The proposals were rejected in 2013 by Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council in the creation of what became the current local plan of 2018 – but with Peter Freeman’s Cambridge Growth Company instructed to grow Cambridge beyond what the emerging local plan accounts for, will we need to revisit this?
See the news report from 2013 on the rejection. This was at the time when Cambridge United FC were struggling financially and sold their stadium to Grosvenor who leased it back to them. Hence the proposals for a joint bid to both upgrade the Abbey Stadium and build a new sporting village between Trumpington and the M11 – on Greenbelt land.
I remember discussing this with the then executive councillor for planning, Tim Ward (Lib Dems – Arbury (!!!)), and he told me that the developers were primarily interested in building expensive detached housing on the edge of the city on Green Belt land.
Above – from the old Cambridge Community Sporting Trust proposals
You can compare the above with what got built in the end on G-Maps here In one sense we got more homes at a higher density, but then on the other we didn’t get the sporting facilities that the application proposed.
I didn’t make a big deal of it at the time because I was more interested in national politics and social media. Town planning was stuff that my two brothers (both qualified town planners) did. Inertia from childhood of not stepping on the toes of interests of your siblings.
There were a number of ‘visions’ for the future of Cambridge appearing in the early 2010s
Above – Published in 2013, from Cambridge Ahead’s 2030 vision video which you can watch here
I wrote about it at the time in this blogpost of Nov 2013, I described the collective of institutions shaping Cambridge’s future at the time as having ‘Little co-ordination, little strategic planning, no long term vision’.
Note Daniel Zeichner’s response for Cambridge Labour at the time here.
“One answer to the problem would be a unitary council for the Cambridge sub-region, which could help get us past the different political priorities of the different local authorities. Many have long despaired at the illogical muddle of our local government system which gives us Southend, Peterborough, Thurrock and Bedford as unitary councils, but leaves the key economic drivers of our region, Cambridge, Norwich and Ipswich marooned within their own counties.”
Above – Daniel Zeichner (23 July 2013 via the Internet Archive)
Interestingly, the term ‘Cambridge sub-region’ was still being used. Geographically it was the same as what was in the county structural plan documents of the early 2000s.
Above – Draft review of the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Structure Plan (2001) p4
A year after Mr Zeichner’s article, the Greater Cambridge Partnership was created via the much-maligned ‘City Deal’ of June 2014 – something that Cambridge Liberal Democrats worked up in their national party’s coalition years only to find themselves losing party political control of Cambridge City Council that same year. My then local ward councillor Lewis Herbert (Lab – Coleridge) finding himself chairing a board with two fellow council leaders who, rather than showing a close interest in the workings, delegated the responsibilities to their deputies. Ultimately the GCP was created because the Conservatives would not allow the Liberal Democrats or Labour to control Cambridge as a more powerful unitary council. That was further reinforced by the creation of the Combined Authority in 2017 – something that I was against at the time and am still against now.
Fast forward a decade and Matthew Pennycook MP, the Minister for Housing and Planning steps up with his proposals for what we now know is a centrally-led development corporation – the Cambridge Growth Company.
One of the things that corporate visions have a habit of is forgetting that people should be at the heart of future plans. All too often they are an afterthought because decision-making structures don’t involve the public at the very early stages, and our public are not educated at school or in adult education about democracy, politics, or civics so the opportunities to get involved and learn are very limited. Hence the interesting draft from 2012 from Transition Cambridge here.
Above – Transition Cambridge Vision for 2030 (draft)
The Transition Cambridge vision has more content on communities than most other subjects. With that in mind, how does that read compared with the high level community strategy from the Cambridge Local Strategic Partnership of 2004?
Above – A Community Strategy for Cambridge (2004) Cambridge LSP
“There is nothing in the plan about educating adults in making use of their civic rights and taking on civic responsibilities that are essential for the sound functioning of cities. “
Above – Lost Cambridge 31 Dec 2025 – I wasn’t impressed!
Not least because around this time I was one of a critical mass of twenty-something graduates who had started working in the Cambridge office of the Government’s regional office network for England. Those of us living in Cambridge should have been encouraged to get involved in this as interested, educated young adults. We weren’t.
Bringing it back to ‘community’ and the dropped proposals for Trumpington
You can read the extensive consultation documents from the early 2010s here. Given what we now know in hindsight, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a shame the proposals didn’t get the go-ahead for inclusion in the local plan. But then at the time ministers did not have Gove-style growth plans, the UK was still in the EU, and we didn’t know what a global pandemic was.
“A key feature of the masterplan is the opportunity to create a new ‘city edge’ defined by a tree planted promenade or rampart. This elevated walkway will afford attractive views over the sport facilities and create a striking gateway when viewed arriving into the City from the M11 motorway or Hauxton Road. The promenade will also provide an opportunity for formal and informal play space, relaxation and recreation.”
Above – City Edge proposals (Abandoned) from 2013
You can look at the original boards here – which include the one below listing the proposed new facilities. See also the paper by WSP for the developers here, and on the public art strategy here.
- Indoor artificial grass pitch
- Gym/fitness suite
- Large multi-purpose sports hall (‘opportunity’ – councillors would have insisted on this had the concept been approved)
- Cafe/restaurant
- Grass and artificial training pitches
- Hockey pitches (artificial pitches) and facilities
- Cycling sport
- BMX Track
- Outdoor velo race track
- 1600m closed road cycle track
So…you can see why I was a little disappointed we didn’t get them at the time. But in those days I hadn’t sunken my mind into planning applications – the same going for the old Hobson Street cinema.
Over a decade later and we have the opportunities to revisit both
That does not mean we should automatically pull out the old plans and rubber-stamp them. But it does mean asking what we can learn from them – and which ideas might work in the current context whether in their original proposed settings, or elsewhere on other sites as the city expands.
The long-overdue focus on provision of sports facilities for girls and women
I wrote about this recently here, and any future studies need to account for the growth in demand and also the public health needs of girls and women in sectors that have traditionally mainly provided for boys and men. One option with the 2013 studies are to invite women’s sports and community groups to examine those past proposals and pick out both the shortcomings in the proposals, and what future proposals need to do in order not to repeat the same mistakes.
That also means looking at other past studies – like the Congestion Charge Survey of 2008
…which I discovered in 2022 and wrote about here. In it I also looked back at past media coverage from when the Conservatives ran the county council back in 2007. It’s up to the county council to publish a digitised copy of that consultants’ report. I’ve given up asking, so if any county councillors out there want to make a push for this, over to you.
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