Greater Cambridge Local Plan Issues & Options 2020

No

• CambridgePPF strongly disagrees with this proposal. The NPPF Para 144 makes it unambiguously clear that development in the Green Belt can be regarded as appropriate only under ‘very special circumstances’. We do not see that ‘very special circumstances’ exist in Greater Cambridge given the large areas of land beyond the Green Belt. The arguments for Green Belt development were comprehensively debated before the Planning Inspector at the Examination in Public of the 2018 Plan and then rejected, and we can see no reason why the situation two years later should be any different. • Green Belts are important because they can provide opportunities for exercise and wellbeing, they can help to improve air quality, reduce flooding, capture carbon, and provide habitats for wildlife. They can also encourage the recycling of previously developed land within the city. And they give city residents access to countryside and informal greenspace on their doorstep. One of the reasons that Green Belts have popular support is because they improve the qualityof-life of people. Building on the Green Belt would be incompatible with the Big Themes suggested for the Local Plan. • The evidence-base for the 2018 Plan included a detailed review of the importance of the Inner Green Belt Boundary in meeting the stated objectives of the Cambridge Green Belt. This review identified a small number of sites where land might be released without causing unacceptable harm to the Green Belt. These sites were all included in the 2018 Plan and will be carried over into the 2023 Plan. The rest of the inner boundary was regarded as being of high importance and was accepted as such by the Planning Inspector. We can see no grounds for any change in this position. • Previous Local Plans allowed the development of Cambourne, which has proved to be largely a suburb of Cambridge located in the countryside with poor public transport/cycle connections to employment sites and central Cambridge (even car travel is not good due to the Girton Interchange not being 4-ways). Greater Cambridge is still grappling with the consequences of this, and it is not a model that we feel should be repeated. The 2018 Plan has already made the commitment to two large new settlements outside the Green Belt – Northstowe and Waterbeach. Both of these have the advantage over Cambourne of having pre-existing public transport infrastructure (guided busway/cycle and railway) and Waterbeach is also closer and therefore will be more cycle-able. Both settlements are planned to be larger than Cambourne and therefore will hopefully be more self-sustaining communities, less reliant on Cambridge. Such communities could prove to be no less sustainable than building on the Green Belt. We are concerned that the council’s thinking on new settlements is influenced by what happened at Cambourne rather than what will hopefully happen at Northstowe and Waterbeach.

Somewhat flexible

• The dispersal of both employment and housing across the villages of South Cambridgeshire should be avoided, especially as such village developments are likely to become dormitories for Cambridge and reliant on car use. Whilst locally such impacts may be modest, the cumulative impacts, for example on traffic, could be significant. • Development should not be permitted which would cause the merging of two villages, there should remain an intentional and deliberate separation between them that is sufficient to retain their individual characters.

Somewhat flexible

• A modest scale of growth depending on the size of the village might be acceptable. This should be located within the Village Framework with priority given to housing people from the local community. • As a general principle, growth should not be scattered across the villages of South Cambridgeshire but concentrated in a few of the larger villages where the necessary infrastructure and support services can be provided. Growth of villages should be a low priority in the Development Sequence – see response to Q42

No choices made

Q42 response: • CambridgePPF believes that a ‘Development Sequence’ should be established and we suggest that the order of priority for development should be as follows: 1. brownfield sites 2. densification of employment sites within the city, like the Science Park 3. major new sites within the city boundary, like Cambridge Airport and North-East Cambridge 4. other sites in South Cambridgeshire outside the Green Belt that already have good public transport connections, including new settlements 5. villages that already have good services and which can accommodate a modest level of new building within the village framework 6. city fringe sites in the Green Belt – the option of last resort when the above options have been exhausted • Significant areas of Cambridge are currently wasted as surface car parks. At a time when efforts should be made to reduce car use and improve air quality, some of this land should be re-used for development – see our response to Q2

• Densification has a useful role to play in the low density, mainly older, employment clusters where there is currently an excessive amount of surface car parking. CambridgePPF supports this. • Where entirely new neighbourhoods are created, we support a higher density of dwellings which through good design can be compatible with high quality communities. High density development may mean taller and larger buildings but these should be appropriate to their context and must take into account the historic setting of Cambridge, its villages and views. We do not support high rise building close to the city’s historic core nor emergent high-rise buildings scattered across the city. Cambridge has a sound Tall Buildings policy which should be enforced. • It is difficult to see how densification can play a significant role in existing residential areas without compromising the quality-of-life of residents and the character of local neighbourhoods. We are strongly against ‘garden grabbing’, and against the demolition of sound family homes and their replacement with blocks of flats.

• CambridgePPF would not object in principle to the development of Cambridge Airport and North East Cambridge if it meant that the green belt was protected, as per national planning policy. • There are very few other locations around the edge of Cambridge that are not in the Green Belt. Whether they are suitable for development will depend on the characteristics of each site.

• We strongly oppose this option. The NPPF Para 144 makes it unambiguously clear that development in the Green Belt can be regarded as appropriate only under “very special circumstances”. We do not see that ‘very special circumstances’ exist in Greater Cambridge given the large areas of land beyond the Green Belt. The arguments for Green Belt development were comprehensively debated before a Planning Inspector at the Examination in Public of the 2018 Plan and then rejected, and we can see no reason why the situation two years later should be any different. • The 2016 Review of the Inner Green Belt Boundary showed that other than a few small areas that were incorporated in the 2018 Plan, there were no sites around the edge of Cambridge that could be developed without causing unacceptable harm to the objectives of the Cambridge Green Belt. This review was extensively debated at the Examination in Public in front of the Planning Inspector whose final conclusions endorsed the findings of the review. CambridgePPF can see no reason why this decision should now be overturned. • Green Belts are important because they can provide opportunities for exercise and wellbeing, they can help to improve air quality, reduce flooding, capture carbon, regulate heat and provide habitats for wildlife. Their protection helps prioritise the recycling of previously developed land within the city. And they give city residents access to countryside on their doorstep. One of the reasons that Green Belts have popular support is because they provide quality of life to people. It would seem to us that building on the Green Belt would be incompatible with the Big Themes suggested for the Local Plan.

• CambridgePPF believes that new settlements must be of a large enough size to promote sufficient employment, retail, education, and leisure opportunities so as to reduce travel and dependence on Cambridge. We therefore believe that the priority must be to complete and to consider expanding the settlements approved in the 2018 Plan rather than create more. • The viability of any new settlement will depend on the transport infrastructure, and particularly on the availability of high-quality public transport linking with the main centres of employment and leisure facilities. We do not support the development of residential suburbs in the countryside isolated by the lack of good transport links (ie a repeat of Cambourne). • The wider implications of new settlements should be fully considered, understood, explained, and agreed in advance as part of the planning process, such as any requirements for transport or services infrastructure. For example, it is not sufficient to vaguely say that public transport will be provided – more detail needs to be provided so that communities can understand the full implications of planning decisions at the point when that planning decision is being made – not years later when that vague public transport turns out to be a new busway or railway that is damaging to the landscape, heritage and communities.

• A modest scale of growth depending on the size of the village might be acceptable. This should be located within the Village Framework with priority given to housing people from the local community – see our response to Q31 • The dispersal of both employment and housing across the villages of South Cambridgeshire should be avoided, especially as such village developments are likely to become dormitories for Cambridge and reliant on car use. Whilst locally such impacts may be modest the cumulative impacts, for example on traffic, could be significant.

• There seems to be some confusion about the concept of ‘transport corridors’. We have heard them described as both a series of nodes along a public transport route (such as distinct villages around rail stations) as well as ribbon development (development alongside a transport route which coalesces into a contiguous, or near contiguous strip of development, such as Trumpington/Shelford/Stapleford along the A1301). Because this is unclear, we feel that this question is flawed from a consultation point of view and that the Council should not use responses to this question to inform its policy thinking. • We have serious concerns that a ‘transport corridor’, such as a busway or CAM line, will inevitably attract development because of the improved transport opportunities, and will thus quickly become a ‘development corridor’. We strongly oppose ribbon development radiating out from Cambridge which would divide the Green Belt into isolated wedges that would be steadily eroded away by more development as the corridors expanded. However, we would not object in principle to nodes along public transport routes such as rail lines, provided a policy is enforced to prevent such nodes from coalescing into contiguous ribbon development