Update 27th May 2025
Dear All,
Update 27th May, 2025
The government appointed Cambridge Growth Company this o act as ‘co-ordinator and convener’ between local government and Westminster
https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/authors/gemma-gardner/
See FeCRA You Tube recording of the Chair of the Cambridge Growth company Peter Freeman’s talk (15/05/25 ) “Making Cambridge a Happy City?” and Q & A
Local businessman Will Banham who blogs as “Cambridge Cracker’ recorded the talk & Q & A.
Questions forwarded to Peter Freeman following his talk
Peter Freeman agreed attendees who didn’t get the opportunity to ask their questions could send them to FeCRA for us to forward to him and he would try and answer them.. We have sent him the questions (below) and will publish the answers .
John Latham, the Chair of Hobson’s Conduit
(John Latham had to cut his question because of time constraints. We forwarded the original question he submitted ).
I am the Chairman of Hobson’s Conduit Trust. For 250 years from 1614 Hobson’s Conduit, fed from the chalk springs at Nine Wells provided Cambridge’s principal source of clean drinking water. One could say that as a model this was only too successful, as 99% of Cambridge’s water still comes from the chalk.
For a hundred years the Hobson’s Trustees have been alert to and concerned about the impact of abstraction by Cambridge Water Company on the flows in Cambridge’s chalk streams, and the deleterious impact on watercourses. In 1952 Cambridge Water was taking 17 million litres a day out of the chalk for the public water supply.
Following a government mandated increase in their supply area from 60 to the current 453 square miles in 1963 the water abstracted had doubled to 36 million litres a day.
With growth during the 1970s, by 1981 the total abstracted had doubled again to 65 million litres a day, and at that point we were clearly in trouble. Nine Wells dried up in 1975 for the first time since the ice age and lost its SSSI status.
Now we are in a permanent groundwater crisis with at least 100 million litres a day coming out of the chalk- six times more than in 1952, and we know that the flow in Hobson’s Brook and Conduit is a fraction – only one fifth – of what it was in 1953 when it was carefully measured by the Borough Engineer.
Current projections for housing completions indicate another 35,000 residential units in the Cambridge Water supply area being completed by 2032, consistent with the figures used by Cambridge Water in their 2024 Medium Term Plan.
On projected average occupancy, and even assuming that a limit of 110 litres per person per day – some 20% less than the current average – can be achieved, the increase in residential demand by 2032 creates at the very least a further 10% in regular demand on the aquifer. This is an appalling prospect.
In 2032, we will start to get 26 million litres a day from Grafham Water – assuming that Affinity Water first get their replacement supply from a Birmingham sewage works down the Grand Union Canal, It is only in 2035 or 2036 that we can expect the new Fens Reservoir at Chatteris to ease the groundwater crisis, but Cambridge Water will still be taking more from the chalk than they were in 1963.
The Environment Agency have stated that a permanent reduction in abstraction of 60 to 70 percent is required to bring our rivers and streams back to what could be called normal flows.
It is pretty hopeless if that relief and environmental restoration expected from 2035/6 through Cambridge starting to receive water from the Fens Reservoir is immediately undone by further growth in demand for water from more housing.
Rome was not built in a day, but the Romans, and the Greeks, clearly understood the vital importance of water to the creation of successful cities, a point forgotten or ignored for decades in this supposed seat of learning.
So, Peter against that bleak outlook, what hope can you give us now that the relief to the badly abused aquifer which is so urgently needed can be delivered faster than seven and ten years hence, and what hope is there that there will be more relief to come?
Dr Stephen Davies
The local health care sector faces major issues of capacity shortfalls and arrears of maintenance. This is the inevitable consequence of health care infrastructure investment lagging behind housing growth over the past two decades. In this context, it is concerning that housebuilders and development promoters, including the University of Cambridge, have objected to the proposed introduction of a formula based approach to planning obligations, with the money raised hypothecated for investment in GP premises. Such an approach would go some way towards supplementing the inadequacy of central government funding for healthcare infrastructure. The developers’ argument is that central government should provide. The reality is that government will not provide on the scale required. How is the Cambridge Growth Company engaging with this issue?
David Plank Trumpington Residents Associations
(David also didn’t have the opportunity to ask the original questions he submitted).
1. Over the last twenty years our infrastructure has fallen well behind Cambridge’s growth in jobs and population. This includes health services, housing that people on average incomes can afford, sustainable water supply, and reliable, affordable public transport. How do you propose to make up the infrastructure ground that has already been lost as well as providing more to meet the needs of the greater growth you and the Government are proposing? Who will provide it and how will it paid for given the Government’s self-imposed “fiscal rules”?
2. How do you propose we should assess whether or not an even more rapidly growing Cambridge is happy? What key measures should we use?
Cllr Howard Kettel vice chair, Stapleford Parish Council
We support a visionary and transformational approach to Cambridge transport, moving away from the current silo approach, and embracing an integrated, strategic and holistic network.
Will Peter Freeman review the concept of accident-prone busways and reappraise their proposed routes, so that the right strategic transport corridors are identified, avoiding the unnecessary loss of green spaces and special countryside amenity.
With particular reference to CSET, will he instead follow the established transport corridors and avoid concreting over the rolling countryside along the Magog Down and preserve the recently designated Magog Countryside Park?
William Harrold, Cambridge Approaches
I would like to follow up on the OxCam Corridor/EWR and its relationship to your Cambridge Dev. Company. In response to my question you disapproved of the OxCam Arc and its million houses and likely low density sprawl. I agree.
But the only concrete aspect so far is EWR, and that has not changed with the new government. There are always three things: jobs, transport and houses that go together. How does making the OxCam Arc/Corridors led by DSIT make any difference at all? It really looks like the same thing dressed up differently. It still has huge potential for creating sprawling housing and the economic case for the railway remains dreadful – £8billion for 2000 Cambridge commuters means £4million each – and that is with new housing for 200,000 people. EWRCo. figures. Mayor Bristow’s light rail for the C2C busway would take further passengers away from EWR.
Ruth Lambert Cambridge Blue Badge Guide
How will anything you outlined – plans, budgets, time-lines, getting to know this Cambridge ‘Patch’ and how it operates – do anything to bring back ‘gin-clear’ water from our ultra-fragile Chalk Streams to the ‘runnels’ in front of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and then most visibly to a Public Fountain on the Market Square as donated (engineeringly proudly & socially humbly of necessity as in a time of plague) by Thomas Hobson in 1610 ?
Even if you could reconnect the pipes cut in 1971 by Petty Cury Clearance for Consumer Development, no monies can bring back the Groundswell and Flow, the very life-blood for equity and ‘re-booting’ of all gasping sentient beings on the banks of our River-systems, clogged by Anglian Water’s upstream sewage neglect and already suffocated by developers’ concrete in ‘Monopoly’ real-estate units, already redundant car-parks, ghostly inhuman labs, plunder of food-security land, in a Floodplain expecting sea surges, hence un-insureable.
With your miraculous ‘Midas Touch’ serving the Cambridge Growth Company, (undemocratically imposed from scientifically-ignorant Westminster) will we and future generations not be wading through water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink?
Honey Hill Campaigners drop their plans for a judicial review
Battle over new homes approved in historic village without sewage capacity
Given the concerns raised with Peter Freeman about Cambridge and sewage capacity, this case, which goes to the heart of the gap between plans for new housing and the capacity of the existing infrastructure, is relevant. Anglian Water are the water company. Link below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn055462jy1o
Cambridge Civic Quarter consultation
Community workshops:
· Tuesday 27 May, the Guildhall, 5 to 7pm
· Saturday 14 June, Lichfield Community Hall, 10 to 11.30am
You need to log in to have your say. See link below
https://engage.cambridge.gov.uk/en-GB/projects/cambridge-civic-quarter
At the hybrid on-line Civic Quarter Liaison Meeting, attendees shared the market traders concerns about the plans for de-mountable stalls and the reduced number of permanent stalls and pointed out that the larger stalls on the market currently occupy more than one permanent stall. The Civic Quarter team were also asked if there was a master plan for the city centre and market square, given Gonville and Caius College’s Project Agora ( Greek for Market Place) and the plans for the Cambridge Arts Theatre. The in-person meeting was attended by Cllrs Katie Porrer and Tim Bick.
Latest news on Cambridge University Chancellor candidates
Varsity reported (5th May) that Pembroke Master Lord Chris Smith is also a candidate for University Chancellor.
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/29584
Lord Smith stepped down as Chair of South Staffs Water and Cambridge Water on 30 April 2025 See https://members.parliament.uk/member/186/registeredinterests
His role ‘included oversight of significant investment at our two major water treatment works in the South Staffs region, ensuring both continue to provide safe and high-quality drinking water for our customers’ and ‘planning for securing the water resource position in our Cambridge region, from our award-winning behavioural change campaign, ‘Can for the Cam’ through to strategic resource option development which will secure the position of the region for future generations and enable us to meet our environmental and growth obligations. Link below.
https://www.south-staffs-water.co.uk/news/sara-vaughan-joins-our-board-of-directors/
South Staffs/Cambridge Water are represented on the board of WRE. The Chair of WRE, Dr Paul Leinster, is chair of the Water Scarcity Group and a member of the Cambridge Growth Company’s Advisory Council. The Growth Company will be getting a replacement representative from the university on its advisory council following the departure of Professor Diarmuid O’Brien. The Advisory Council is currently considering potential candidates for the role of Transport Advisor. Links below.
https://thecgc.org.uk/index.php?contentid=141
https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-pro-vice-chancellor-to-lead-research-ireland
Best wishes,
Wendy
Wendy Blythe
Chair, FeCRA
www.fecra.org.uk
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