned cross-boundary issues arise. This could be achieved through policy wording to that effect.
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CambridgePPF give a qualified agreement to the themes. The matrix provided by the four big themes with the three main cross-cutting planning elements produces a useful framework within which to develop the Plan. We feel that this is a significant improvement on the approach to the 2018 Plan • However, CambridgePPF believes that the theme ‘Wellbeing and Social Inclusion’ is drawn too narrowly. We would like to see this theme widened under the broader heading ‘Quality-ofLife’ which would cover not just the issues of public health and social inclusion but also the wider factors that people need to enjoy a high quality of life – education and training, adequacy of local medical services, environmental issues like air quality, local retail facilities, opportunities for sport and recreation etc. These items are essential for people’s quality-oflife and happiness yet they risk being overlooked in the proposed big theme structure. It is appreciated that some of these issues could be covered within the Great Places theme, but Great Places seems to be primarily orientated towards new developments and incoming occupiers rather than on facilities and opportunities for current residents. • The historic environment, which is one of Cambridge’s most outstanding and most widelyvalued features, is largely overlooked within the 4 key themes. E.g. Cambridge’s most significant green spaces are historic spaces, considering them only as green spaces fails to recognise their full value. We suggest a fifth key theme: how to reconcile growth pressures with keeping Cambridge special, in effect, how to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!
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Climate Change, Biodiversity and Green Spaces, Wellbeing and Social Inclusion, Great Places
Question 7: How do you think we should prioritise these big themes? Q7 response: All the elements of sustainability are important and we don’t believe that prioritising them in a generic way is an appropriate approach. It seems to us that ranking the four themes is a meaningless exercise that trivialises a highly complex multi-dimensional reality. • The Sustainability Assessment for the draft 2018 Local Plan did not tackle key issues including environmental capacity. It is vital that the Sustainability Assessment for the new Local Plan takes these issues very seriously indeed. • The priority between themes in any given situation will inevitably depend on the circumstances of specific issues and the local context. For example, it would not be appropriate to attach solar panels to the roof of Kings College Chapel – which is the type of perverse outcome that could arise if any one theme was pre-dominant. The Sustainability Assessment is the document that should present a suite of criteria for prioritising conflicting themes in trade-off situations – but does it do so?
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