Plans for a proposed development which will comprise 2500 homes, a similar number of student residences as well as University buildings between Huntington Road, opposite Girton College though to Madingley Road, joining up with the observatory site on Madingley rise took a step forward today. A draft Northwest Cambridge Area Action Plan (AAP) draft, and the Council’s responses to comments received so far were taken to a ” North West Fringe Member Reference Group ” a joint meeting with members of Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council.
The AAP states:
” priority must be on the provision of housing for Cambridge University and College key workers. “
The councils’ proposal is that all the affordable housing on the site is to be for “University Key Workers” .
I do not approve of this new term “University Key Worker”, those who work at the University are not police, firemen, NHS staff, teachers or others who generally come under typical definitions of “Key Workers” with respect to housing.
I believe there needs to be proper keyworker and affordable housing provision in all new developments and this should not be monopolised by the University.
How would a policy of homes only being made available to University staff work over time, would they be compelled to sell up if they changed jobs or retired. It appears that it is impossible to keep an occupancy restriction in place beyond 10 years in any case. I would think it reasonable that first refusal on the first sale of certain properties being given to University staff given that the University owns this site but to restrict occupancy beyond that I believe is an undesirable interference with the free market.
I disagree that the policy of University staff only housing meets the Councils’ aims to create mixed, balanced and sustainable communities; this is a divisive policy which will promote segregation of the “town and gown” in Cambridge.
There is no definition of a University Key Worker, without this it is not possible to make a properly informed opinion, the lack of this definition is something I believe needs to be corrected.
I cannot see how this scheme will make it any easier for researchers on short term badly paid contracts to afford to buy a house in Cambridge. Providing housing is a very different problem to making it possible to buy a house, and the latter is a problem which cannot be solved on a micro scale, we need to look at researchers’ pay, stability of employment and house prices. As it is I don’t know if research workers come under the “University Key Worker” definition.
The sensible suggestion from local residents to keep taller development away from the existing housing is rejected by the council, though essentially this decision is deferred to the more detailed “masterplanning” stage.
Reference is made by objectors to the poor quality of recent development allowed in the city: ” ‘Russian type’ tenement blocks (as seen on Cambridge West Site close to the Vet School)”, their concerns are noted, but I am not convinced they have been taken seriously. Compared to new developments elsewhere in the country such as those I have seen on the outskirts of London and in Oxfordshire and Dorset what we are getting in Cambridge appears to be very poor quality, I think Cambridge deserves better.
Despite the fact that large numbers of new student residences are being planned, in some aspects in great detail, students, and students unions do not appear to have contributed to the planning process so far.
Many excellent suggestions are made by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, supporting routes suitable for cycle commuting though most are dismissed as being inappropriate for the AAP and need to be made later in the planning process. I think the level of detail dealt with at the various stages is unclear and irrational. The design o cycle racks is tightly controlled at this AAP stage, but road design even the principles of the site layout are considered to detailed and left to the masterplanning stage.
A link road from Madingley Road to Huntington Road is remains a possibility with this AAP, but is not stipulated by it, and refers to a proposed road between Huntington Road and Histon Road (Where is that proposed – in detail? the AAP doesn’t say). I would suggest unrestricting the Madingley road M11 junction and improving the Girton interchange getting traffic out of the city entirely are missing elements.
Finally a mention of a possible ice rink has made it into the draft AAP:
North West Cambridge may also provide the opportunity to host a facility which may serve a wider area and the University community as a whole, such as an ice rink.
The Area Action Plan will be submitted to the Secretary of State on 19th May 2008, then a six-week public consultation period will start on 19th May and finish on 1st July 2008.
12 responses to “North West Cambridge Development”
I have reiterated and developed many of these points in my response to the 2012 consultation on the Cambridge Local Plan
The outline planning application for this site, with 5,000 homes proposed, is due for consideration by councillors at a Joint Development Control Committee meeting on the 8th of August 2012.
As someone who commented on the application I was notified of the meeting and given the opportunity to register to speak at it.
A search for the application’s reference number C/11/1114/OUT on Cambridge City Council’s planning public access site gives no results. The reference number one needs is 11/1114/OUT.
A South Cambridgeshire District Council webpage on the development assures readers it will be kept up to date but doesn’t mention the planning meeting.
I’ve not previously published my comments, which I submitted in November 2011:
Many of the key issues I raised are in the report, and up for councillors to discuss.
My Response to the 2012 Cambridge Local Plan Consultation covered a number of related points.
The proposals to require the developers to improve transport infrastructure are in my view poor, and insufficient.
Rather than properly refurbish the M11 junction, they require monitoring of the existing slip road, and perhaps resurfacing it.
Just £60,000 is allocated to improving cycling at the Histon Road / Victoria Road / Huntington Road junction. I think this is a tiny sum. (For comparison the public art contribution is £3,450,000).
The proposal is though to request:
from the university. I think this is excellent.
I observed a few hours of the planning meeting at which outline permission for the development was reportedly approved.
The most interesting thing was a presentation during the public speaking section from a Pro Vice Chancellor from the University of Cambridge. He explained how the University sees the development, and painted a picture more of a University enclave than I expected. He said the University would rent out the houses only to University staff. He said the new development was a move away from the closed, walled, colleges of the past to a new more open format.
I felt the university were holding something back though, and not making clear if a new college is what they are proposing, albeit a new model of a college in an open format. Council officers stated it wasn’t yet known if some, or all, of the new accommodation would be a new college, or if it would be owned and run by existing colleges, or run centrally by the University.
Public speakers, as public speakers tend to do, made some rather imaginative (some might say outlandish) suggestions, including setting an initial five year minimum tenancy length to boost community creation. Another suggested the university should give land to enable a dual carriage way down the backs.
Notably Cllr Brooks-Gordon decided not to join the committee deliberations, whereas her fellow ward councillor who was also not on the committee, Cllr Hipkin (and others) did. Cllr Brooks-Gordon made a single short comment saying something about pollution levels and complaining the proposed supermarket had too much storeroom space, saying this wasn’t needed due to the fraction of food delivered fresh daily. I thought this was odd.
Councillors commended proposed cycle infrastructure on the site; though Cllr Reid expressed concern about shared use cycle and pedestrian footways, saying “purposeful” cyclists ought be separated from pedestrians.
Cllr Reid also commented on 20 mph, saying she hoped it was not merely an aspiration. The response she got was that the roads are “designed to 20 mph”. This was explained as being narrow tree lined roads (with the narrow width expected to slow traffic) with cyclists on the other side of the trees.
There was little discussion of cycle improvements (or lack of them) off the site. A Cambridge orbital cycleway was mentioned, from the West Cambridge site to the Science Park. Cllr Tucker asked, but didn’t get decent answers to, questions about how this copes with crossing main roads.
Cllr Reid called for orbital public transport, but not car traffic.
Cllr Hipkin asked if someone using the site to reach Madingly Road Park and Ride from Huntingdon Road would be considered a responsible motorist. He was told modellers thought few people would try that, and the route would be designed to be indirect to discourage such traffic.
Cllr Reid used my words, calling open space maintenance charges a second council tax, and requested they be avoided.
Councillors wondered how much traffic calming they would get on a main road for £10K (this was one item in the proposed development tax agreement).
Cllr De Lacy asked for traffic lights to respond instantly to pedestrians and cyclists. He was told a “scoot and move” programming system allowed such programs, and also allowed things like cycle phases to be included, however County Council officers rejected the idea of using the functionality citing safety hazards if traffic built up on M11 or A14 slip roads as a result.
Council officers defended the design of the NIAB junction, saying it was wide to allow a slip road for those properties with exits onto the junction. They also said it would work better when it was full of traffic after the completion of the NIAB site.
The meeting was told the University will be keeping control of some roads in its new enclave, and building them with materials the County Council would not be prepared to “adopt” and take on and maintain as part of the highway.
Overall councillors whistled through the agenda. I don’t think scrutiny of this major expansion of the city was really seriously carried out; major items such as junctions, cycling, open space maintenance etc. were passed over in minutes.
I got the impression councillors were not seeking to seriously achieve anything other than make their pet points so that when things go wrong in the future they can claim to have raised matters at this stage – however seriously raising matters and trying to persuade fellow councillors there is a problem is a million miles away from just raising a matter.
Cllr Caroline Shepherd made a rare appearance in public in Cambridge. She lobbied the chairman in secret via a note, as this was passed just before the break for lunch I guess she was keen to tuck into her taxpayer funded meal.
Many of the details will return to the committee in the future. One of the problems is there’s often a lack of clarity as to when certain things are agreed. Often it appears to me councillors are told it’s too early to discuss something at one meeting only to be told at the next it’s too late. The only thing it was suggested councillors were having the final say on at this meeting was the junction design; however I fully expect if they raise concerns about in the future they’ll be told what’s proposed is in line with the outline plan they approved so they can’t reject things.
An opportunity has been missed to seek a cycle route through Murray Edwards College and St Edmunds Colleges providing a traffic free route into/towards the city centre, or otherwise seeking significant improvements to the cycle link between the development and the city centre.
The council has gained an agreement from the university that it will build a new 50m swimming pool within 7 years of the first homes on this site being occupied or face “fines”:
http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/west-cambridge-sports-centre.html#comment-84792