Phil Rodgers: My ‘poograph’ shows River Cam water quality at Sheep’s Green - plus Cambridge’s omni-problem and a by-election preview
It often seems that the main policy challenges facing Cambridge are all part of a tangled web of interconnected issues.
Housing, transport, congestion, the environment, inequality, planning, growth and our bewildering layer-cake of local government are all closely related, and policy in any one of these areas inevitably has consequences for others.
One of the most basic but also most crucial parts of the city’s omni-problem is the water supply, which (depending on your point of view) either threatens or promises to stall the growth of the Greater Cambridge area. So here’s a look at the politics of water, which is likely to be a big issue for Cambridge for years to come.
Until recently, concerns about water supply were holding up a major housing development at Bourn Airfield, consisting of 3,500 homes, and other development plans.
In the longer term, there are two major projects which will boost the water supply to the Cambridge area - a pipeline from Grafham Water, and a new reservoir near Chatteris, but these are not expected to arrive until 2032 and 2036 respectively.
In the meantime alternative plans have been devised to allow the development projects to go ahead. These include water-saving measures for Cambridge residents such as new shower heads and taps, and a system of water credits, which means developers will have to support the implementation of water-saving measures.
The water credits system is still in development but nevertheless government modelling seems confident that it will produce enough water savings to enable the planned development to go ahead.
However, you might be forgiven for being sceptical about whether Cambridge residents will really rush to install low-flow showers, and whether the water credits system will really deliver the savings that it promises, or if instead we’ll end up with more dried-up chalk streams, or unpopular water restrictions, or both. The development plans are now going ahead, so it looks like we’ll find out.
The flipside of the water supply is the sewerage system, which has just as much potential for controversy. Cambridge’s sewers have a long and vivid history.
Little now remains of the noxious and malodorous King’s Ditch which bordered the south and east of the city centre in medieval times. In the 1600s, Hobson’s Conduit brought fresh water into the city centre, but the increasing population put more pressure on the water quality of the Cam.
On a visit to Cambridge in the 1840s, Queen Victoria is said to have asked, “What are those pieces of paper floating in the river?” The not entirely accurate answer was, “Those, Ma’am, are notices forbidding bathing.”
In the 1890s the mighty Riverside pumping station was built to remove the city’s sewage to Milton. The current plans to relocate the sewage works to enable more development within the city are unsurprisingly proving controversial.
We are also faced with the prospect of new notices forbidding bathing, or at least strongly discouraging it. A stretch of the river at Sheep’s Green has been designated as a bathing area, and as a result the water quality is being regularly tested.
The designation itself proved quite controversial. It was applied for by the Cam Valley Forum, supported by Labour and Lib Dem councillors, but was opposed by the Friends of the Cam and Green councillors, who were concerned that the designation would encourage swimming in polluted waters and would increase visitor numbers to an ecologically sensitive area.
It may seem unfortunate that you have to go to all the trouble of registering a designated bathing area in order to get the government to monitor the water quality, but here we are. Now that we have the data, what does it say? The picture is not a very pretty one. The graph shows the average readings this year for bacteria at each of the inland bathing sites monitored by the Environment Agency.
While the readings vary from week to week, on average a small teacupful of river water at Sheep’s Green contains at least 1,000 enterococci bacteria and 3,000 E. Coli, one of the worst results in the country.
So if you do go in the river, please be careful not to swallow any of it.
In due course, these results should lead to a plan to reduce the bacteria levels, and we’ll have to see how well this works.
Romsey voters to go to the polls again
Further away from the river, residents of Romsey are currently enjoying their third election campaign of the year.
After the May local elections and the General Election, they now have a city council by-election to look forward to, following the resignation of Independent councillor Mairéad Healy.
Cllr Healy was originally elected for Labour in 2021, but quit the party in October 2023 following Keir Starmer's comments on the Gaza conflict, and she has now decided to stand down from the city council entirely.
Normally, Romsey is a pretty safe seat for Labour. As you can see from the graph, Labour have consistently won big majorities in recent years, with only the congestion charge issue in 2023 putting a small dent in their large lead. However, by-elections in safe seats can be unpredictable, as the other parties step up a gear or two from their usually fairly perfunctory campaigns.
There are four candidates for the seat, one from each of Cambridge’s main parties. Labour’s candidate is Beth Gardiner-Smith, former CEO of a refugee charity, who was runner-up in Queen Edith’s at May’s local elections. If elected she will be following in the footsteps of her father, former Cambridge mayor Barry Gardiner, who was a Romsey councillor in the 1980s and 90s and is now MP for Brent West.
Along with Petersfield and Coleridge, Romsey is one of only three city council seats where the Greens were in second place at May’s elections. The Green candidate this time is Zak Karimjee, a mechanical engineering professional, who stood in Petersfield in May. He will be hoping to at least reduce Labour’s majority and build momentum in the ward for future elections.
In the early 2000s, the Lib Dems regularly won seats in Romsey, but since the coalition years their vote has seen a fairly steady decline. Their candidate at the May elections, John Walmsley, is standing again in the by-election, and will be hoping to improve on his previous 11 per cent of the vote.
The Conservatives have often finished bottom of the poll in Romsey in recent years. Their candidate in May, Rob Nelson, is also returning for the by-election. If recent history is anything to go by, a prominent part of his campaign will involve opposing the renewed plans to close Mill Road bridge to most motor vehicles.
Romsey residents who aren’t yet registered to vote have until 27 August to do so (https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote), and the deadline to apply for a postal vote is 5pm on 28 August (https://www.gov.uk/apply-postal-vote). We’ll get the verdict of the voters on 12 September.
Phil Rodgers has lived in Cambridge since 1984. Married with two daughters, he works as a developer for a city software firm. You can read more from him on his blog, and look out for his column each month in the Cambridge Independent.