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Sunday, 19 May 2013

hanley grange - a fifth anniversary

Five years ago - in the early summer of 2008 - people living in the villages of this part of Cambridgeshire mobilised in their hundreds to "stop Hanley Grange" and oppose the proposals for a 10,000 house development.
People believed that the planned new-town, put forward under the eco-town initiative of the then government, would have swamped Hinxton, Pampisford and the villages of Great and Little Abington, put Sawston High Street out of busines, and made the A505 even more of a gridlock than it is already.
Over the last few weeks I have been reminded of that effort by local people in the faded car bumper sticker I saw at Pampisford last Thursday and the odd poster on a playground fence. Now the local housing plan has been published, showing that most of the new houses over the next 20 years will be built at Northstowe, Bourn Airfield, Waterbeach and on the outskirts of Cambridge at Trumpington.
But there is always the chance that the people who own the land on which Hanley Grange would have been built will argue that allowing such a settlement would - mirroring Northstowe - meet the housing demand south of the City.
So as always, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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