Does the Government’s Case for Cambridge stand a chance?

Building Magazine has looked into the details, and has interviewed the Chief Town Planner of the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service

You can read the article here.

Also, sign up to my event at the Cambridge Central Library on Saturday 23 March from 11am here.

And if you haven’t already, read the original “Case for Cambridge” here

“And the water?”

See:

Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire’s emerging local plan 2031-40

“There are 20,000 homes already slated to be built in the current local plan, across developments such as Northstowe, Waterbeach, Cambourne, Bourne Airfield, Wellcome Genome Campus and Eddington. Sufficient space has been identified in an emerging plan, which runs to 2041, for around 84,000 additional jobs and 61,000 houses. “For two district councils, that is a pretty astonishing amount of growth,” says Kelly.”
Stephen Kelly, Chief Planner for Greater Cambridge to Building.co.uk on 20 March 2024

I agree. Given that the City of Cambridge (within its 1935-era boundaries) has 53,000 homes according to the article, building the homes already committed in the existing local plan is…ambitious. Especially given the problems in the construction industry and the total reliance on the private sector to do the building. It was the Thatcher Government that took away local government’s ability to have significant in-house building functions that could build council houses. It remains to be seen if a future Labour Government would reverse this, mindful that Blair and Brown chose not to.

Cambridge 2050 is now the target date

I don’t know about you, but I may well be plant food by that time, (I’ll be in my 70s if I am alive!) and given my long term health, I’m not banking on surviving the next quarter of a century in tact to see the results of Gove’s proposals.

“[Gove] will also have to deal with opposition from rural stakeholders within his own party. Anthony Browne, Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, did not even wait for Gove’s speech to begin last summer before calling the plans “nonsense”.”

This refers to the comments reported in the Cambridge Independent last year.

The problem for the MP for South Cambridgeshire is that he can no longer criticise any of the Government’s proposals because he accepted the Seal of Ministerial Office at the Department for Transport. Therefore the Ministerial Code applies to him – in particular paragraph 1.3

“What does paragraph 1.3. say?“

“The principle of collective responsibility applies to all Government Ministers”
Ministerial Code signed off by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak upon forming his Government

Therefore the MP for South Cambridgeshire fully backs the Government’s proposals for Cambridge & Cambridgeshire 100% no quibbles…or he has to resign his ministerial office on the grounds that he cannot reconcile his political views with those of The Government.

Which will make for an interesting discussion point at any hustings in the new St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire constituency.

Water issues

I was jumping up and down about this back in 2020 when tipped off that the consultants advising the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service said that there was no further capacity. Or to quote the consultants directly:

“There is no environmental capacity for additional development in the new Local Plan [2030 ono] to be supplied by with water by increased abstraction from the Chalk Aquifer. Even the current level of abstraction is widely believed to be unsustainable”.p17 here.

Ever since then, all those involved have been trying to figure out how to get new supplies to the region. You can see the pipeline plan from Anglian Water here.

“Water supply issues are already holding back housing development around the city. In its previous draft water resources management plan, Cambridge Water failed to demonstrate that there was enough to supply all of the new properties in the emerging local plan without risk of deterioration.”
Daniel Gayne in Building.co.uk 20 March 2024

As The Budget 2024 documents on water at the top demonstrate, this is something that was discussed at Cabinet levels of Government. Yet with the general election looming, there is a growing sense locally that we want to know what the opposition parties’ alternative proposals are, just as much as we want the substantial essentials from ministers – such as the proposed geographical area for the confirmed Development Corporation.

“Homes England chair Peter Freeman has been given £5m and tasked with scoping out plans for a new neighbourhood complete with affordable homes, a sustainable transport network and a substantial new green space to rival the Royal Parks.”
Daniel Gayne, 20 March 2024

Again, as Mr Gayne alludes to, the biggest problem for local residents is the lack of certainty on so many things.

Affordable homes: Affordable to whom exactly?
A new neighbourhood: 150,000 new homes next to a city with 53,000 homes is not a new neighbourhood. It’s a new city. And not a small one either.
Sustainable Transport Network: I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the Greater Cambridge Partnership for nearly a decade and no substantial segregated mass transit system has been submitted for planning permission
The cities and areas listed as case studies to take inspiration from: That’s nowhere near the same as having even a basic concept master plan for a designated part of the county – for example the land north of Cambourne (which someone has already snapped up the development rights for)

That lack of clarity really hits home at the end of that section.

“The [Case for Cambridge] report says “a range of tools” might be used, including design codes, pattern books, visual preference surveys, local design review panels, development orders and thoughtful masterplanning.

“It also notes that there is “huge potential to capture, for the public benefit, any increase in land value that will arise from development decisions taken in Cambridge by central and local government”. “
Daniel Gayne, 20 March 2024

“”A range of tools” that might be used?”

Again, note the uncertainty. It’s not the same as:

“We will use:

Design Codes
Pattern Books
Visual preference surveys
Local design review panels
Development orders
Thoughtful master planning”

This is where (for all of their faults) the work by Create Streets has been interesting.

Not least because they are being seen to challenge the current trend of minimalist spreadsheet architecture and value-engineered design – the likes of which we see too much of in and around Cambridge.

Above – from Of Streets and Squares (2019) p88

The question of why so many new buildings seem so ugly is explored in this article by the School of Life – whose premises in Marchmont Street I used to live opposite from during some of my civil service days in London. Which fell in the London Borough of Camden – which pleased me muchly given one of my favourite songs of my mid-teens was Camden Town by Suggs. (It’s more St Pancras than Camden in reality!)

Above – Suggs in 1995

The design codes, pattern books, and visual surveys will be highly contested by the profit-hunting developers

And that’s where one of the battles has to be won if we are to avoid concrete carbuncles, Eddington Edifices, and Brookgate Boxes.

Because it’s not what the local residents choose from the survey of options that matters most, but who gets to decide what options are available for the public to choose from.

And if you get a question that’s a long the lines of:

“Which of these ugly and hideous-but-cheapo building typologies would you least object to us covering your local countryside with? A, B, C, D or E?”

…then that’s asking for trouble.

Because that’s not having an honest conversation with the public and it’s not properly engaging them *at design stage* in a process or spirit of co-design. When it comes to wanting to get your own way and not being able to deal with constructive criticism in a process of improvement, politicians and big developers have got form. Especially in a testosterone-fuelled workplaces.

Retrofitting the existing city

I’m glad that Mr Gayne picked up on this in his article because few people seem to have discussed this in any detail.

“Initial retrofits across Greater Cambridge will be targeted at commercial premises and social housing stock, and the government will be working with specialist retrofit companies to offer water audits and retrofit to households and businesses across the region.”
Daniel Gayne, 20 March 2024

This is where public policy gets ****really complex****

Because local residents in and around Cambridge will tell you that finding a decent tradesperson is very difficult due to the very high demand for their services. There simply is not the supply to go around. Combined with the housing crisis, there simply are not the homes available to house all of the people that need a city to function properly. We’re not striking the right balance between the demand from the sci-tech bubble vs the other industries that are essential to a city’s survival. Back in the mid-1990s one of my school friends at the time warned me about Cambridge becoming a city full of executives where you could not find a plumber. What an incredibly prophetic observation.

Building for today’s problems rather than for tomorrow’s

One of the things many local residents – myself included have said is that our local ecology does not have the capacity to cope with the levels of development the Government is talking about. Furthermore, in the midst of this sci-tech bubble, it’s hard to imagine a Cambridge when there wasn’t such a bubble. Unless you actually lived it and are old enough to remember. (Which I am. Just!)

Mr Gayne quotes Zoe Metcalfe, client director at AtkinsRéalis, who states that the Cambridge 2040 [or 2050] Vision ‘may quickly become a case study in how outdated models can lead to development in the wrong areas.’

“Today we live in a much more ecologically conscious world – or at least would like to think that we do.

“Growing that London to Cambridge element seems intuitive, but actually we are in a different place now in terms of the climate risk.“
Zoe Metcalfe to Daniel Gayne, 20 March 2024

Long term planning for the future is extremely difficult. As it turns out, Ms Metcalfe proposes a solution similar to my own – building new, and upgrading existing transport infrastructure to ensure fast rail-based connections to/from Cambridge, and enabling the expanding sci-tech sector to spread out to surrounding county towns in a co-ordinated manner as I mentioned in this blogpost. But because Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps got rid of the regional planning tier in 2010, we are at least 15 years behind where we could/should be.

It’s one thing renovating and retrofitting commercial premises. It’s quite another if you’re going to do it to people’s homes

Follow the Save Ekin Road campaigners and you’ll get a feel for the issues residents are likely to have. Furthermore, in Coleridge ward (my part of the city) the residents of Fanshawe Road are going through the same process. And that planning application is coming up for a decision at the Planning Committee at the end of March 2024.

I went along to one of the public consultations. While I supported the principles of overhauling the housing (on the assumption that it would involve working with residents eg not leaving them with fewer council homes of a smaller size and higher rents), I was resigned to the inevitable bland designs.

Above – Item 9 p18 Cambridge City Council Planning Cttee Papers 27 March 2024

You can see how a ‘non-choice’ survey might work on a design code or a pattern book. “Here’s the template block. You have a choice of which colours of brick or cladding you’d like to apply on this design!”

It has come out even worse with the Computer-Generated Images (CGIs) which had not been produced during the consultation event.

Above. Dull. Dull. Dull.

Above – the view from Coleridge Rec Davy Road entrance by Dragon (yes – really, named after Puffles!) Park.

If the blocks have to overlook the Rec, at least make them look vaguely artistic! As it is, there is an inevitable risk of the buildings being tagged and graffitied up because with such a blank canvas of a building, combined with massive cuts to youth services, it’s something that feels like it’s waiting to happen. And it doesn’t need to be like that. Far better to come up with a nicer design, get youth services properly funded (we didn’t have them in my time either in mid-1990s Cambridge) *and* follow the example of Argyle Street next to Mill Road Bridge by creating a space for local artists to come up with their own designs that they can take pride in – such as the Stephen Hawking mural here.

Above – from BBC Cambridgeshire 07 Apr 2018

“Street artists in the city – where he lived, worked, and died – paid their own tribute on the underside of a railway bridge. Kyle Warwick, who was “inspired” by the professor after a school visit, and Tim Shuker-Yates created their vision of Prof Hawking on the bridge in Mill Road.”
BBC Cambridgeshire 07 Apr 2018

I’ve seen examples in Brighton, London, and Cambridge where councils have come to informal agreements with local residents about using otherwise blank brick faces, with local communities self-regulating and not needing law enforcement to get involved.

One thing to ponder re Gove’s visions of leafy London’s affluent parts: How do you ensure variety in the detailing, and what examples does he have of inspiring housing design aimed at the majority of us who won’t be living in detached houses with large private gardens, or plush apartment blocks? What policies can he and his successors bring in that prevent the value being extracted by speculators and prevent developers from ‘value-engineering’ the living daylights out of what might be wonderful designs, leaving little but the present trend of minimalist spreadsheet blocks that we see all too often today?

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:

Follow me on Twitter
Like my Facebook page
Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.

If you want some ideas on how to go about this, pop into Together Culture on Fitzroy Street down the road from The Grafton Centre.