​Now that the dust has begun to settle following the surprising Local Election results, it's worth reflecting on what the results might mean for the StopBAD campaign.
 
Due to the boundary changes that saw Bourn, Longstowe and Little Gransden incorporated into a new Caldecote Ward we had two StopBAD supporting District Councillors - Des O'Brien and Tumi Hawkins - competing for one seat on the council. That meant that, irrespective of the result, the campaign to stop 3,500 houses being built on Bourn Airfield would have a spokesperson on the council. In the event, Tumi Hawkins won the Caldecote seat by a comfortable margin and we have a very able councillor at the heart of a now Liberal Democrat-controlled District Council.
 
The Liberal Democrats - who voted against the Local Plan in 2014 - now have 30 seats while the Conservatives have been reduced to 11. The ousting of so many Conservative councillors - many of whom voted to keep Bourn Airfield in the Local Plan - could be very good news for the campaign.
 
The architects of our misguided, and much delayed, emerging Local Plan have now left the field: the councillors and officers who concocted the Local Plan have either retired, resigned, or been voted out of office. One would naturally think that the Plan would therefore need to be re-drafted. Unfortunately, that is unlikely and the Local Plan inspection process will continue to its conclusion (latest estimates for the Inspectors' Report is late summer).
 
The Liberal Democrats find themselves in a tricky position with respect to the Local Plan. While on the face of it a change of Council leadership would suggest a change of policy - such a policy change may not materialise.  The Liberal Democrats will be reluctant to derail the Local Plan as it's the only game in town. However,  if they defend the Plan as it stands, they are likely to face a significant backlash from their supporters and others who are worried about the glaringly obvious transport infrastructure weaknesses that undermine the Local Plan.
 
It will be important over the coming weeks and months for StopBAD to speak to the Liberal  Democrat leadership and the new Liberal Democrat councillors, to re-iterate our case against BAD. Many of the new councillors are first time councillors and may not yet be fully briefed on the Local Plan. Some will not be aware of the StopBAD campaign and our arguments against the inclusion of Bourn Airfield in the Local Plan.
 
What the election results made clear was that local people were unhappy with the direction their local representatives were taking the District. This new council must be better at listening to local residents' concerns about the nature and scale of housing development and they must develop and communicate a vision for South Cambridgeshire's future in partnership with the people who live here.

Some of you will have heard news yesterday suggesting that the Inspectors have approved the Local Plan including 3,500 new homes at Bourn Airfield. 

We were rather surprised to hear that as the Inspectors have yet to make their decision known. 

It is clear that South Cambs District Council and Cambridge City Council have been premature in briefing the press, and others, on the ‘outcome' to the Local Plan Examination. The outcome has certainly not yet been determined. Furthermore, we can report that the Inspectors were surprised and unhappy at the councils' precipitate action. They have written a strongly worded letter to the councils and have specifically asked them to publish their letter to avoid any perception that they have reached a fixed conclusion.

We have attached the Inspectors' letter below. Do let us have your comments.

​​StopBAD's original submission in October 2013 questioned the site’s ability to accommodate the 3,500 houses to be built. We pointed out that the council made significant mistakes in their calculation of the site’s capacity.

Questions concerning the site’s capacity are not new. In 1992 when Bourn Airfield was being considered as a potential site for the new settlement of Cambourne, the Planning Inspector, Mr T Kemann-Lane, submitted a report in which he drew particular attention to the “generally small and cramped nature of the site”. He observed “the Bourn Airfield proposal does lack sufficient room within its boundaries to give adequate separation (from Highfields Caldecote)”. Similarly, he thought the proposal (for only 3,000 dwellings, rather than the currently-proposed 3,500) “would produce a tight development”. This was prior to the building of Cambourne, and Highfields was less than half its present size. In addition, the A428 was not a dual carriageway in 1992, which has also reduced the size of the Bourn Airfield site by 10 ha.

​​Figure 4: Schedule of Yields, Proposed Development at Bourn Airfield by Rummey Design [4]

Figure 5: Overview of StopBAD's original analysis

The updated land yield allocated to residential parcels (93.82 ha.) by Rummey Design (see Figure 4) on behalf of Countryside Properties comes close to StopBAD's estimated figure from our 2013 Submission of 85 ha (Figure 5). However, the yield of 93.82 ha. comes at the expense of the employment land on the Tallent site and the loss of the access spur on the North East on the site. The subsuming of these areas into the MDA means that the proposed new settlement is effectively conjoined to Caldecote Highfields. Clearly, there are now insufficient distances to achieve an effective buffer zone and visual separation between Upper Cambourne, Bourn Airfield and Caldecote Highfields.
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In addition, building 3,500 houses on an area of 93.82 hectares produces a housing density of 37 dwellings per hectare (dph). A density of 37 dph is well in excess of the densities in the original Cambourne Masterplan, and closer to urban than rural density levels.

The next round of hearings for the Local Plan Examinations for Bourn Airfield start on 4 April 2017 at South Cambridgeshire Hall in Cambourne.

In preparation for these hearings, the Inspector has produced a series of questions ("Matters and Issues") for inclusion in the examination and has invited responses from interested parties. The deadline for these responses was yesterday, 16 February. StopBAD (as well as the Coalition of Parish Councils led by Bourn Parish Council) has made detailed and updated submissions responding to these questions.  In a series of updates here, we are releasing our submissions on a section by section basis for your reference, beginning with the matter of site sustainability regarding employment. [If you would like to download a copy of the full submission, see below]. 

​The answer to this question is clearly no. As illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2 the key employment centres are in Cambridge City itself, at the Science Park off Milton Road, at Addenbrookes and the Biomedical Campus, and further south at the Babraham Research Campus and Granta Park. At the moment there are in the region of 118,500 jobs at these 5 sites. Furthermore, the concentration of employment at these sites is set to significantly increase with plans already in place to employ 30,000 people on the Biomedical Campus.
 
The only significant employers near the Bourn Airfield site are the South Cambridge District Council and Papworth Hospital - which will relocate 2000 jobs to the Biomedical Campus next year (2018). There is now universal consensus among statutory bodies and observers that R&D Health Sciences companies and agencies will look increasingly to work in close proximity with one another and consequently there is little prospect that this pattern of employment dispersal will change.
 
Bourn Airfield is not a sustainable distance away from the main centres of employment and represents an over-concentration of housing development away from the main centres of employment.

We will add further submitted responses to the other questions here over the coming days. In the meantime please do make a note of the timetable:

Tuesday 4th April - 10am and 2pm at South Cambridgeshire Hall, Cambourne - The New Village at Bourn Airfield
Wednesday 5th April 10am and 2pm - Site Visits 
Thursday 6th April 10am and 2pm - Continuation sessions if required. 

After a lengthy quiet period, the South Cambridgeshire specific Examination in Public (EIP) gets underway in December 2016. It will run into January, February and March before the site specific sessions are held.

For further details of the EIP schedule see here: http://www.scambs.gov.uk/local-plan-examination
There is a meeting scheduled for 8th November covering modifications to the Local Plan and it will specifically reference possible modifications to Bourn Airfield. We are currently trying to find out more details about this and will publicise this as it becomes available.
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So, the focus and attention on opposing the proposed development at Bourn Airfield now resumes! Please continue to follow progress here, on Twitter and Facebook and let's keep the pressure up.

The Inspectors examining the Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Local Plans have released a new programme, with dates of hearings for the first of the South Cambridgeshire only hearing sessions.

The hearings programme now includes:
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• dates for the first blocks of the South Cambridgeshire only hearing sessions to take place in November and December 2016 (starting on 1 November 2016)
• a revised skeleton programme for the South Cambridgeshire only hearing sessions and remaining joint hearing sessions to take place in 2017

Matters and Issues have also been released that relate to the first blocks of the South Cambridgeshire-only hearing sessions. These Matters and Issues relate to climate change policies, housing allocations at villages, housing policies, provision and protection of services and facilities policies, and environmental health policies.

The updated programme and the matters and issues are available online and can be found via the following link: www.scambs.gov.uk/local-plan-examination.

The Examination in Public (EIP) is re-opening. Week 1 (Block 5) commences on the 7th June and covers Overall Spatial Vision, Housing Need and Green Belt. We will be making a statement for this section.
The South Cambs Strategic Sites Hearings are set for Block 13 week 1. These hearings will not be until the end of the year and participants are not listed in the Hearings Programme (Version 8). There will be an update later in the year.

A message from Cllr Des O'Brien:

I plan to reopen this channel over the next few months as the ‘New’ Local Plan consultation is underway. The first thing to say is that so far SCDC have not listened to the criticisms levelled at their Plan by either local people, or the Government Inspector: they are effectively re-presenting it with a few modifications and seem hell bent on ploughing forward regardless.

For me the Plan failed at the very beginning and, rather than admit their errors, both Councils - Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire - are digging the hole deeper still and look set to condemn our District to carmageddon.

A central feature of the Plan is that they have chosen to build in new settlements and not on the fringes of Cambridge. This is in spite of the fact that this U turn contradicted the Councils’ own Sustainable Development Strategy. The justification for this is wholly inconsistent as the Councils’ attempt to defend the Green Belt against sprawl, encroachment into the countryside and merging of settlements and yet completely ignore these same arguments in relation to West Cambourne and B.A.D. These two new settlements are the most obvious example I could ever imagine of urban sprawl, encroachment into the countryside and merging of settlements.  Sadly, the Councils have lost their way completely and their blindness is set ruin our area forever.
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Can I ask again that people make their voices heard and respond vigorously to the consultation between now and the 25th of January.

Examination of the South Cambridgeshire Local Plan was suspended by the Planning Inspector in May 2015 to enable SCDC to address two points. Firstly, the Inspector was concerned that the Local Plan jumped to the idea of new settlements (e.g., the proposal for 3,500 houses on Bourn Airfield) without adequately examining the alternative of building in the Green Belt south of Cambridge, Secondly she considered that the overall housing requirements may have been underestimated.  SCDC is working to address the Inspector’s concerns and will issue a revised Local Plan, for public consultation, in November. Have your say!

Coalition of Parish Councils. Bourn Parish Council convenes a Coalition of 16 parish councils concerned about unsustainable housing development in the A428 corridor. We argued to the Inspector that new housing developments like West Cambourne and Bourn Airfield would increase rat-running through our villages as people living in the new houses would have to drive to work. This is because most of the new job opportunities will be concentrated in the Addenbrookes’ biomedical park and related developments (e.g., Astra Zeneca) south of the city. The Coalition will review the revised plan and play an active part in the next round of hearings to be organised by the Inspector.

Cambourne to Cambridge busway. The county, city and district councils would like to use up to £100 million of City Deal money to establish a dedicated busway from Cambourne to a new ‘park and ride’ facility near Madingley Mulch and on into Cambridge. Three routes have been proposed, one down Madingley Hill and the others to the north and south of this. It would be a bus route and not a guided busway.
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We recognise that a dedicated bus route would be useful to some people living in Cambourne and to users of the proposed new park and ride scheme. But, over 80% of people living in Cambourne currently travel to work by car. People in South Cambridgeshire work all over the district and a better bus service to Cambridge will not help them or residents of any future development! The dedicated bus route proposal will  be published for public consultation on the 12th October. Have your say!

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