What will Energy Minister Greg Barker say?

Energy Minister Greg Barker will be in Cambridgeshire tomorrow - stopping off in the morning to spend time meeting residents at Rampton Drift, who are part of a pilot scheme run by South Cambs and commercial developer partners. The scheme is retro-fitting insulation onto mainly 1970s houses, and it is incredible the scale of the insulation going on, in, and around these houses, built before the early 70s oil crisis when fuel was dirt-cheap.

Later in the day he will be giving a talk.

Hope it isn't to announce that photovoltaic panels on roofs, if not installed by end of the year, will not qualify for the high feed-in-tariff, which is a rumour going round on green websites and blogs.

More likely he will be making a very strong link between insulation and feed in tariffs. This does make sense, because there isn't any point in having all this alternative energy if your house or your school or the village hall or whatever rattles about and loses heat every time the wind blows.

We'll have to see - if the tariff does go down, it will be a challenge to make the numbers stack up for South Cambs who are putting panels on council-owned properties, and here in Whittlesford, where we want to put the panels on the village hall, Duxford Imperial War Museum, panels to go on one of the hangars, and William Westley school, who are thinking the same.

The village hall and the school are reasonably new buildings, so their energy efficiency rating should be good.

Just off to stuff some paper in the cracks in this house....

all aboard the community bus to Whittlesford station

Good to hear that there will be a pilot community bus with county council funding that will pick up from Duxford and Linton and deliver to Whittlesford station.
Hopefully if the timing can be got right, there will be fewer commuters parking on the roads around the Station as a result.

yellow lines, commuters, and car park prices at whittlesford station

I've had fed-up emails from fed-up people, both residents and commuters, saying that if only the outrageous cost of parking in the Whittlesford station car park could be reduced, commuters would not park on the corners of the Moraine and Knights Orchard, making the places easier for residents to get out of without being run over.

I'm not so sure, in that if Whittlesford was cheap to park at, more people would catch the train and potentially those empty spaces along Station Road would be taken up by other commuters wanting to save even the reduced price of a ticket. I think it is the economic law of demand.

So the answer is to get the county highways to agree to put yellow lines on the corners of these roads - as there are on Station Road itself. We are trying to fix a meeting with highways at the moment, and Tim Stone, our county councillor, is on the case.

Land for development in Whittlesford - can I just say something...?

A4 Map low res
OK, so I went to the printers on Friday to get a flyer sorted out to go in Look this month about the development land put forward in Whittlesford. The printer (thanks Neall, from Altone in Sawston) scanned in the map, and here it is.
So the map and an explanation of what has happened and what will happen over the next few years will go to every household in the village, which will at least bring everyone up to par on the process.
When I used to work in PR, I'd get a proof diagram or visual, laid out using a scalpel and pasted on graphics and text. This would be couriered to the printer who would send back a final proof the next day having worked overnight. Any changes would have to be marked up, couriered back, and then printed. And now, the printer sends me the map as a pdf. and I've uploaded it onto sripd, and you can download it and look at it. My boys says you have to get over this new technology stuff, but I still think it is incredible.
And now back to the plot, which is the proposal for a lot more houses in Whittlesford than we currently have.

Duxford IWM update

Good session with the director of the Duxford Air Museum. The museum is still doing well despite the tough economic climate, and is developing new income streams.

Interesting to hear that the airfield had featured in as diverse a range of activities as a British Airways advert and as part of the Horrible Histories TV series. 7,000 schoolkids attended its educational days more than the previous year.

No complaints received from residents re the last F1 test-day, but a good deal about the F15 plane. The IWM plan to seek permission increase the number of F1 test days to eight next season. Long discussion on the various accidents at airshows this last year and the precautions being taken to manage the future. Mick Martin knowledgeable as ever.

IWM plan to put solar panels on one of the hangar roofs, which seems sensible, and their plan for the north side of the A505 is to keep it largely as it is.

Airshow dates next year - 27 May, 30 Jun and 1 July, 8, 9 Sep and 14 Oct.

village signpost - coming soon!

Following discussion at the parish council, and a follow-up meeting with Highways, a site has been agreed for the long awaited village signpost designed to direct strangers and the bewildered to the village hall etc etc.
It will be adjacent to the Guildhall, which seems very sensible.

Broadband

At a meeting in the House of Commons this week with the leader of Cornwall County Council. We got talking broadband.
Basically Cornwall are putting money into superfast broadband for the same reasons we are in Cambridgeshire - to make it easier for businesses to access the internet from anywhere in the county, and that includes villages like Whittlesford, where the service is highly variable depending almost on which side of the street you live.
Talking this morning to a resident who runs a business from Whittlesford that has global connections - they have to download files overnight to be sure of getting them. So a big thumbs-up from that person for the county's investment.
Now all we need are some surfboards.

yellow lines outside the village school at Thriplow

Good meeting at Thriplow Parish Council this evening to decide the detail of the yellow lines to go in outside the village school.
Basically the school is on a narrowish road and the tendency is for people to park inappropriately when dropping children off, causing real problems and some danger.
Local PCSOs Gary and Chris walked the course with the parich councillors last week and the police back the proposals. Also caught up with people on views re the housing proposals put forward by landowners for Heathfield.

Land - for possible building on II

Here is a more detailed update on the planning process that will be working its way through South Cambridgeshire District Council over the next three years.

In the past SCDC and the Government agreed a housing target of 21,000 houses by 2016, based on the then prospects for the economic growth of our region.

Time has moved on, and SCDC and the Government is now looking at the period 2017–2031. There are two parts to the analysis

1. To decide how many new houses will be needed, called the “Housing Needs Assessment”.

This process started earlier this year and will last to Summer 2012, when the findings will be put out to public consultation. Obviously, the analysis has to be based on sound projections, forecasts and evidence, and cannot be arbitrary, and it can be challenged if it is not rigorous enough.

2. To decide where those houses should go, called the “Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment”.

That process started in June, when landowners and developers were invited to put their land forward, called the “Call for Sites”. On 28 September, SCDC published the details. There are sites spread across South Cambridgeshire, and include some of the land previously known as Hanley Grange, as well sites at Heathfield and Whittlesford.

SCDC will now take about 9 months to consider these sites. It will publish (in Summer 2012) an “Issues & Options” paper for public consultation. For example, the options might be:

(a) to focus on more new towns a few miles away from Cambridge; or

(b) to expand out from the edge of Cambridge; or

(c) to locate developments in existing villages; or

(d) a combination of those, or something completely different.

For each option, the list of sites that have been put forward will be ranked in order of suitability, according to ‘best practice’ guidelines published by Central Government. Each entry on the list will also specify the number of houses that can fit on the site.

The ‘Issues & Options’ paper will be subject to public consultation and, afterwards, a vote of the 57 elected Councillors at SCDC.

Then, when the chosen option is known, and when the Housing Needs Assessment is finished (so there is a decision on how many houses SCDC needs), the planners will (in general) approve development on the necessary number of sites to reach that number, starting from the top of the relevant list, and working down until the required amount is reached.

Please appreciate that this note is just a very brief summary of the very complicated process of drawing up our area’s next “Local Development Framework”. Full details are here.