Final fortnight of public events on Cambridge’s Future – the draft local plan 2024-45

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

You can see the list from the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service here

I’ve also organised two public events in Cambridge:

For convenience, I’ve listed the remaining ones below:

  • Thursday 15 January, 5pm to 7pm: Drop-in session at Jubilee Pavillion, Stapleford, CB22 5BQ  
  • Thursday 15 January, 5pm to 7pm: Presentation and Q&A on Cambridge Biomedical Campus, 1000 Discovery Drive, CB2 0AX 
  • New time: Friday 16 January, 4:45pm to 6:45pm: Drop-in session at the Nightingale Pavillion Community Room, off Nightingale Avenue/Queen Edith’s Way, CB1 8SG 
  • Friday 16 January, 11:15am to 1:30pm: Drop-in session at The Small Hall, Milton Community Centre, Coles Road, CB24 6BL
  • Monday 19 January, 1pm to 6pm: Drop-in session and exhibition space at The Cambridge Room, Unit 57, The Grafton Centre, CB1 1PS
  • New event: Monday 19 January, 4:15pm to 5:30pm: Drop-in session in Girton, The Pavilion Girton Recreation Ground, CB3 0FH 
  • Tuesday 20 January, 4:30pm to 7pm: Drop-in session at Gamlingay Eco Hub, Stocks Lane, SG19 3JR 
  • Amended date: Thursday 22 January, 4:30pm to 6pm: Drop-in session at Cherry Hinton Village Leisure Centre, Colville Rd, CB1 9EJ
  • Thursday 22 January, 5pm to 7pm: Drop-in session at The Wing, Brown’s Field Community Centre, 31A Green End Rd, CB4 1RU
  • New event: Friday 23 January, 11:30am to 1pm: Lichfield Hall, Coleridge, CB1 3SJ 
  • Tuesday 27 January, 2pm to 6pm: Drop-in session Cottenham Village Hall, Lambs Lane, CB24 8TA

Above – I’ve also put in bold the events within Cambridge’s city boundary

More big maps

Above – turns out the GCSP Service also created a hi-res A0-sized map for the City of Cambridge itself – which you can download here. (It’s worth saving a copy to your computer should you need to return to it).

You can see from the above image that to cover the whole city in a high level of detail, the physical size of a printed version needs to be huge. And it is. A screengrab of the complete map is as below

Above – a low-res screengrab from a file called “Draft Greater Cambridge Local Plan: Cambridge Inset Map (2025)” (10.74 MB) which is in the GCSP Document Library here

Above – the key to the map

Use the link and instructions above if you’re not able to access the file directly from the GCSP website address.

With huge thanks to a very kind supporter, I’ll be getting a few copies of the big maps re-printed at A0 size to bring along to the two events that I’ve organised – and if all goes well to some of the Cambridge-based events that my health allows me to get to!

Local residents on various local message boards are asking questions about some of the detailed screengrabs

For me it is in the public interest that detailed print outs of the large map are displayed where the local public can see them. Furthermore, the maps should generate questions from the public – even if they sound simple and straight forward to those familiar with the process. Most of the public (myself included) never studied politics and democracy at school. Most of the public don’t take a close interest in politics and democracy whether local or national. Therefore something like this the results of which will affect the future of their neighbourhood and wider area is a chance for the public to become familiar with a whole host of things denied to them at school.

Take the detail below in East Cambridge

One resident asked about what some of the lettering meant on the area labels. Eg S/AMC/AS = Area of Major Change / Abbey Stadium.

Above – detail of East Barnwell in Abbey Ward

For Cambridge United fans, this is something they may want to look into and ask for more information about. (Either to the GCSP Service (which is NOT the Greater Cambridge Partnership – that’s different) via email localplanning [@] GreaterCambridgePlanning [dot] Org [No-UK at the end] and/or your local councillors via https://www.writetothem.com/

I normally recommend people going to their local elected councillors in the first instance as often there are other issues they want to raise, and also it’s more likely to lead to ongoing conversations about improving local neighbourhoods.

Sticking with the Abbey Ward theme, it also covers the proposals for the Cambridge Retail Park that also incorporates the Newmarket Road Tesco.

Above – the blue section indicates retail spaces. The orange hatching super-imposed on top of the Cambridge Retail park section indicates that this is a policy area which residents interested in its future need to look at.

“So…it’s not just about the places that are going to be changed?”

Exactly – it covers the areas of land and the city that have specific functions designated. Which amongst other things can indicate where proposals to build residential housing are prohibited. For example in the detail of the map above, the bits in green are open spaces. The hatching super-imposed means that those green spaces are also protected – such as Coldham’s Common by the Abbey Stadium – and the allotments behind the stadium too. (Where many a football has ended up!)

Cambridge Railway Station area and Cambridge Retail Park – including The Junction

This forms part of my childhood neighbourhood so I’ve lived through a huge amount of changes over the decades

Above – the letter codes indicate new policies including a proposed eastern entrance for Cambridge Railway Station which I wrote about here following ministerial confirmation

This also includes the proposed redevelopment of Davy Road, north of Dragon Park and Coleridge Rec – which is at pre-application consultation phase if you want to see and comment on what’s proposed.

Above – to download the document pack, see https://davyroad.co.uk/#moreinfo and scroll to the foot of the page. Click on the trio of dots on the right of the five small icons at the bottom of the page (in the image above) and the option to download the proposals appears.

Above – various proposals on upgrading the public facilities around the Bowling Green on Coleridge Road/Davy Road corner are included in these proposals

Afternoon drop-in session at The Cambridge Room in The Grafton Centre: 1pm-6pm, Mon 19 Jan 2026

For those of you interested in the future of Cambridge more generally, you can drop into the Cambridge Room opposite Boots in The Grafton Centre on most days – there’s normally a volunteer/researcher there from around 10am-4pm.

As well as the open drop-in session on Monday from 1pm-6pm, they run and co-organise other events – the next one is on how resilient Cambridge is to potential disasters/civil contingencies. This is being organised with Resilience Web Cambridge. For those of you who volunteer for community groups, have a look at RW’s website above to see if your organisation is listed on there.

The How Resilient is Cambridge event for January ***will be at the Guildhall*** and the details / tickets are on EB here. Additionally there will be an online livestream for those of you that cannot get into the city for the event.

Peter Freeman of the Cambridge Growth Company on Cambridge Radio

Mr Freeman appeared on a panel discussion earlier as part of Lewis Herbert’s Cambridge Challenges series – you can see the list of podcasts here for previous months.

Above – for those of you who missed it, have a listen to the podcast/replay

The only substantial new thing I picked up was that the Cambridge Growth Company will be announcing the name of their new transport chief along with a couple of other senior posts. So keep an eye/ear out for that – mindful again that the CGC’s instructions from the Minister for Housing involve coming up with proposals for growing Cambridge ***on top of the proposals in the emerging local plan***

Note this doesn’t give the Growth Company a free hand – they have to work with the same evidence bases that the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service is collecting and which is listed in the document library. Which is why the consultants’ reports need scrutinising in detail because if someone like me can pick out holes in them (such as on the imbalance of sports facilities for women vs men – the former losing out again), then it’s more than likely that you will be able to pick some out as well – especially on the themes that you are already interested in and have a level of knowledge that a generalist like me could never hope to obtain. For example if you play in an adults’ sports team, you’ll know what the state of facilities are currently like, which areas we have huge shortages of/unmet demand, and facilities that we do not have at all but for which there is pent-up demand.

Food for thought?

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: