A local employment site close to where Coleridge, Cherry Hinton, and Queen Edith’s wards intersect (so on the constituency boundary of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire constituency) has been bought out by a big pension fund.
TL:DR? Have your say here, or alternatively go along to the consultation event at Lincoln House at The Paddocks on Monday 22nd July 2024 which I’ve added as an FB event on the Queen Edith’s Community Forum.
You can see the details of The Paddocks ‘vision’ here
Above – from the developers’ website
You can see from GMaps here that the site is currently occupied by low-rise warehouses and offices
There is a lot we don’t know at this stage including:
- Total floor space allocations for each use
- Total number of employees anticipated to be using the site
- The facilities that said employees will need
- Traffic and transport impact of getting all those people into and out of a very constrained site that only has one entrance and one exit.
“What does the Cambridge Local Plan 2018 local plan say?”
Check your local development plan – Normally the first port of call when something like this comes up. In our case, the Cambridge Local Plan 2018 here. The policies map identifies the site at R7. And the text linked to it states that it has been allocated for housing development given our chronic housing shortage – something that the Cambridge Biomedical Campus commissioned and published a recent study on here. (Will they object to this application?).
Above – from the Cambridge Local Plan 2018 Policies Map
And as former councillor Sam Davies pointed out…
In fact as the 2018 document notes, the site has been allocated for housing since 2006.
Above – from the Cambridge Local Plan 2006
Why that site has not actually been converted into housing is one for the national politicians. What’s the point of having local development plans allocating sites for specific purposes if nothing gets done? I think part of that answer depends on how active and interventionist the political party in government wants to be. The previous government didn’t want to be interventionist, while – and as we have seen over the past couple of weeks, the new government definitely does. See Northstowe in my previous blogpost.
It’s worth noting that the developers are appealing to the proposals on the emerging local plan for 2031-40 indicating that the site could remain employment land.
“Do people trust the developers?”
Generally, no.
“[Grosvenor] found that trust in the planning system is almost non-existent. When it comes to planning for large-scale development, just 2% of the public trust developers and only 7% trust local authorities.”
Grosvenor Report 2019 on Building Trust
There’s a role for a South Cambridgeshire constituent to email their MP (https://www.writetothem.com/) and ask them to forward the above report from Grosvenor to the Deputy Prime Minister to ask how she (the DPM) intends to challenge developers to rebuild trust with local communities – and possibly ask an oral question in Parliament. (Daniel Zeichner can forward on the response but he cannot speak on constituency issues in the Commons because of an archaic rule that restricts ministers to speaking on departmental issues only. One of many things that needs changing)
“Back to the Paddocks, what is the vision?”
“Welcome to BAE Systems Pension Funds Trustrees and Columbia Threadneedle Investment’s (CTI) project website for their exciting proposals to redevelop The Paddocks, Cambridge, into a leading research and development facility.”
Above – who’s the paymaster
It’s a textbook outsourcing operation where the people making the money have outsourced the public-facing elements to specialist organisations. I wouldn’t be surprised if, given the opportunity the developers were able to sell on the site with the attached planning permission and bank the profit – similar to what happened with the Romsey Labour Club – still lying derelict.
Anyway, the above are the consultants – London-based so unlikely to know much about the local area and who are there to act – amongst other things, as a shock absorber for any local people who might strongly oppose the proposals. Call me cynical – I’ve simply seen it one time too many to lose any sleep over it. On another consultation for a large site in Cambridge, one of the consultants did not know where Parker’s Piece in Cambridge was. Even though it is in the vicinity of the development he was working on.
“No – really, what is their vision?”
Other than taller box-buildings and speculative letting to the sci-tech bubble, not a lot.
Above – the vision from their hompage
Above – the CGI tricks of the trade – having the proposed buildings as pale boxes rather than dark boxes
And when you look at what they propose for the gaps in between, the amount of imagination they’ve actually used is…minimal.
Above – from the vision
“Assuming the overall proposal of sci-tech-bubble space goes ahead, can someone come up with a much more imaginative set of proposals for the outdoor bit – and for community space too?”
Again, it doesn’t look like they’ve taken much notice of the Cambridge Local Plan 2018 so far. On Table 8.3 on p217 / pdf225 it states the following regarding community leisure facilities – mindful that the proposal covers a site that is around 100m x 50m in area. (Rough calculation on GMaps).
Local
- A community or civic room
Neighbourhood
- Community house – typically the size of an average three-bed house – or community hall
- Primary school
- Day nursery
District
- Public Library
- Primary care facility
- Community centre and other shared use/services buildings
- Function room
- Secondary school
- Place of worship
City-wide
- Acute health care
- Civic and court buildings
- Colleges and universities
“Could we get a new community centre out of it?”
Given the lack of ‘non-religious’ community centres in my part of Cambridge, why not? Especially when you look at the city council’s map here, and compare it to the size of the development proposed
Above – Cambridge City Council’s map of community centres
So it will be interesting to see what concessions the developers would be willing to make on community facilities.
“Could a big player like the Cambridge Biomedical Campus oppose the application?”
If I was them I would given the expensive housing study they commissioned. The existing local plan assumes 123 new homes/flats can be built on the site and has allocated as such. Given that we have a starting point of 40% affordable homes in new developments, I’d expect to see a massive contribution towards new affordable housing on other sites if they were to get permission to build a development for employment uses on land allocated for housing. One option the Cambridge Biomedical Campus has is to work with its member organisations to negotiate one of the buildings on the development as housing for CBC staff, and signing a medium-long term lease accordingly.
Other nearby employers could also make similar objections: i.e. they cannot find the staff who can afford to live in Cambridge, and this site is one allocated for housing in the Local Plan. The End. Whether any of them will depends on how many have the time to put in an objection – assuming they become aware of the development proposals in the first place.
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Which reminds me – do get involved with the Queen Edith’s Community Forum – and also the Coleridge Community Forum if you live north of Cherry Hinton Road
The Cambridge Town Owl 