The additional land added to the site proposed in Modification SCMM078 will further exacerbate the problem of ribbon development along the A428 and mean that villages will lose their character and identity.

For example, the proposal will mean that the new development will end up within 50m of Highfields Caldecote, removing its identity as a separate settlement. In addition, recently the completion of a further 950 homes in Upper Cambourne has brought houses right up to Bourn Broadway. With the recent approval of 2350 houses in West Cambourne it means there will be a contiguous ribbon of
development from Hardwick in the east right up to the Caxton Gibbet roundabout and the A1198 in the west, a distance of 8km. The villages of Highfields Caldecote, Caxton and Bourn will all be subsumed within a Greater Cambourne strip development.

Developers have repeatedly claimed that the individuality and physical separation of existing and new villages will be maintained. This has been shown to be a false. There is no physical separation between Greater, Lower and Upper Cambourne and there will, in future, be no separation between the new proposed settlement, Upper Cambourne and Hardwick. Any assurances that this is not the case are worthless.

The purpose of the Green Belt is to: prevent unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas; prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another; to safeguard the countryside from encroachment and to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns (villages). These protections should also be applied to those communities south of the A428.

It is also repeating the argument made in 1992, when Bourn Airfield was being considered as the site for Cambourne, that it was unsuitable for a settlement of such size. The Planning Inspector in 1992 submitted a report that stated the “generally small and cramped nature of the site”. He went on to say that, “the Bourn Airfield proposal does lack sufficient room within its boundaries to give adequate separation (from Highfields Caldecote)”. He thought the proposal for only 3,000 dwellings (the current proposal is for 3,500) “would produce a tight development, which when considered in the context of the existing rural character of the area and its proximity to Highfields would appear cramped and too urban in it form and character for this rural area”. These comments were made when Highfields Caldecote was less than half its present size and before the A428 was widened, reducing the size of the Bourn Airfield site by 10 hectares.

​​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.