Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

The second in a series of blogposts looking at individual papers that form part of this summer’s consultation on the future of the city and district See Wellbeing and Social Inclusion here Above – Infrastructure 2D-style from the Infrastructure Topic Paper – just 29 pages this time! This paper covers: The following proposed policies areasContinue reading “Draft Gtr Cambridge Local Plan: 2) Infrastructure Topic Paper”

The first of a series of blogposts looking at individual papers that form part of this summer’s consultation on the future of the city and district I wrote about it in this earlier blogpost Note you can: If health and other things allow, I’ll also try to make some short video clips for each oneContinue reading “Draft Gtr Cambridge Local Plan: 1) Wellbeing and Social Inclusion Topic Paper”

Cambridge City Council confirmed council officers are already gathering the evidence base needed to bring in an ‘Article 4 Direction’ to require anyone changing the use of a property by a single family to less than six tenants You can have a listen to the response for Cambridge City Council by Cllr Katie Thornburrow (LabContinue reading “Cambridge City Council to require planning permissions for smaller Houses of Multiple Occupation”

I first wrote about the proposals back in November 2024 here. Since they, the Crown Estate and its agents have done a significant amount of work including on public engagement. They have set a new high bar on youth engagement – something other developers now need to match. See The list of documents (149 atContinue reading “Crown Estate submits application for Cambridge Business Park revamp”

The old National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education (long since merged with ‘Learning and Work’), and the old Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education (abolished by Thatcher’s Government) published a number of reports that still read well today The Government’s plan for Music Above Turn It Up: Our plan for music It couldContinue reading “The forgotten studies on adult education and learning for leisure”

The Deputy Chief Executive of the Cambridge Growth Company / Greater Cambridge Development Corporation highlighted huge governance issues that ultimately are outside of the competency of her organisation – and must be resolved by ministers The Cambridge Radio podcast hosted by Lewis Herbert is here *Declarations of interest: Have we got any better on solvingContinue reading “Beth Dugdale’s open question on Cambridge’s growth is a huge challenge for ministers”

I haven’t! Hence sleeping through most of the weekend and missing a whole host of events – such as the open day held at Mill Road Library Turns out heatwaves make it even harder for neurodiverse people to get decent sleep because we already struggle to regulate our body temperatures anyway, and trying to coolContinue reading “Have you recovered from the heatwave yet?”

With the final public consultation on the draft local plan for Cambridge due to start in a week or so, is anyone looking at linking up the new settlements at Cambourne, Northstowe, and Waterbeach New Town? Image: Towns and Trams, by the Campaign for Better Transport & Create Streets Above – detail of the newContinue reading “Are planners considering a Cambridge Orbital for the new settlements around the city?”

It’s so…beige! You can have a browse of the landing page here It looks very much like an ‘Apart-hotel’ rather than the boutique hotel some of us were talking about almost a decade ago when the Tories decided to ‘dispose of the asset’ and move to Alconbury – a few years before the electorate votedContinue reading “Proposals to turn Old Shire Hall into an aparthotel published.”

Successive governments only have themselves to blame for not requiring the infrastructure providers to construct what was needed – and for not funding the expansion of primary healthcare and new hospital provision The landing page for what locals have long called Addenbrooke’s still has the very busy A&E notice up As of Midnight+7mins on ThursdayContinue reading “Symptoms of too much Cambridge growth and too little infrastructure supporting it”