M11 travel hub: ‘Giant car park’ plan on green belt land outside Cambridge deferred again
Plans to build a “giant car park” on green belt land outside Cambridge described as the “wrong scheme in the wrong place” have been deferred for a second time.
A planning application for the travel hub off the M11 junction 11 was discussed by Cambridgeshire County Council’s planning committee.
The county council applied for planning permission for the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s Cambridge South West Travel Hub in June 2020.
Under the plans the GCP scheme will create spaces for 2,150 cars, including disabled spaces and electric car charging points, and 326 bikes on farmland between Trumpington and Hauxton.
The plans also included 10 coach bays, eight bus bays, 326 cycle storage spaces and a purpose-built segregated road to act like a busway connecting it with the nearby Trumpington Park and Ride.
The application had previously come before the committee in July last year, but was deferred amid a number of concerns.
These included land contamination, drainage, pollution, impact on Trumpington Meadows nature reserve, solar panels, EV charging, future travel demand and patterns, and the climate emergency.
A representative for the applicant told the meeting last Thursday: “Cambridge is surrounded by green belt and therefore it is very difficult to identify suitable sites within the edge of the city that are not within the green belt. Of the sites assessed this site was the most preferable, [and] the layout has also been carefully designed in order to minimise impact to the green belt.”
He said pre-pandemic Trumpington Park and Ride was at capacity and added that more demand is expected to come from planned expansion at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
James Littlewood, the CEO of Cambridge Past, Present and Future, said the plans were the “wrong scheme in the wrong place”.
He said: “Demand levels have changed due to the pandemic and therefore, if you are minded to approve, we ask that planning conditions are imposed which result in a phased development to meet demand only when it is needed.”
Cllr Sebastian Kindersley (Lib Dem, Gamlingay) said: “We as an authority have declared a climate emergency, as indeed have all of our neighbouring authorities, we cannot justify building a giant car park any more and we particularly can’t justify building a giant car park in the middle of the green belt.”
He proposed to refuse the plans. However, when it went to a vote, five councillors voted against refusal, and four for.
Chair of the committee, Cllr Henry Batchelor (Lib Dem, Linton), then moved to a vote on whether to accept the officer’s recommendation to approve the plans. That vote ended in a tie.
Cllr Batchelor used his casting vote to vote against the recommendation, which put the meeting into confusion.
After a break, Cllr Batchelor said he would reopen the debate to see if the councillors could come to agreement.
Cllr Kindersley suggested that the committee defer the application again.
This proposal was accepted.
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