The fragmentation of the public sector combined with an over-complicated planning system that seems to make everyone angry combined with the mystery that is where power resides at the University of Cambridge and its colleges are all reflected in this particular case – a piece of sporting infrastructure for a rapidly-growing city that we are still waiting for
This post stems from, and contains an update to my last blogpost here. That post stems from my original post about what Cambridge City Council stated in response to my public question for a progress update on the West Cambridge Swimming Pool. That latter post looked at the original West Cambridge (with swimming pool proposal) planning application from 2016 which you can see at https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/online-applications/ typing in Ref: 16/1134/OUT
I’m cross-linking the posts because I think it’s important to show how I came to my previous conclusion in my last blogpost, and how an update from architect Jonathan Gimblett. The question I asked in my previous blogpost was:
**Does The University of Cambridge have planning permission for the West Cambridge Swimming pool?**
To which I responded with: “No, but…”
…and then sought to explain that while outline planning permission on the large West Cambridge development included plans for such a swimming pool, no detailed planning application had been made, so therefore no planning permission could be given by Cambridge City Council or anyone else (eg The Secretary of State).
This led to the headline in The Varsity here.
Mr Gimblett dug further
What complicates things is that the separate Eddington Development contains a clause in the planning permission that requires the University of Cambridge to build a sufficient level of sporting facilities – including a swimming pool, by a given date, with failure to do so resulting in a financial penalty. What I don’t know is whether the triggering of that penalty then lets the University off of the hook from building the swimming pool that they had previously committed in writing to build.
“What was the Environment Agency’s position in 2016?”
In July 2016 it stated:
Above – from 16/1134/OUT – Environment Agency 14 July 2016
A reasonable statement given the size of the development and the water crisis we have.
Two weeks later Anglian Water got back – but didn’t say anything about water supply. But then isn’t it Cambridge Water that does the supplying, and Anglian that deals with sewage? That’s what the letter from Anglian Water two weeks later indicated.
It wasn’t until 2019 that they got something from Cambridge Water,
“West Cambridge outline – 16/1134/OUT
Cambridge Water
December 2019
“Our final Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP19) covers the next 25 years and indicates water resources availability. The growth in new properties and water demand in our WRMP is based on the adopted 2018 local authority plan, therefore if this development and property numbers was included in the local plan, then there is water resources allowance for this development.
“This is for both construction and post construction period assuming that construction period demands for water do not exceed post construction demands for water.”
“For a development at this stage, and with no increase in demand, I do not see the need to add conditions to the final permission over and above those for BREAAM Excellent and water management targets.”
Cambridge Water to Cambridge City Council, 06 Dec 2019
“So…where’s the hold up?“
I’m not quite sure. Is it the case that Cambridge Water has indicated that it has the necessary supplies as of 06 Dec 2019, or have things changed again? We know that Anglian Water’s proposed reservoirs won’t come on stream until 2037 at the earliest. Yet they are also building new pipelines (See here) but I’m not clear whether the work will provide the additional supplies such a large facility on an even large development site will need. Anglian Water states their new pipeline linking Grantham to Peterborough will be open in 2025. Does that connect into existing supply infrastructure that would serve the West Cambridge Site? I don’t know.
***It’s all very complicated***
And it shouldn’t be – not for the summary headlines anyway. For the construction of civic, social, sporting, leisure, arts, and environmental infrastructure that are essential for cities to function, there’s a huge public interest in having the key information easy to find, easy to understand, and something that enables the residents who have to live with what’s built, to be able to influence the debates.
It should not require someone with a university degree and/or a public policy background to try and make sense of it – making various oversights and inevitable errors along the way because of the huge weight of documents involved. This should be something that someone with the academic/intellectual ability of a school leaver should be able to understand – and quickly, so that anything likely to affect them is something they can raise with their elected councillors or MP. Assuming they were taught the essentials on civics and citizenship. Which is a very strong assumption indeed.
If we want our city – and our county to become greater than the sum of our parts, the case of the West Cambridge Swimming Pool provides a demonstration of how to prevent this from happening.
Question for candidates at the next general election: What needs to change?
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