A property in Station Rd Whittlesford that has been the subject of a number of complaints because of its overgrown garden and hedges is to be demolished and replaced with a two storey house. I have asked the planning/building regulations team at South Cambs to ensure that the roof height is closely monitored as this has caused some local concern, and likewise that there is a proper vehicle management plan to ensure that the road is not filled with mud and trades vehicles parked up on the grass verges as the work goes on. Here is a pic from a few years back when we had to get the local boys in blue in to issue parking tickets to prevent total gridlock.
Further up the same road there is currently a house being built to the rear of another property. Some four years ago two large developments - Knights Orchard and The Moraine - were built in the long gardens that used to run down to the A505. I know that the owners of the site currently occupied by the scrapyard, to the end of Station Road and along by the rail car park, could itself become a development. Looking even further ahead, in the next five years we could see the highways depot on the east side of the station put forward for development by the county council.
All this development, large and small, is fuelled in part by the Cambridge effect on property, in part by the attractiveness of the village and its amenities, and in part by the very good train service from Whittlesford into London that now exists (except when there are overhard lines problems at Broxbourne).
And yet, at the same time, there has been no significant investment in the support and structures that keep a community going, and this is the "infrastructure deficit' that people in our villages are rightly concerned about - a drip-drip-drip of more traffic, more demands on roads, schools, surgeries. The effect is felt very keenly by residents of Station Road, new and old.
So what is to be done - and not just for Station Road, Whittlesford? The district council is robustly defending its long term plans in front of the planning inspector who is sitting in majesty in a big room at South Cambs headquarters, listening to the serried ranks of developers putting forward the argument that the council's five year housing supply is insufficient and therefore their own well-polished plans for a hundred houses here, a few hundred houses there, should be allowed to happen. The planning inspector will consider arguments about green belt in the new year, which will be very interesting and very significant.
The county council is being urged to engage earrlier with planning proposals to say what the transport demands are likely to be from major developments. We had a debate on this at the council meeting.
Further down the food chain, parish councils can do something, although it is a long and demanding process. They can develop a Neighbourhood Plan, which carries a legal standing in planning law, and which can help manage what is developed. Whittlesford Parish Council is considering putting one in place - before it is too late.
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