The site is much larger than it looks from Cherry Hinton Road
I went back to the original planning application (via the planning portal here, ref 20/04705/FUL) to get some screengrabs of the proposals as they were of May 2021
…and they look something like the above
Today I dragged my P-E-M-burdened head out of the front door – if only to grab a coffee from somewhere, and spotted that the barriers had come down. The area – formerly an industrial estate that used to do the laundry for many colleges, hotels and even local residents such as…me, was obviously out of bounds to the general public. (I used to know a few people who worked there from my primary school days).
Above – some snaps from my photo-walk. Not my finest work but then I was zombied out and it was a little windy.
It’s actually turned out better than I thought it would – although admittedly the bar in my view is not high for contemporary developments and architecture. In my very subjective book anyway. The most important thing compared to the monstrosity further up the road that is The Marque (see the excruciating report here from 2015) is that the development is at human scale. i.e. not huge towers designed to extract as much ‘value’ from a site as possible. Which was the objective of Land Securities and the Cambridge Leisure Park that is really showing its age in what will be its 20th year of operation this year.
It’s a shame that their advertising has been left so dated – almost as if the chaps got distracted by the next shiny new project that their working on. For example there’s no shop called “Balzano’s 204” – the number refers to the house number on the road. Also, some things on their map have been mislabeled and The Flying Pig Pub was closed down by the property developers long ago. (Building work seems to have started on that monster as well – making a fortune for the property investor who won on appeal to a planning inspector then selling off the site to RailPEN, extracting the financial value, banking it, and leaving the rest of the city to pick up the pieces.
I know, if it wasn’t that group doing it, someone else would have done it instead. We live in an era where the financial incentives to extract as much financial value from property at the expense of local communities are huge. And successive ministers and whipped Parliaments are complicit in the creation and the operation of that system. At what point the said system implodes in the face of its own massive internal contradictions and/or the climate emergency that is very much here, remains to be seen. (It’s the insurance industry being unable to meet claims from climate-related that could bring it down).
Anyway, both Savills here, and Bidwells here, seem to be competing to get the units leased – one of them seemingly already accounted for.
Private College HQ moves into the neighbourhood
It was hard not to spot the sign on the walkabout, and my instinctive reaction was that Cambridge needs another private college like it needs a hole in the head given how unequal our city remains.
…but they seem to have relocated their headquarters here, and furthermore the building is near completion so may as well see what community benefits (for example renting classrooms in the evening) could come from it.
Some of you may be familiar with their premises in Chesterton just off Elizabeth Way
Above – CATS Cambridge on the site of the old Chesterton Hospital
There’s a local history project or three on the old Chesterton Hospital waiting for someone – in particular its closure and sale of various bits of the site (see these old photos here).
Too early to judge?
Certainly for the firms that will move in – we don’t know who they are, or what sort of business functions they will be running. So I guess I’m more curious than anything else – a sort of ‘first day at work’ thing.
People have raised concerns that the site was designated for housing in the Cambridge Local Plan 2018-30 – and wondered how the developers and the city council got around that one.
I had a look at the original planning application (20/04705/FUL) and the officer’s delegated report of 13 Oct 2021. It looks like one of their concerns was that at a future date.
“Within the extant application the applicant has acknowledged that the application site is allocated for housing delivery within the current Development Plan however the current
occupier has vacated the building(s) and the proposed alterations are intended to make good defective areas of the older buildings, enhance the performance of the existing buildings and secure new tenants under the existing use classes”
“Officers raised concerns that the works could preclude the site coming forward for comprehensive residential redevelopment and would encourage on-going permanent industrial use or facilitate a [Change of Use] under [Permitted Development] to residential without the need for [Planning Permission – thus dodging the requirement to make Section 106 payments and providing for affordable/social housing]. The applicant confirmed that there is no intention by the applicants to seek to apply for residential use via the PD route and is happy for a restrictive condition to this effect.”
Above – Delegated Report paras 8.3 & 8.4. 20/04705/FUL 13 Oct 2021
So if a future application to turn it into flats comes in, it will need separate planning permission.
Furthermore, the Officer’s Report says:
“Policy 41 of the Local Plan aims to protect land in employment uses to ensure a sufficient supply remains to meet demand. It also facilitates redevelopment of existing employment sites where there is a need to modernise buildings that are out of date.”
“Given the anticipated amount of residential delivery on the site, non-delivery of housing
in the short term or under the current LP is of no particular consequence to overall housing delivery nos. in terms of the Council’s Housing Strategy. The principle of the works and what they seek to facilitate is on balance acceptable with the necessary safeguards in place.”
Above – Para 8.7
In the longer term there’s nothing to stop the site from being turned into residential housing as per the Local Plan. That, combined with the need to protect existing land in employment uses means there is a work-around that nominally protects the public interest regarding S106 payments. So that seems to have been the workaround for now.
A rapidly-changing history
This comes back to the Chesterton Hospital site because the site had a significant amount of money spent on it in the post-war era, only for the functions to be abolished by successive governments.
Above – from Architectural Review in 823 from 1965, in what was a disappointingly short article on the then new offices of the Eastern Anglian Regional Hospital Board
This was at a time of the growing regionalisation of local government in England. That building lasted less than half a century. In an era of the climate emergency, our environment cannot cope with carbon-intensive buildings that have such short lifespans.
More local buildings changing their use
The building on the left is the old Lloyds Bank building, and the one on the right is the old Cambridge City Council housing office (south).
This came through as a change of use planning application for the private college to move over the road onto the old bank.
Above – the details are in the full cover letter here
Under the existing planning system it looks straight forward – it will be interesting to see what organisation will move into the vacated premises on the road opposite.
Traffic jams, cars parking in bus stop bays, bus shelters smashed up and with vegetation growing out of it…a sign of the times?
Above: Disappointed but not surprised given the shambolic state of local government finances everywhere – to the extent Parliament has said that the crisis is now ‘Out of Control’.
Private wealth vs public squalor
The private wealth of The Marque (itself a controversial development) and of Land Securities that owns the Cambridge Leisure Park contrasts with the pot-holed road and bus bay, and the smashed up bus shelter with a plant growing out of it.
Whatever the principles, theories, and philosophies the present lot in Government are living their lives by – and forcing onto the rest of us, it’s one that’s clearly not working well for villages, towns, and cities everywhere. What’s difficult for those of us that follow politics closely (which is very few of us sadly!) is that the looming general election is more likely to be about who can be more competent within an existing broken system rather than who can come up with a better system for the many, not the few.
Anyway, the Cambridge City Council elections are back again in four months time. Anyone who is interested in standing for public office – whether as a paper candidate, someone who wants to get attention for a specific issue or three, or someone who want to stand-to-win, see Be A Councillor by the Local Government Association.
This year I’m interested in getting some offline informal gatherings going in the south of the city – especially those that are not normally closely contested. You may have seen the Queen Edith’s by-election hustings from November 2023 (part 1 here, and part 2 here). This time around I think there’s just as much value as having and publicising informal gatherings instead of only having ‘broadcast-to-the-masses’ BBC Question Time-style events. Something along the lines of ‘hire a small hall, put on some teas/coffees, invite the candidates to pop along, invite some local community groups to run a stall/hand out leaflets, have some display boards of what major consultations or projects are happening (we’ve got quite a few round here!), and let people have informal conversations with each other. Amongst other things I hope such gatherings could help boost the community forums such as the Coleridge Community Forum, the Queen Edith’s Community Forum, the Petersfield Area Community Trust, and the Cherry Hinton Residents Association.
It might make a difference, it might not.
Food for thought?
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Below: You and the State – civics education from 1949
The Cambridge Town Owl 