Clarendon House is back again – out for consultation so you can all comment on it too!
Go to https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/online-applications/ and type in 24/00889/FUL into the search box. See the guidance here if it does not make sense.
This is the Clarendon House redevelopment which was featured last December in the Cambridge News by Cait Findlay
The documents to look for are the ones that date from 22 March 2024 and include:
The Design and Access Statement (Below)
The Statement of Community Involvement (Below)
- The Public Art Strategy
- The Townscape Visual Impact Assessment
- …and anything in a row that has ‘drawings’ on it
On the Townscape visual assessment, the heights of the buildings in the area are shown on a map.
Above – Townscape & Visual Impact Assessment Part 1, p6-7
There’s also a random tourism ‘m o n e y s h o t’ image that has nothing to do with the development itself.
Above – Townscape & Visual Impact Assessment Part 1, p14
Unless the local policy is to build some new tudor-style college quads, I’m not entirely sure how this adds to the case given the style of architecture & design they are proposing. Anyway, make of it what you will.
Statement of Community Involvement – or the lack of involvement. In excruciatingly unnecessary detail
I’m actually embarrassed for them that they got their consultants to go through this in such a manner.
They had an in-person exhibition that in the grand scheme of things piled development failure upon development failure.
Wrong venue
For anyone who has been to The Signal Box Community Centre they will be more than familiar about:
- How outrageously small it is given the number of people living in the area
- How very poorly sign-posted it is, and how little-known it is – to the extent hardly anyone knows that it exists unless they happen to have been to an event there.
Which made it a perfect venue for a community outreach event if you wanted the minimum level of community input while being able to tick a box saying you held a consultation event.
Above – how widespread was this publicised? (This actually is a symptom of a wider problem not just in Cambridge but elsewhere, and it is about how the people of a town or city communicate with its institutions and each other. Especially given the collapse of local print press and now the fragmentation and implosion of mainstream social media platforms which prioritise spam’n’ads).
The result? 22 people rocked up on what was probably a cold autumn evening.
Did the consultants deliver on the output? On paper, yes. They organised, advertised, and put on a consultation event. They leafletted the immediate neighbourhood, put out a press release, booked a small community venue, created a webpage and held the event. Was it their fault that hardly anyone turned up? But did the consultants deliver on the outcomes?
“What were the outcomes?”
They helpfully listed them earlier on.
Above – you be the judge. Did their activities achieve the awareness-raising of their proposals, and did they understand the views of the local community as a result?
When it came to the consultation period prior to submitting the planning application – normally the one where residents have at least some chance of influencing a few things, the volume of responses given the scale of the development was utterly miserable.
Also, spot the mathematical error.
What made it more excruciating was that the consultants then number-crunched the feedback to try and quantify the percentages in favour/opposed to the plans.
“On only fifteen responses? That’s a brave move!”
First, there were the demographics.
Above – no one under the age of 25 responded. And if the two people in the 25-34 cohort were aged 34, then it’s even worse!
Don’t like bar charts? Have a pie! Chart!
Above – do residents think there is a need for more high quality office space in their neighbourhood?
Oh.
And even then, a couple of people didn’t respond to the question. Leaving just 13 people representing ‘the voice of the community’.
“Maybe the voice of the community is one of apathy?”
Or fatigue. Or hopelessness, Or one of being so utterly worn down by the volume of consultations where the amount of unpaid work required by residents is not reflected in the improvements to planning applications that all too often appear to be a done deal in the eyes of the public.
Given the seasonal egg from Michael Gove, slipped out as a written statement to Parliament just before it closed for recess, the fears that the public will have even less of a say about the future of Cambridge due to the proposed development corporation further confirms the sense of hopelessness.
At the same time, I perfectly understand the frustration many of my generation and younger have about any prospect of getting on the housing ladder. I gave up well over a decade ago and have been living with my parents in my childhood home ever since leaving the civil service. One of the reasons why I’m of the view that as a human being I never really had the chance to become a mature adult – because (mainly due to broken mental health) I never really got the chance to be a fully independent man with my own place (they were always house shares of one sort or another) and that – for worse mainly, has made me who and what I am today.
As many people have said – including those derided as NIMBY types, Cambridge has not been building the type or mix of housing that meets the needs of our city and county. Instead, for decades we’ve had a system that primarily serves the demands of the international property markets, the land bankers, speculators, financiers, and big developers. Ever since the ability of local councils to acquire land to build council houses on was taken away by Central Government, the sector has become almost entirely dependent on the private sector to build homes and ‘allocate’ a percentage to ‘housing associations’ – reducing the role of local government even further.
Public Art Strategies
I had another moan earlier today about the resin giraffes doing the rounds.
My complaint is that it’s all beginning to look a bit corporate and identikit given that the same organisation is responsible for similar types of trails in cities across the world. Credit to the founders on their success – it’s not easy to do in this field. My criticism is more aimed towards the commissioners for not being more imaginative, and ministers who broke the back of local government *and* of any hopes of educating children and adults on democracy, civics, and citizenship. And then ministers complain about the lack of civic pride? That’s not to say there’s this huge backlash against the project. There isn’t. Two different viewpoints in favour of the project from Kerrie and Naomi below are – I believe, important to put on record.
The first from Ms Portman shows something about the story behind the choice of the animals featured. And it’s not just ‘they stand tall’ – but it also reminds us of the massive inequalities in our city, and that for all the wealth that we’re told Cambridge generates, we do not have the civic or governance structures to ensure that our adoption, care, and fostering systems for children who need that support are being properly funded.
The second, as Cllr Bennett (Greens – Abbey) highlights, puts the reader (me in the first instance, but then the rest of our city too) in the position of the exhausted parent who is struggling to make ends meet while trying to find something to occupy their children with that does not cost money. Again, a reminder of our city’s chronic inequalities. Having a free public art trail that gets the children out and about – and keeps them entertained, is a huge bonus at a time of year when schools break for Easter.
Which then brings me to the city council’s recently adopted Public Art Commissioning Programme (See item 9 here)
Above – Does this programme make public art work in Cambridge? (Item 9 Appendix F)
The developers commissioned Richard Wolfströme to write their public art strategy, and he picked out a number of interesting examples.
Above – Public Art Strategy P10 – I quite like the murals and the mosaics, but the bike stands will get broken and as for those random walky-bits of metal. Just No.
(Actually, I appreciate that it might be suitable elsewhere – such as a playground for adults! Just not in a small hidden away part of town that could end up spending a lot of money on something few will see. Such as we found out the hard way on the other side of Hills Road with the unfinished monstrosity of The Marque.
The strategy for the development invites interested artists to express interests in the potential commissions. Hence asking Melanie Watts, one of my favourite contemporary artists (I do have some!) to put in a bid.
Above – detail of ‘Autumn Splendour’ by Melanie – public art commission, bridge 79b, Buckinghamshire on the Grand Union Canal. Cotswold Sculpture Park
You can see why I purchased a limited edition print of the full mosaic. You can see her other work here – if any developers in/around Cambridge are looking to commission a large and lovely nature-based mosaic.
Improving how Cambridge does public consultations won’t be solved by moaning at developers alone. The problems are much more deeper and structural.
Ministers and MPs will ultimately decide what happens to the planning system over the next few years. But little can be achieved while:
- So small a percentage of the population have a solid understanding of the basics of how our political system functions
- So few people have the time or inclination to wade through files and folders-worth of intellectually-heavy reading in order to make a meaningful comment on planning applications – with the sense that their comments more often than not will be ignored
- Trust in our political processes and governance institutions – along with the entire construction industry as a whole, are so low.
But that’s a separate blogpost.
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Below: You and the State (1949) – they used to teach civics and current affairs once!
The Cambridge Town Owl 