Update 18th December 2025
Dear all
Update 18th December, 2025
A number of key applications, consultations and decisions at a time when most residents have other things on their minds!
Urgent 27th Dec Deadline for commenting on planning applications 25/04382/FUL and 25/04383/LBC for the refurbishment of Market Square, Peas Hill and Guildhall Street is Dec 27
See full description at https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/
Please try and find time to respond to this application slipped out just before Christmas with no notification to the hundreds of respondents to multiple council surveys etc. who were not included among the Notified Neighbours (which seem to be almost exclusively city centre businesses).
You may find the response under “Comments” on the Planning Portal from an Edward Street resident helpful in framing your response as it highlights the enormous number of serious breaches to Cambridge Local Plan Policies.
Kati and John Preston, of the Cambridge Market Support Group write
- The City Council proposals are set upon taking away ALL of our traditional market stalls.
- The proposals include fixed cabins. Cabins that, no matter how often the Council say can be suitable for our traditional stall holders, our stall holders have said will just not work!
- What these cabins will work for are the stalls selling hot food for immediate consumption. These cabins are to be mainly located at the Market St end of the market square. The opposite end of the market square, in front of the Guildhall, is where the Council want there to be an area of demountable stalls. It is these stalls (which would be taken down and re-erected each day) which the council are suggesting will be fine for all of our traditional traders. This in spite of, over two summers and two trials (interestingly, none yet in winter?!) the Council not having been able to produce a demountable stall which is even remotely fit for purpose. The traders have been coherently and graphically clear regarding the non-viability of these proposed stalls.
- The City Council have not included the de-mountable stalls in their application. This is even though the whole Council proposals for the Market Square stand or fall upon being able to produce an example of a viable de-mountable stall.
- The application Planning Statement skirts over the traders’ strong objections to both de-mountable stalls and the proposed fixed stalls. It’s only deep into the documents (para 8.7.15 of Section 4 of Part 2 of the Statement of Community Involvement!) where you find anything remotely representative of the traders’ strong objections,
- no information is provided on how and where the traders will be accommodated, and enabled to carry on their businesses during works to the Square. Disgracefully for a challenge which is critical for the whole project, the documents suggest this could be resolved by a condition on the planning permission. No lessons have been learned from previous proposals when, as the then Director of Planning Peter Studdert said later: ‘Where were the traders going to go?
Cambridge’s University’s prestigious Vet School at risk of closure. Link below
https://savethevetschool.co.uk
‘Cambridge University has been accused of shutting down one of Britain’s top veterinary courses as part of a “land grab” that will open the way for the redevelopment of some of the country’s most sought-after scientific real estate’. See The Times and Varsity reports and the map tweeted by the journalist Mark Williamson which shows the location of the vet school: ‘For context this is the location of the vet school ‘. See link below
‘https://x.com/markrwilliamson/status/2001570719780790323?s=20
The former head of the department Professor James Wood who still works in the Dept : “I think you can frame this exactly as a land grab.” The recommendation to close the department made by the school of biological science’s council last week, will go before the university’s general board in January. Links below for reports.
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/30847
Local Plan Consultation deadline to comment 5pm, 30th January
https://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation
The planners are holding a meeting for Cambridge Residents’ Associations on the draft Local Plan consultation from 4:30pm-6pm on Tuesday 13 January 2026, at the Council Chamber, South Cambridgeshire Hall, Cambourne Business Park, CB23 6EA. Please confirm your attendance by responding to Beverly Childs or ask any questions about the event by emailing localplan@greatercambridgeplanning.org.
We have written to ask them why such an important meeting for city residents is being held in Cambourne when there are lots of venues in Cambridge that would be much more convenient. It is also at a time which excludes people who are working.
Friends of St Matthew Piece have shared some helpful advice about how to participate in the Local Plan consultation. It includes links to slides shown at a Public Meeting they organised on 15th December. See below.
Please comment on the New Local Plan!
The New Local Plan Consultation runs from now to Jan 30th 2026
Here’s how:
FIRST, REGISTER AT (even if you already have a Planning Dept account):
1) https://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation
2) Click on ‘Log in’ in upper right hand corner
3) Create a new account (to be able to log in, log out and re-log in)
TO LOG IN
- Go tohttps://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation
- Click on ‘Log in’ in upper right hand corner
- Enter your email address and password
TO LOG OUT
- Click on ‘My Account’ in upper right hand corner
- Click on ‘Log out, at the bottom of the drop-down menu
THEN if you concerned about potential development in your own local area note the advice given by Friends of St Matthew’s Piece to their supporters on how to
PROTECT St MATTHEW’S PIECE USING:
4) https://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation/site-allocations/cambridge-urban-area/policy-1
5) Scroll down to ‘Comment’ (bottom of that page)
6) Paste this bold text below into the comment box:
115524 would be a disaster for this community. This Site was given an Overall Score
of ‘Red’. The exclusion of this Site must be permanently enforced. This will protect
our vital, extremely limited and increasingly pressurised local amenity space. St
Matthew’s Piece is the only public park in North Petersfield. Unambiguous evidence
of this is the sequence of five Planning Refusals since 2021 (none appealed) all
pertaining to this area: 25/0432/TTPO, 24/0413/TTPO, 23/0119/TTPO,
22/0271/TTPO, and (most significantly) 20/04514/FUL.
7) Click on ‘Next’ & then click ‘Next’ again (no need to add anything else!)
8) Click ‘No’ on the next screen & type in the comment space “I did not participate”
9) Click on ‘Next’
10) Finally, click ‘Submit’
TO THEN COMMENT ON DRAFT LOCAL PLAN ‘POLICIES’ …similarly use:
- https://consultations.greatercambridgeplanning.org/draft-greater-cambridge-local-plan-consultation/site-allocations/cambridge-urban-area/policy-1
- Click on Show document contents
- See a list of all the Policies & Selected sites – feel free to scroll thru & comment as you wish!
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(B) This is the helpful blog Cllr Katie Thornburrow posted following FoSMP’s 7pm 15/12/25 Public Meeting for Petersfield on the Local Plan and How To Respond
https://katiethornburrow.com/2025/12/the-consultation-on-the-local-plan-is-open/
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(C) These are the slides Cllr Katie Thornburrow presented at FoSMP’s 7pm 15/12/25 Public Meeting for Petersfield on the Local Plan and How To Respond
St Matthews Piece have also highlighted the problems likely to be faced by members of the public who are trying to provide feedback to help ensure their local neighbourhood stays not selected as a site, in the face of the pressures and comments that might well be submitted at later dates or stages.
We will be in touch again soon, with further thoughts and information about the Local Plan. But until then,
A very happy Christmas from all of us at the FeCRA Committee!
Best wishes
Wendy
Wendy Blythe
Chair, FeCRA
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