County councillor for ten Cambridgeshire villages: Pampisford, Ickleton, Duxford, Fowlmere, Gt Abington, Thriplow, Whittlesford, Little Abington, Babraham, Hinxton.
District councillor for the communities of Whittlesford, Heathfield and Thriplow.
Tomorrow is the planning portfolio meeting at South Cambs District Council and the huge amount of consultation and discussion about the Local Plan that has gone on over the last two or more years takes a critical step towards a decision.
This is about where houses are going to be built and communities grown in South Cambridgeshire from 2016 way into the future.
The proposed developments at Bourne airfield, Waterbeach, Northstowe and -closer- between Sawston and Babraham will be discussed. There were over 7,000 representations last year, and before that, consultation on the call for land that took place in 2011.
Issues of sustainability will be considered, weighing up the demand for new houses against the impact on local communities and the local infrastructure.
Depending on what happens, the Local Plan then goes to full Council, and then, if agreed, submitted to the planning inspector, either as is, or with minor changes, or with limited major changes, or with significant amendments.
I will be there, and I am having a final read through of the key documents in advance.
Residents of Heathfield told me this evening they hope that superfast broadband - or even relatively brisk broadband - comes soon because at the moment most houses can't even get the required 2mb to sign up for the most basic services.
Broadband is fast becoming an essential connection as so many services depend on people using it.
The County is rolling out its "Connecting Cambridgeshire" High-speed fibre broadbandand people really want it.
Until then, here's a picture of the sunset over the fields to the north of Heathfield, which residents do not want to see built on - I agree, because there just isn't the infrastructure to add to the houses at Heathfield already there.
The developers have succeeded in winning their planning appeal to build two houses on a patch of land at the entrance to Heathfield.
I have opposed this three times in the last five years because that is what the people of Heathfield wanted. Three times the district council planning committee has listened to us and rejected the application. The developer took the decision made by the district to appeal two years ago and lost. Now the developer has won his appeal and the building will go ahead. The local community will get about £6k for local projects but that is small recompense for cramming two houses on a pocket handkerchief. Local residents will watch the site to ensure there is no disruption to traffic etc while the houses are being built.
The district council is working up what new houses will be built in South Cambs in the future. The recent consultation period has ended, and the next time people will get their say is in July, when the draft plan will be published.
The position for Whittlesford and Thriplow is that the large scale housing proposals put forward by various landowners and developers are unlikely to feature, and so a pattern of smaller scale development will be the future for these villages, limited by the tightly drawn village frameworks.
Up to 500 more houses could be built in and around Sawston - which is a lot. More detail at: http://www.scambs.gov.uk/content/one-week-left-have-your-say-development-options
The parish council meeting at Whittlesford this coming Tuesday 12 Febr at 7.30 has to decide if it wants to ask the District Council to extend the framework of the village to the west of Orchard Terrace, roughly the area marked in red on the screenshot.
This would enable the County Council to sell its farmland to allow a development to be built of some 20 houses, five of which would be affordable.
To give some context, there are two other developments currently under active consideration in Whittlesford: the area in yellow at Newton Road, which would be 16, all of which would be affordable housing, and the area in purple which is the current site of Granta Processors, which the company wants to sell for 16 houses, of which four would be affordable. In the longer term, the County Council Highways depot at Station Road could be sold off for land, even though it is not a very attractive site, and possibly some land around Church Lane.
Land to west of Orchard Terrace
Clearly there is real demand for affordable houses in the village. The question as always is the scale and timing. Much of the commercially priced housing in Whittlesford is attractive to people commuting to London, because of the improvements to the railway, and one of the reasons why house prices are high in the village. Not forgetting the village shop, amenities including two pubs and the excellent school.
About four years ago,in summer 2008, the county council planted a dinky little hedge in the field at the back of Orchard Terrace. Fast forward a few years and the county teamed up with a developer to build some social housing and some market value housing on the land, which is outside the village envelope so would not usually get planning permission for commercial housing.
There was then a disagreement as to how much the developer should pay the district council for a small strip of land to enable access to the new development from Orchard Terrace. The District thought £20k was about right, and I'm inclined to agree. Any way, the whole development is now on a more general hold at the county end.
None of the land offered up by developers and landowners in Whittlesford, Heathfield and Thriplow has been taken forward by South Cambs into the discussions that take place next week. The SCDC link is here.
But we do need some new houses, especially ones that are affordable.
Difficult juggling leaflets, umbrella and notepad when out in Church Lane Thriplow in the pouring rain.
Discussion with people ranged from
solar panels, whether or not Thriplow could sustain development for further
housing, making the bridleway to Whittlesford all-weather, and how to
make best use of the funds paid over by previous developers.
And some
kind people invited me in so that I could dry off by their fire - yes, a
fire at the end of April. I'm beginning to think we had our summer in March.
When I have been out and about in Thriplow, Heathfield and Whittlesford people have asked about the proposals for building many more houses around the villages, and why the developers keep coming back with their plans.
The bottom line is that our villages and the countryside within which they sit are hugely attractive to big developers. Why? Well, we are near enough to Cambridge to bask in its reflected cachet and enjoy its booming economy and chic shops, there is the 43 minutes rail journey down to Liverpool St and the M11, the village shops, schools and pubs, the air museum, people riding horses through the villages, children playing football on a crisp November morning on the recreation ground, cricket on summer evening with the long shadows over the the village green..you get the picture.
No wonder then, that as in the opening of HG Wells famous novel, there are "envious eyes across the gulf of space slowly and surely drawing their plans against us."
But we'll see them off...
I've contacted the people at South Cambs council running the roll-out of the solar panels onto roofs across the district, and a further 200 are in the next batch, so I am hoping that a decent number of those will be going up in Whittlesford and Thirplow.
Clearly some roofs, because of their direction, are not suitable as they won't get enough sunlight for it to make economic sense.
Down in Heathfield this evening - beautiful blue sky and clouds sunset. The playarea and fields at the back of Kingsway looked stunning. So a good time to talk to people about keeping the developers away who want to encircle the area with more houses.
Differing views about the bollards that the Residents Assn. have put up to prevent parking on green areas. Most people were in favour, but some not so sure, pointing out that it meant if there was a family occasion or party then people now had to park up and down the street, which wasn't ideal.
Out and about in Thriplow this morning - still looking good even tho Daffodil Week-end has long gone.
Talking to an elderly gent whose council house has the new District Council funded solar panels on the roof - reckons it is very good indeed - it will save him a lot of money.
He said that they have adapted to make the best use of the power, so rather than being on Economy 7 at night, they run the washing machine in the early afternoon. Simple things like this will make a big difference.
I've got an email from delighted people from Sheralds Croft in Thriplow that their request to me to help get solar panels for their next door neighbour's roof has been successful. Originally their apple tree blocked out the light but since the tree was removed all is well.
These are some of five hundred South Cambs District
Council council houses having solar photo-voltaic (PV) panels
installed. The cost of the panels and installation work is being met by Savills
Solar, and properties have been chosen following a survey last year
which identified those roofs capable of producing the most
electricity. This low-carbon renewable energy is available to tenants
free of charge during daylight hours, and it is reckoned this will save
about £150 per year in electricity bills. People in Thriplow told me the installation went very well.
Any surplus energy is sold to
the national grid which also helps to pay back costs.
Called in to talk to the warden at the sheltered housing at Butts Green in Whittlesford. Currently the county council passes on around £643,000 annually to the
district council for the service, but that is being reduced to
approximately £424,000.
It is tough for the residents - who I talked to a few weeks back - because the basic service provided is being cut further as a result. Some people get very little social contact except the warden service. And Butts Green has a really active group of residents so it isnt that people are just waiting around - they do help themselves.
The library at Shelford, the C7 bus service through the villages, the warden service - all being cut back. Yet the county has put its rates up - unlike the district.
Some villages have a warden scheme - and that is something that I want Whittlesford to look at. It won't be the same, but it might help. It means the parish picking up more financial commitment.
Over to Thriplow on Thursday for the PC annual meeting, where outgoing parish councillor Tim Spicer was given an engraved glass for his 16 years on the parish council.
The recreation ground play area has now gathered all the funding it needs - including £18,000 from the District Council - which I was happy to support. So now the improvement work begins, ready for the summer and the Jubilee.
Other issues including dog mess, the development proposals triggered by the call for land, whether there should be a parish plan, the yellow lines outside the village school, updates on local issues such as policing, village school, Heathfield issues etc etc
Meeting finished, over to the Green Man for a very good pint and a natter.
We
have managed to secure Keith Miles, the head of planning policy from
the district council to come and talk about the proposed development
issues across the district and how they might affect whittlesford. Some
of us know Keith from the Hanley Grange campaign from a few years back.
He is very sensible and well worth coming along to discuss this with.
So we are letting people know - even though it is short notice - so that there is a reasonable turn out
and a chance for people who are concerned to come along to listen and
find out more.
Residents of Whittlesford viewed the new affordable homes at West End this afternoon, and which were formally opened by Rt Hon Andrew Lansley MP. As builders cleared away a path to enable people to enter the site, the new residents who will move into the three houses were welcomed by representatives of local charity the Nicholas Swallow Trust, which will administer the scheme. The small scale scheme is funded by the will from local resident Betty Yule. It follows on from a public meeting in Whittlesford in summer last year, which Andrew Lansley also chaired for us, to consider how to break the deadlock of providing local affordable houses. For its part, the district council needed to produce a special agreement to allow the homes to be run by the Nicholas Swallow charity, which meant a series of meetings at the beginning of this year with South Cambs lawyers and planners. Mince pies at the village hall followed on - localism in action.
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.
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.
Over the last month, people have been invited by South Cambridgeshire District Council to send in details of their land that they want the Council to consider for potential housing developments.
This does NOT mean all the sites submitted will be suitable (and some will be very unsuitable, and the owners just chancing it) but it does mean that the planners know about all the land that could be available, so there is a clear picture.
Now the process has finished, and we will get to know what land has been offered up in this area.
Next year there will be consultation on the sites, and the local Development Plan that it feeds into.
The important thing is for development to be locally owned, rather than just lumped on top of us. The development in West End, Whittlesford is a good example of development that is working:
- the site includes some affordable homes that will be managed by local charity Nicholas Swallow, and South Cambs have agreed the preference is for local people with village connections;
- unlike previous propositions, the houses fit in well with the local area;
- the gift by a Whittlesford lady which has enabled the affordable housing will be commemorated in the name of those houses - Youell Way - which keeps a local link going for as long as the houses are standing.
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