Astra Zeneca submits planning application for long-awaited conference centre

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

Have your say on what they are proposing – noting their documents on the travel plan and on public art

See the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning application page and type in Ref: 26/00092/FUL into the simple search box.

Above – the brown building on a beige background that could have been from a fashion show in 2001.

Above – …and the key to the buildings

Some of you may recall the postponement of the work in September 2025 which I wrote about here. It looks like things are back on track with the submission of the planning application that was approved last Thursday and published for consultation. I can’t claim to be the person who spotted it though.

The public consultation event

Just before the Government’s announcement, AZ had a consultation even which I went along to/sulked at because I don’t like spreadsheet architecture. But I have to concede that this is better than many of the contemporary buildings built and proposed in Cambridge – such as the contempt the design by Bennetts Associates shows to the city and its visitors with the proposal for Kett House on the prominent site that is Station Road Corner.

As I wrote up in a blogpost about the consultation event here, I took along recent research on building façades and mental stress

“I took along multiple copies of the abstract of Dr Valentine’s co-researched recent paper: Visual Discomfort in the Built Environment.

“The results revealed that façades with regularly spaced elements at approximately three cycles per degree exhibited the highest stress metrics, particularly when combined with high contrast ratios and consistent repetition. Vertical wooden slats and vertical metal screening elements produced the most pronounced indicators of visual stress, while more varied geometric compositions demonstrated substantially lower stress metrics.” Valentine, C et al (2025) Abstract“

Above – CTO 12 Sept 2025

Former councillor Sam Davies MBE also reminded me of the new ‘Anti-render’ app at https://antirender.com/ that turns publicity photos into scenes that building designs might look like on a rainy day after the elements have spent a decade or two attacking the buildings.

There is a more serious point to mentioning a satirical app. And that is maintenance of the public realm in an era of austerity & enfeebled councils.

Above – Mark Williamson on Birdsite

Which is why any big conversations about the collective future of our city needs to cover the future of local government – in particular the powers (including tax-raising), competencies, and duties.

Statement of Community Involvement

The second part of the Statement of Community Involvement here has copied and pasted most of the qualitative/free text comments. (See if you can guess which of the many comments were mine!)

Public Art

The first image after the front page was this.

Above – from the Public Art brochure which you should be able to read here.

I’m like: “This is supposed to be a place where people get better! Don’t fill it with stuff that makes people ill again!” (Or rather, don’t install things that risk increasing the levels of mental stress from visually intrusive external stimuli. Something like that!)

The conference centre bit and lecture hall

Well at least they’ve made half-decent provision for women’s toilets, but it seems a bit small unless I’ve missed a larger hall on a different floor!

Outline Travel Plan – this needs further scrutiny – for positive reasons

Which is a rare thing for a chap with a miserable outlook on life to write! You can read the report here. It’s full of *lots* of data maps.

There are some university-level research projects waiting for potential researchers to do that involve downloading the travel plans attached to major planning applications for sites in Cambridge and analysing them. Given that the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service are using AI-tools to process and analyse the huge number of responses that are coming back from the ongoing local plan consultation, similar processes could be used where programmes have been designed to analyse very large data sets. (I.e. *not* AI-generative programmes). That said, every major statement/conclusion that comes back in response should be ‘human-checked’ given the problems of hallucinations that have been getting too many researchers into trouble.

The spread of commuter journeys of AZ staff

The image below shows how challenging it is not just for AZ staff but for commuters into Cambridge to get into the city and to their workplaces using public transport.

Above – AZ outline travel plan (2025) p31

Based on analysis of this data, it was found that:

  • Approximately 8% of current Cambridge-based AstraZeneca staff live within 30-minutes’ walk of the site;
  • Approximately 33% of current Cambridge-based AstraZeneca staff live within 30-minutes cycle of the site;
  • Approximately 63% of current Cambridge-based AstraZeneca staff live within 30-minutes’ drive of either Trumpington or Babraham Road P&R sites;
  • Approximately 27% of current Cambridge-based AstraZeneca staff live within 400m of a bus stop served by buses to/from CBC; and
  • Approximately 74% of current Cambridge-based AstraZeneca staff live within 10km of a train station served by trains to/from Cambridge.”

I remain sceptical of the push to get people to use buses because as a regular bus user myself I know how unreliable they can be – especially in busy periods. Furthermore, the Greater Cambridge Partnership/City Deal never solved the core challenge it was charged with taking on: The ‘Last Mile Challenge’.

Above – AZ outline travel plan (2025) p32

The above table shows that for AZ staff over half are commuting in by private car – albeit around 16% of commuters are doing so as car passengers rather than car drivers for 2023, 37% of commuters being behind the steering wheel.

This is one of the reasons why I believe a new light rail system integrated into a new sub-region-wide public transport system needs to be built so as to be the ‘game-changer’ that our city needs.

Anyway, have a look for yourselves – see the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning application page and type in Ref: 26/00092/FUL into the simple search box and let the city planners know what you think.

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: