 Welcome to our webinar on the Greater Cambridge Local Plan, the first proposals. As you'll have just heard the announcement, this is being recorded so that we can put it on our YouTube channels and on our website after the event because we know there are some people who would like to watch it, who may not be able to attend this evening. And any questions that we can't answer this evening, we'll answer in writing as well and we'll put them up on our website as well over the next couple of days. We're really happy to see so many people come this evening to hear about the stage we're at with the local plan. I'm Hannah Loftus, I'm the Communications and Engagement Leader for the Shared Planning Service here. And we've got on our panel tonight with us Stephen Kelly, who is the Joint Director for Planning and Economic Development at the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service. And we also have my colleagues Caroline Hunt and Jonathan Dixon, who've been absolutely instrumental in bringing this plan together. I'm just going to do a little bit of an introduction now to say where we are in the process. As always with the webinars, please put questions into the Q&A. We'll answer them once we've gone through the presentation and hopefully pick up as many as we can. And as I said, those that we can't pick up tonight, we will answer in writing. So we held a first conversation consultation in early 2020, as many of you know. That was an issues and option stage consultation. So that was really about the big picture, some of the opportunity, some of the challenges that the new plan might have to face to hear what all of you thought. And many people across the whole area thought about what we should be focusing on in the new plan. We've been publishing various reports and research since then, and further consultation and engagement has been taking place. And now we're at the stage where we have published the first proposals. This isn't yet open for consultation. They've been published for consideration by the elected councillors of both councils. And I think it's important for everyone to understand that as part of the process that we go through with the local plan. The councillors need to approve the first proposals to go out to consultation. And as part of that, they can also ask for changes to be made. So that's why these are not open for consultation just yet. They will be open for consultation once we've made any of those changes that are agreed with our councillors. And those therefore represent the proposals that the councils collectively would like to put forward to you for your comment. You can see at the bottom here the timetable for the plan. So this is just one stage in many further stages of plan making. This is the first time we're putting something on the table in terms of proposals, suggestions for the plan. We'll go to a full draft plan next year, a proposed submission plan the year after that. And there are full public consultations at both of those stages as well. And then it goes through to the Secretary of State and into the examination process. So that is where no planning sector appointed by the government looks at our plan, decides whether they think that it's sound. They can also recommend some changes and then hopefully it goes through to adoption. So what are the first proposals? Where are we? What does this really mean? The first proposals are not a full draft plan. They're not full draft policies. It's really the outline. It's the direction of travel for the plan. It includes the vision and aims. It includes the overall amount of development that we think we should plan for, the main sites we think should be developed, and some of the key policy proposals that we think should be implemented in the new plan. So it's not a fully formed plan. You'll see that when we're talking to, talking about the thematic policies, for instance, we're talking about proposed policy direction. We're not saying in chapter and verse, this is exactly what that wording is going to say. And that's because we really want to hear the feedback from all parts of our community about whether they think that policy direction is the right direction and then we can go on to flesh out the detail of the policies. Alongside the first proposals, we published a really large amount of the evidence and the underlying research that has informed the plan. And that can all be read on our digital document library. So there are topic papers, one per theme and one for the development strategy and a number of reports and research papers that form the evidence base, including the Housing and Economic Land availability assessment, which we'll talk about a little bit later. So this is the guiding vision that is part of the first proposals. And this really captures the overriding ambition and aim for the plan. And as you can see here, it is about marrying a really significant decrease in our climate impacts with a big increase in the quality of everyday life for all our communities. Those two things we think should go hand in hand. We want to look at reducing carbon emissions and particularly reliance on private car, creating thriving neighbourhoods. That's about having the right variety of jobs and homes, not just one kind of jobs, not one kind of homes, suits everybody. Increasing nature, wildlife and green spaces. We know that biodiversity and green spaces is a really important theme for our communities and for our councillors. And of course, safeguarding our unique heritage and landscapes. Our plan takes inspiration from what is unique about our area. We've studied the area in depth and we want to build on that and not lose what is characterful and important about it, but also looks to the future. This is a plan for the next 20 years. So it's important that we're future facing. We look at technology, we look at new trends and we harness them to bring the vision to fruition. How has this informed the plan? Well, that overarching vision sits above seven objective aims that are thematic. So these correspond to the themes of the plan. So each theme has a broad overarching aim that helps to guide the policies that sit within that thematic area. And overall, those themes have influenced where we choose to suggest sites for development and where how our green infrastructure strategy comes forward and many other parts of the plan. So they really do intersect very strongly. It's not that they sit in silos, they work together as a whole. And I think what's something that's really special about this plan is that we have looked at them from the start very holistically. They aren't bolt-ons after the event. They have been looked at from the start with very detailed research and evidence behind them and have heavily influenced the choice of sites that we've put forward in the first proposals. I'm now going to hand over to Caroline, who's going to talk to you a little bit more about the development we need to plan for the numbers and the strategy. Thank you, Hannah. Good evening, everyone. So, yes, the local plan is a formal planning document. We have national planning policy guidance through a framework that the government prepares that sets out how we have to prepare our plans. And that says that we have to identify what it calls our objectively assessed need for housing and for other uses. It sets a standard method for calculating the minimum level of housing need, but it says that there can be circumstances where actual housing need is higher. Alongside that, the framework requires plans to support economic growth. And the continuing strength of the Greater Cambridge Economy as one of the most important research and innovation-led employment locations in the UK is something we do need to look at and consider properly, including its implications for housing needs. And the evidence that we have had prepared says that the most the forecast level of jobs to be delivered in our planned period from 2020 to 2041 is 58,500 new jobs. And they suggest that there should be some flexibility in the number of jobs that we provide. And the evidence also says that 44,400 homes are needed to support those jobs. And if we look as a comparison with the level of housing that the standard method would give us, that would give 36,600 new homes over the planned period. And that would support only 45,800 jobs. And as you can see, that's considerably less than the new jobs that have been forecast to come forward in our planned period. And on an annual basis, it would actually be rather less than we've seen delivered over recent years. And therefore, we think there's a strong reason why we say our objective assessed need is the forecast level of new jobs and the number of homes that are needed to support those jobs. It is important to recognise that our evidence was prepared in pre Covid times and we will clearly need to review the impacts of Covid and as best we can as we move through the plan process. But we haven't looked to update that evidence at this point because we're still really in the middle of this pandemic. And it's really difficult to predict what changes, long term changes in particular, there might might be. So we know there may be some changes and we will keep that under review as we go through the process. And we have also considered what would be the situation if we were to plan for fewer homes. So, as I said, our evidence is that jobs like growth is likely to to continue recognising the special qualities of the Cambridge economy. And if we plan for fewer homes, that's like have a number of different effects. If we don't provide the homes in greater Cambridge, then assuming the jobs are still created, then people are going to have to commute from further afield. And that has implications for climate change and for congestion. We know that location is the biggest single factor in climate emissions. Housing could also become in shorter supply and even more unaffordable. And we know affordability is already a serious issue in this area. And also we have to prepare a plan that responds to our evidence. And Hannah mentioned the independent examination that comes at the end of the plan making process. And it needs to be found sound is the term. And that means that it has to be positively prepared and respond to to the evidence. There's also a risk that if we don't have an up to date plan that that that that there can be problems with us being able to give full weight to all our plan policies. So when we're determining planning applications, if we don't have what's called a five year supply of housing land, then then there can be real challenges in us controlling speculative development in in areas. And that would be similar to could potentially be similar to the area that was a situation experience in South Cambridge year while the last plan was going through through its process. So it's a serious risk and we need to be mindful of of that. So summing that up in terms of our objective, this needs, we say we need to provide for forty four thousand four hundred new homes over the plan period and fifty eight and a half thousand new jobs and that's jobs across all sectors. So businesses, industry, as well as retail and leisure and education and healthcare. So that's all a full range of jobs. It's also will be important that we understand the needs of our gypsy and traveller community. But that's one of the studies that has been affected directly by by Covid because it requires face to face interviews. So that that study has been held up. But as we move to the draft plan stage, understanding and meeting the needs of our gypsy and traveller community will be an important part of the new plan. So looking at that visually, the the brown houses are what we have today or in 2020. And the dark green houses are houses we already have in the pipeline. I think it's really important to recognise that through our current plans and planning permissions already granted, we have over thirty seven thousand homes already in our in our pipeline that we anticipate will be delivered in our new plan period. So that's a significant part of the need we identified. So that means we need to look for just over another seven thousand new homes specifically to meet that need. But also when you're preparing a plan, it's it's good practice to have an element of flexibility built into the plan and when we're proposing around about a 10 percent buffer to give that flexibility so that if one or more sites that are identified in the plan do not end up being able to come forward for some reason or come forward more slowly or later that we have some flexibility in the plan to continue to meet our needs as we move forward. So when you look at that current pipeline of housing that's distributed in a range of different locations, some sites on within and on the edge of Cambridge. So Eddington, the University Development in the Northwest of Cambridge that's coming forward and also Darwin Green there. Developments of North and South of the Airport at Marley and North of Cherry Hinton proposal sites down at Watercourseway and Southern on the Southern fringe with Clay Farm and Trumpeter Meadow. So a mix of sites already coming, coming forward around Cambridge and then some new settlements, Canbourne Western earlier expansion of Canbourne already in under construction. Born Airfield, New Village now with I'm planning permission. North Stowe, a significant number of housing coming forward there now. It's really getting established and building out well and Water Beach New Town also has permission for both parts of the new town. So a significant amount of provision already within our pipeline as well as some village sites there. And I think it's also important to think about the spread of those sites and I'll come back to that in a moment in terms of how we've sought about moving forward to the sites to meet the rest of our housing need. We undertook a couple of call for sites. That's a very standard part of preparing a plan where you invite landowners and site promoters or any body to put forward sites that they think are good contenders for us to consider. And the council has carried out the detailed assessment of those through the Housing Employment Land Availability Assessment, which is a key part of our evidence. And that looks the whole range of things, everything from does the site flood, does it have important biodiversity or nature conservation issues on the site, you know, right through to all road access and landscape impact and green belt impact and so on. So a wide range of considerations are looked at through that assessment. We also happens to council to check whether there are any other sources of supply or with the other sites that we should have should also look at. And we we looked at over 300 other possible sites, but most of those we screened out early on. And there were 38 additional sites that we we've assessed. So over 730 sites have been assessed through the healer and the healer provides a rating either red amber or green using a sort of traffic light system for whether the site is suitable, available and deliverable, which are the three key tests for a site to be considered for inclusion in the plan. If you look at that across the map, you can see that there are the distribution of those those sites. So they range from very large sites down to much smaller sites within and on the edge of Cambridge and villages. So once we've undertaken that work, we understand our need. We looked at the sites. Then then how do we go about developing the preferred strategy that we're now putting through that to members to to consider? So we looked at the findings of all our evidence. That's the the interim evidence we published in November last year that some of you may be familiar with and the new evidence that we've undertaken since then and published with with the committee papers. And we tested as part of that a range of different spatial options, everything from concentrating development within Cambridge out to dispersing development to the villages and a whole range of options in between the role of new settlements could have in that the role the villages might have. And the role of the edge of Cambridge, including that within the green belt. So we've looked at a whole range of potential options. And what became clear through our evidence is that different types of location, different types and scale of sites have different impacts. And when we looked to those overarching themes that Hannah talked about, the preferred spatial option that we wanted to develop was one that had least climate impact. That were active as in walking or cycling and public transport for natural choice, very much where green infrastructure can be delivered alongside new development and and also that there's good access from that new development to job services and facilities, either close to where people live or that they can get to those services and facilities in using sustainable transport options. So we looked at the sites in the healer against the aims of the strategy, what would be the best the best sites. So we narrow down from that very long list of sites that I mentioned earlier to look at over 170 sites that we thought fitted broadly with that overall strategy approach. And that was subject to sustainability appraisal. And from that whole wider process, we narrow down to a strategy that includes 19 new sites in the first proposals. So you'll appreciate that's a very small proportion, only about 3 per cent of the total sites that we we assessed and 11 per cent of those that went through the sustainability appraisal process. And looking at those sites and their distribution, the orange sites are the existing sites I talked about that are already in our current plans and now very many of them building out or with planning permission. And then the dark purple sites, there are the new sites that we've identified to include within our new strategy. And I'll talk you through those those now. So just before I do that, just to think about, OK, so we're looking to minimise carbon emissions. As I said, carbon emissions result primarily down to transport methods so we can we we can reduce the impact on the climate from house buildings. But where you put those houses is really, really important in terms of the wider impacts. Therefore, the new sites are primarily in and on the edge of Cambridge. And also we've identified Canbourne as a broad location for development. And I'll come back and talk about that in a moment. And only 4 per cent of additional homes proposed at villages. As I said, green infrastructure really important alongside development. But before I go through the individual sites, one thing to be really clear about what our evidence has shown is there are real challenges in this area about water supply. I think we know that many of you living in the area will be aware of the challenges in this part of the country and also that. The in terms of how we deal with the water supply, there are some still some questions over that and we'll talk about that further on in the briefing. But just to be really clear before I run through the strategy, we are clear that this is our preferred strategy. Only and if an adequate and appropriate water supply can be provided. And by that, we mean a sustainable water supply that isn't going to cause unacceptable harm to the Chalk Appifer and the Chalk Streams in particular. And John, my colleague, will talk you through that in a bit more detail a bit later on. So looking at the. Proposed new homes alongside the the current homes in the pipeline. When you look at that together, you can see there's a reasonable distribution of development. And we've also looked at how how is that distributed across the different types of the location, so a significant proportion of our existing and proposed allocations are within and on the edge of Cambridge. The next greatest proportion at new settlements and only a very small proportion in the rural area. And you'll see that there's a combination there with new sites, but also additional homes from some of our existing sites. And I'll talk about those as we go through each of those locations in turn. And that really repeats what I've just been talking about. So our new allocations are a relatively modest element of total delivery. Our current pipeline is by far the three quarters of our supply for the new plan period. In terms of looking at how we distributed the new development, our plan includes a settlement hierarchy, a kind of ranking of settlements based on their level of services and facilities and how sustainable they are in those respects. So Cambridge sits at the top of that hierarchy in this now single joined up plan. There are the three new towns, Water Beach North Stoke and Campbell, with its recently created town council. There are a number of rural centres, which are our largest and best served villages. The main change from our previous plan is to include, as a requirement of our rural centres, that they have a really high quality and dedicated public transport connectivity, either have or will have through the delivery of the Greater Cambridge Partnership schemes that are in preparation. So most of them stayed as in the current plan. The only change is Cottenham, which does not and is not proposed at this stage to have one of those high quality public transport connections to Cambridge. And therefore, we propose that Cottenham gets reduced. So, and then, as I said, the strategic green infrastructure, green infrastructure and access to open space, as well as open space that is not so much about access, but it's about biodiversity and really how we have still a strong and vibrant countryside and rural area around our development. And we've undertaken one of the new types of evidence that we did this time is a green infrastructure study that looked really carefully at the special characteristics of different parts of Greater Cambridge and looked at where there is potential to really take advantage of some of those characteristics to expand into new strategic green infrastructure initiatives. So looking now at those different types of location, Cambridge Urban Area, I mentioned that that's the most sustainable location with best access to services and facilities within the heart of Cambridge. The main proposal within Cambridge is in North East Cambridge, as we've defined it, that red area at the top there, which is around the Cambridge North Station. It includes Cambridge Science Park. It's a brownfield site. It's a site that has been looked at over a number of plans, but the limitations of the existing water treatment works there has really constrained any serious reuse and regeneration of that brownfield site with the proposal by England Water to relocate the water treatment works out of Cambridge. That does, if that gets its development control order process successfully, then that would be a really good opportunity for regeneration of that part of Cambridge using a brownfield site. And North East Cambridge came out very well in a whole range of our evidence documents as a really sustainable location for development. We also have West Cambridge, which is an existing area by the university that's been building out over several plans now. Still potential for further development in there, and we floated the concept of potentially some residential development in that area to help make it even more sustainable. And we're also flagging that there may be potential and maybe a good idea to start looking at that with the Eddington site, the other side of Bramptonee Road, and pick that one up in a moment. Also, in Cambridge, there are a number of areas that are called areas of major change where we're not specifically proposing development and we're not specifically relying on numbers necessarily, but we think that there could be potential for further development to come forward in some of those areas, and they are shown on the plan there. So they're around the station area, around Graffton Centre and a number of other locations. Also being carried forward from the Cambridge plan are a number of opportunity areas. There are a number around places like James Corner, Longmill Road around the station, Hills Road and several others. But we are proposing a number of new opportunity areas, where we're suggesting that the Newmarket Road retail park and also the nearby Beehive Centre as areas of very large retail sheds with significant amounts of car parking on surface car parks are sites that may have potential as we move forward and climate change becomes even more important in our considerations for may have potential for development. As I say, we're not relying on anything, but we are identifying those as opportunity areas. The Abbey Stadium, either through making best use of that site or if an alternative site were identified through potential redevelopment and Shy Hall and the Castle Park area up Castle Street there with the relocation of the county council offices there. Edge of Cambridge, the key news sites here are at Cambridge East, where we are talking about bringing forward the safeguarded land that's been identified in previous plans for new development with the advice from Marshall that they intend to relocate the airport by 2030. We see that as a real opportunity for major new urban courts at the Cambridge. It won't all come forward in the planned period, but we think that is a really important part of the overall strategy. We have not identified that there's a need to release land from the green belt to meet our overall numbers, but we have looked to see whether there are site-specific reasons for releasing any land. So we looked at the Marshall proposal to expand further out into the green belt and we not being persuaded that's an appropriate or necessary thing to do. We have looked at the biomedical campus around Adam Brooks. They put forward very significant proposals to us, and we don't feel that they are appropriate or could demonstrate the exceptional circumstances that would be needed, but we think there could be a case for a more modest release by Babrum Road south of the campus and opposite the developments that caused way coming forward through the last plan, but together with green infrastructure and biodiversity enhancements. And we think that Eddington, the University Development, can provide some additional development within the built footprint without releasing any further new sites. So then moving on and looking at new settlements, we have the existing new settlements I mentioned, but I mentioned Camborn as an opportunity for a strategic scale expansion. And this is very much on the back of the proposal for an east-west rail connecting out to the west from Oxford through to Cambridge and with a new station proposed at Camborn. And we do see that as being a game changer, really, in the sustainability credentials of Camborn. So we aren't identifying any specific sites or contents of development at this stage. Overall, but we think it has capacity for a few thousand homes in our plan period. And then looking at the rural area. Firstly, we look to the area to the south of Cambridge, where we have a number of existing employment sites. We have the genome campus already with the permission for a significant expansion for all business, but also for 1500 homes. We've also looked at the Baberham Research Campus and we have proposed that there is potential this time to release that site from the green belt as an island in the green belt with a small expansion included there, recognising the significance of employment and the clusters of these really important high tech and biotech sectors. And then the other new allocations here at Comfort Cafe on 1307 A11. And then two further ones. One at Duxford, which is a small site in Hunts Road there. And the other one is a site that does involve release of land from the green belt in Great Shelford. It's a site that's very close to the existing main line station there, which with the new Cambridge South Station at the Biomedical Campus has really strong sustainability credentials. And it's a site which still would have some impacts. We recognise it would have some impacts on green belt and landscape, but it also it's not in the highest category of impact according to our evidence. So we have looked at that carefully and we've proposed a different type of configuration of site to those that were put to us, but we're proposing a site at Great Shelford for members' consideration. And then looking at the rest of the rural area, there are several sites we're proposing here. Two sites down in Melbourne. One a mixed use site next to the Science Park for a mix of housing and employment. And then a smaller site at More Lane Melbourne. A site at Highfields Cauldicott, which is a site with some existing development happening nearby that we feel is a rounding off of the village there. Also at Highfields is a proposed employment, actually technically in Dry Drayton, but on the nearest road there are just outside of the newborn airfield development. And a smaller site at Station Road Okington, that's the only other green belt site in the rural area we've identified, and that's very close to the station on the busway and provides an opportunity. We think to help provide some really enhance the access to the busway stop with limited rounding off of the village there. I think the other ones, just to mention specifically, are at the A14 services, proposing some industrial and warehousing developments of small to medium scale, recognising in particular changes in retail patterns to enable transfer of goods from larger to smaller vehicles. And we've identified a smaller site at the top end of Cotnam and an opportunity potentially within the line of the bypass at North Stanton. And I think that's it from me and I'm now going to hand over to John Dixon to take you through the rest of the preferred options. Hello everybody, I have a very unstable internet connection, so please bear with me. First of all, we've published a large range of evidence space alongside the plan and one of the studies that we've produced, the first stages of, but it will carry on, is our integrated water management study. Caroline's also already mentioned how seriously water is considered in our strategy decision making. There are some quite significant proposals already planned in the wider area, some new reservoirs north of Cambridge that will help to deliver additional water resources, but they are longer term, so into the 2030s. What's also being explored is whether they're more available interim measures such as connecting up with other supplies which would potentially take pressure off the aquifer. There are separate water planning processes underway to look at these issues, the issues being noted as an important one at the Oxford Cambridge Arc level. There is a regional water planning process being undertaken as well by the water companies, and we need to understand the outcome of that process. So in a way, we are at an early stage in our planning, they are now going to almost catch up with us and overtake. So, as we get towards later stages of the plan, we will know the outcome of that process and the implications for the planning strategy we're looking at. Just to emphasise, the councils do take the issue very seriously, and we do take opportunities to highlight this, a government level and other opportunities to highlight to relevant bodies to make sure this issue is being fully addressed. I'm going to particularly highlight now some of the policy areas that we're looking at as we move through the plan, so as well as looking at a strategy for development, we start to look at what policies would guide, how that development would take place, what it would be like, the standards it would be required to meet. And this has been really influenced by the big themes we consulted on back at the first conversation. I hope you'll see some of the issues that were raised through that consultation being now delivered in the form of policy proposals. So looking first at climate change, we've now completed our net zero carbon study, which is available to you on our website, and that's recommended some very strong standards in terms of how building should be constructed, and particularly how they use their or gain their energy supplies. Effectively, they would require buildings to meet their energy needs on site, and if they can't meet them on site to make contributions towards delivery of renewable energy off site, effectively helping to make our buildings net zero carbon. We've got strong policies that would seek to respond to the challenges of climate change as well and deliver high quality designs, and also support, as I mentioned, that renewable energy infrastructure that we're going to need, and some other innovative approaches like minimising waste in buildings as well. Our next big theme was green infrastructure. We consulted back at the first conversation on your ideas for where green infrastructure is important, and then we've now completed our green infrastructure opportunity mapping project, and identified a series of major greener structural opportunities that could be the focus of investments coming out of our development and the focus of stakeholders also helping to deliver. We want to see sites delivering improvements to biodiversity. There is a national requirement on its way, which would require sites to deliver a 10% net gain in biodiversity, but we want to go a bit further. Therefore, our policy approach proposes to achieve a 20% net gain. We've also got policy approaches which we seek to protect and enhance our open spaces as well. Another one of our important themes from the first conversation was well-being and social inclusion, and we've really looked to see how we can make health a central theme throughout the plan. We know that some of these new communities that are planned are already planned and are now proposing this consultation take a long time to develop, and those early communities take a long time to build up into places. One of the things we're proposing is to seek meanwhile users on sites to help those communities grow. How can we use temporary buildings and so on to create those users up front in the very early days of those communities? We also explore how we might create inclusive employment opportunities through developments, such as can we support apprenticeship schemes through building developments, for example? Our great places theme is always the theme picking up on design, and we think we've tried to capture what we think good design looks like and what the expectations would be of developers building in Greater Cambridge, so I'd be really interested in views on whether we think we've covered all those aspects. Heritage is absolutely key to that, and we've done a lot of work looking at the heritage impact of future proposals in the area, but also we want to propose even more innovation in the area of how we can help our heritage assets adapt to climate change. On our jobs policies next, a lot of these will be fairly familiar in the way that they seek to guide where employment proposals might be suitable within and on the edge of in our employment areas, so some familiar territory if you're familiar with the old plan. We have got some new policies here such as should we be asking for large employment areas to include areas of affordable workspace that could help a range of businesses set up in our communities as well as just those larger high-tech firms, for example. We also are trying to look at what we might do for retail and our centres because we all know retail is changing rapidly. Our evidence, even the work we've commissioned, is now a lot of that was done pre-COVID. We will need to keep working on that, but we've proposed some ideas about how we can keep our town centres relevant. We also look at other issues such as visitor accommodation, issues around air, BNB, and the role planning can play in those issues that sometimes they cause. On the homes, again there's a lot of familiar policies in here. We still want to seek high levels of affordable housing. That's really important and to make sure the homes built at the right space standards and the range of different occupiers. As Caroline mentioned, we propose approaches here to how we might plan for gypsyn traveller needs, but we still need to complete that evidence space as it was impacted by the COVID issues. On infrastructure, we've got a quite a strong policy approach seeking to make sure any sites are very clearly integrated into the transport network and provide good opportunities for travel by active mode, cycling, walking, and so on. We know parking is a difficult one. There are areas, certainly in Cambridge, where it's possible to go for very low levels of parking because you've got real alternatives to the car available, but in villages often you still need to have parking, so we try to take a design that approach. The one thing we think is important is our sites need to start including chargers for electric vehicles. We think because obviously that change is coming very quickly and they should really be included through the developments themselves. Then energy infrastructure master planning. We're already doing some work on this in north east Cambridge, but we want to make sure that energy needs are planned upfront as part of developments to make sure they look at what they need and how it can be delivered in a sustainable fashion. On digital infrastructure, our previous plans required the basics such as including ducting so you could get cables into dwellings. Our policy now goes a bit further. We've been working with Connecting Cambridge to see whether we can set stronger requirements for our developers to make sure that digital infrastructure is available upfront and delivered to a high quality. We think we've come up with quite a strong range of policy approaches and they will want real feedback as we develop those into actual policies. I'll come back to Hannah. I've just got to unmute myself. Thank you very much John. We're just going to very briefly wrap up by talking you through the process from now on in. So this is the cycle of committees and advisory groups that the first proposals go through before we go to full public consultation. So you can see that that lasts for the next month or so. After that we will discuss with members what changes are made to the first proposal before we finalise them for consultation and you can see that full public consultation is currently scheduled to start on 1 November. That will be a mixed method consultation. We hope to do face to face as well as online consultation there. We are testing our new digital planning platform at the moment and we're glad to publish using that ahead of time so we can get feedback and so forth. So please do let us know what you think about that and really just look at our website near the time. I'll put up contact details at the end of this webinar for anyone who wants to know more but we will be releasing more information about the consultation once we've got through that committee stage and we are into the lead up to 1 November. We've got lots of really great questions now so I'm just going to stop showing my screen and start picking up some questions and we will hope to answer as many as we possibly can. So I'm just going to go from the top here questions saying what are the special circumstances thought to justify removing yet more land from the green belt for the expansion of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus surrounding White Hill and extending the city edge to Granham's Road which the community residents association is said by the commentator to have opposed when the smaller modification to the current plan was proposed. I think maybe that's one that Caroline could pick up. Hi. Yes, so I sort of explained that a little bit. I think the question might predated my introduction to the site but we did look really carefully at this site. It is a site that is of national importance arguably even beyond that in terms of its biotech companies and research and so on. The promoters, the campus put forward very large proposals. They say they need more land as we move forward. We think that there can potentially be a case for exceptional circumstances because of that really importance of that site but we didn't think the full extent of the land that they proposed was appropriate. So we've set out why we think there are potentially exceptional big circumstances and we've set out a proposed boundary for that that I'm sure you will to look at but it was very much to try and provide some flexibility for continuing development of this really important site whilst recognising the sensitivities around that area and keeping development of the lower ground and also maintaining an area for biodiversity and access around it. Thanks Caroline. A quick question about were the plans for jobs and homes estimated or for Brexit the facts were seen? We talked about COVID but I wonder if you could just quickly fill in on Brexit. Yeah we recognise a number of different factors that we'll need to update it with our employment land review and that does include the effects of Brexit so yes that's very much on our radar too. Thank you. A question about the figures for jobs and homes suggesting a lot of single working adults at the homes required are nearly one dwelling for every one and a half jobs yet most planned units look like family homes. I'm not going to read the whole question because it's fairly lengthy I know you can see it Caroline but I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how the figures from jobs and homes relate. So the we also commissioned evidence to understand the number of homes that would be needed to sit with our our employment forecasts and that looks at the whole of the population from young people older people as well as employed workforce. The advice we've had is that you know that there is a combination of factors that play into the amount of housing that we need. This isn't necessarily a direct one for one but what we've said is that for the homes above the homes to support the additional jobs above our standard method need to be fully provided within Greater Cambridge so it's not quite a one for one so there's a number of different factors in there and you'll see that in our technical information. What would be the best document for that person to read maybe if they wanted to find a bit more of the method behind that do you think? I suggest as well as the preferred options document to look at the strategy topic paper and that will then point on to some of the individual evidence documents depending on the level of detail the person's interested in. Thank you Caroline I'll let you go in a minute Caroline but I can see the next question is also around jobs and homes which is obviously your special area given the land already allocated and available for economic development in the current local plans how will the number of new jobs be controlled to not exceed 58,500? I think that's a really interesting question isn't it and actually planning isn't you know it's not an absolutely exact science what we try to do is to plan to the best of the evidence that we have we know that this area has held a very high level of employment land supply for very many years and even when we've been delivering quite high numbers of new jobs we've continued to have that supply so it's a bit like you know these are very big sites that build out over a long period of time so the likes of Grant Park and the Chinone campus and the biomedical campus have been developing over a long period of time so it's not an exact science but our forecasts say that they think the most likely level of jobs growth is the is that 58,500 jobs and we think that's the best figure we have available to you to use for our plan making. Thank you the question around the Oxford to Cambridge Arc which is a really interesting one because of course the arc are consulting on their spatial framework currently as well what account has been taken of the proposals which include across the arc area up to one million additional homes and between half and one and a half million new jobs up to 2051 Caroline I thought I was going to let you go but maybe you could step in or maybe Stephen as well might want to say something about this. Well shall I start there've been various figures quoted around the octocam arc I think it is still very early days though and I think we need to wait and see what comes out from from government as it goes through its process it has said that local plans are still you know really important part of the plan making process or planning system and they're encouraging us to continue to prepare our plans which are supported by very clear evidence and I guess what we'll be saying is that we've we've commissioned evidence we've understood what our area we anticipate our area needs and suggesting that back to government as something that they need to take into account for our end of the corridor. Thank you there's a few questions here around the relationship between the local plan and the proposals from Anglia and Water about moving their wastewater treatment plant so I might just take these all together so there's a question around the carbon emissions and what Anglia and Water is saying about its carbon emissions required for moving the water treatment centre counting against the northeast Cambridge area action plan site and if that is the case how can NECAP the northeast Cambridge area action plan be considered sustainable or viable in terms of low carbon accounting I think it's just I'll just answer this one actually just off myself because it's a it is difficult for everyone to understand but Anglia and Water of course are just one landowner and site promoter as well within the northeast Cambridge area and we're not the ones developing their carbon strategy so I think it's really for them to to talk to their own carbon accounting the area action plan puts in place its own ways of looking at that and we have to divide our responsibilities as a local planning authority that will ultimately assess certain aspects of planning applications and what Anglia and Water says is is not really something that we can answer to tonight but I know that they would be happy to answer any questions. Two further questions here which are really related about the green belt so how can northeast Cambridge develop and comply with policies on protecting green belt biodiversity landscape and so forth when the surge works will be a huge industrial development on the green belt this is not mentioned in the plan at all and a similar question around the green belt why is the the use of the green belt potential use of the green belt for the new wastewater treatment plant not included in the local plans discussion around the green belt um Stephen I think maybe you could come in on this one. Thank you yes I mean in many respects it's a good question the challenges that we've faced in terms of responding to the wide range of consultation and feedback but the approach by relocating the wall treatment works to an alternative look and looking at the evidence that we've published it clear that northeast Cambridge performs as a brownfield site very strongly against those priority issues that people have highlighted particularly in response to climate change also in terms of accessibility and integration work with existing localities and of course the questioner who points out that well you could build houses on the green belt instead of relocating the wall treatment works nearly the area of housing that would be required in order to achieve the meet our housing needs and that would be substantially larger. Stephen I think unfortunately Stephen's collection sounds like it's breaking up quite badly. Can I come in Hannah? Yeah please do. Yeah I think it's also important just to be really clear here that there are different processes in place here so the the council is local planning authority in preparing the local plan we're not requiring the relocation of the wall treatment works that is being dealt with as a separate process proposed by Anglain Walton going through a separate development control order process is the title of that process that that will go through. What we're saying is that if that process happens and the site is the treatment works relocates then the North East Cambridge site is a really sustainable location for development and if that happens that we would say that this is a really important you know really good and positive part of our development strategy but I think it is important to recognise there are two separate processes. I appreciate to you as residents in the area it might not seem that that's that's the case but in technical terms that they are two separate processes. Thank you Caroline. I'm just moving on to another question about a different matter to do with water. A questioner says the counterbalance to water supply is flooding risk. How will increased building impact on natural soakway and drainage? Canborn has suffered lots of problems regarding flooding and sewage management. Can you give an assurance that flooding has been properly considered and there is a sort of related question around the quality of new build housing and infrastructure and the non-delivery of committed green measures such as water conservation which is an issue that the questioner says in Trumpington. Maybe John if you're still there with us I know your connection was a little tricky. Do you think you'd be able to pick those up? I'll try. Tell me if you can't hear me. So as part of an integrated water management study we've commissioned another strategic flood risk assessment which really draws together all the information we've got on flood risk that's available to make sure we're fully informed. We then want to include very strong policies to require sustainable drainage systems and set strong standards to ensure not only developments are safe in themselves but they don't impact on downstream communities as well. So it's another really important issue for the plan and we've set out our approaches and hope we get a lot of feedback on how those policies will be developed to yes and I don't want to take very seriously. Thank you very much John. I've answered a couple of ones in writing so I'm just going to skip past those. There's a question that says how can a thousand sites distributed across the plan area be whittled down to 19? How can 19 sites be considered to address not just district housing need but settlement housing need? Not everyone wants to live to the north of Cambridge for example and surely smaller but still sustainable settlements should be considered in order to provide a balanced approach to housing delivery. How is a strategy for placing all the housing eggs in one basket here going to be different from the failed in the case of UDC and the severely delayed brain tree cultures to tendering large settlement approaches taken by others? This is a really interesting one that as a team we have had many many debates about from the sustainability perspective and the social, environmental and economic balance of sustainability. Caroline I think maybe this is one you could expand upon. Yes it is a really interesting question isn't it? I think it is important to recognise that our villages it is difficult for them to be providing really sustainable development on the whole because of the level of services and facilities and connectivity to places like Cambridge or larger settlements. So when we looked at the carbon impacts of development villages did come out poorest on the whole. We have looked at some villages where they have better services and facilities to provide some development. I think it is important to recognise that our plans also allow for what is called windfall development which is development that can come forward consistent with our overall policies and within the built boundaries of our settlements and that does still yield quite a significant number of homes and jobs over each year. So just because we haven't identified every individual site that might come forward it doesn't mean there won't be any development in the rural area. In terms of that why the question about can we be confident our strategy will be successful where other places for example Luttleford have not been. Ultimately that is down to an inspector to determine but if you look at the strategy that we have in our adopted plans which does very much look at sites in and on the edge of Cambridge and through several new settlements that was found sound in our last plans and really what we're doing is very much sort of carrying forward that strategy and those new settlements now either are coming forward or have planning permission and we're not proposing any brand new new settlements in this plan so one of the other benefits that looking at an expansion of Canborn has for example is that you're expanding an existing established settlement as well as the benefits that will come from East West Rail. We do obviously have to make sure that all the infrastructure to support all these proposals will come forward at the time we anticipate and as we go through the plan making process we'll be keeping that under very close review to check that we think it's an actually a plan that is deliverable and fit to be submitted for that examination. Thanks Caroline we're at time but we've got lots of really good questions so if everybody is happy to carry on just for maybe another 10 or so minutes maybe we could just get through a few more of these and then we will pick up the other ones in writing. I've got a question here around proximity and accessibility not being the same thing that the questioner says northeast Cambridge has great advantages of proximity to places of work but the reason it has not been developed in the past is surely that it is a site heavily constrained by access difficulties. Caroline is that one maybe you might pick up on? Yes and again that's a really good question. I think what I would say is that you know there's certainly a lot of congestion around around that part of Cambridge but when you now have the Cambridge North Station you have the Sennheifft of the Cambridge busway you have the proposed Greater Cambridge Partnership Water Beach to Canborn both public transport scheme and Greenway scheme coming forwards. Actually this is one of our best connected sites and it really does show that when we've undertaken our transport modelling and reporting that that really does stand out. I think the other thing to say is that we are looking to provide homes close to those jobs in that area so that there's more opportunity for people to live and work close together. We know not everyone will choose to take that opportunity but it does help to internalise more trips so that less people are having to travel out and into the area but we're also proposing what's described as a trip budget which is where we are putting in measures to make sure that there are no increase in the number of trips generated by this site as we move forward so really not expecting it to be somewhere where the car is very much relied on as not relied on in everyday use. I think that reflects a really interesting change isn't it and how we approach planning that is no longer looking at purely the sort of the road access as being the measure for which proximity is measured. Previously you might not have chosen a site because of the road access and now it's a slightly different equation. A couple of other questions will get through. Sustainability seems to have disappeared from the list of seven overall objectives why and do the objectives need to reflect that sustainability will depend on a balanced stream. Really interesting one so I think we would say that sustainability is a sum total of all of those seven themes in the plan. That really is the overarching principle behind planning in the present day that stems from the national planning policy framework and actually I think we were all really delighted to see that the updates to it recently to the NPPF actually really strengthened the definition of sustainability within the NPPF and put more flesh on the bones for us to all work with there. We do talk about what that means and of course there's also the sustainability appraisal process that the plan goes through that is a really fundamental and important part of the process. I think if we put sustainability as a theme it is so broad brush to divide it we need to spit that down into the environmental and the economic and the social and and we've actually chosen to in essentially spit that down further to talk about climate change as a theme biodiversity as a theme and so forth. I'm just going to quickly with through the next question which is around Cambor and being sustainable due to East West Rail but this being a diesel track proposal with us not to track from the sustainable attributes and mean that this does not qualify with our criteria. The councils do have a perspective on East West Rail and electrification and Caroline I don't know whether you want to just quickly say a little bit more about that. Well Hannah as you say the councils are very keen to see this new proposal as being an electrified proposal and it remains to be seen whether that does come to pass. I think you know we do need to recognise that train almost even if it were not electrified still would have the benefit of getting a lot of people out of their individual cars and the emissions that that would would cause. We have looked at balancing development at Cambor with for example releasing down from the Greenbelt on the edge of Cambridge but really we think that the merits of Cambor with East West Rail is sufficiently strong that we don't need to really stand on the edge of Cambridge from the Greenbelt given that really strong national policy so you know you weigh up the balance and you know you reach of you guided by your principles and we felt that that was a reasonable and appropriate strategy to put forward and we we're really interested to see what you know what what our stakeholders and communities think about that through the consultation if members agree it is the right strategy to put out. Thanks Caroline. The question there's two questions here around transport modes which are quite interesting one says is transport looking only at current technologies buses, cars, bicycles etc or also likely new technology such as the shuttle that's been tested in West Cambridge and the pods that were one of the proposals for the metro and the other question asks about how in terms of sustainable public transport how will the extra buses needed be accommodated within the city centre. I wonder if I feel like Caroline you've had a little questions to answer but maybe that's something that you might start on and maybe John or someone else might want to come in on as well. Yes and I think Steven is perhaps would like to come in on this one as well but I think in the outset we have to look at what we know and we need to look at what you know what the potential impacts could be but absolutely we're open to what new technologies might might be into into the future but I think we need to understand almost as a not quite worst case scenario but understand on today's transport methods what the impacts would be and you know hopefully if more sustainable and less impactful measures come forward over time that will only reduce those impacts moving forward but Steven I don't know if you wanted to add to that. Just to build on that obviously as Caroline said we have to anchor because of the test of soundness our proposals in an understanding of existing technologies and the process will involve reviews of transport modelling that's undertaken but we would then expect absolutely through the plans process and in conversations with the combined authority as transport authority and the county council and Greater Cambridge hardship to understand those opportunities that people have put in the chat for enhanced technologies and in indeed ways of improving behaviour change to take those sustainable choices going forward and you know that's an open common that's a real objective in terms of the plan is to change patterns of behaviour around how we move around the movement of that movement that regardless of mode in many respects is a key component of what we're trying to address. Thank you Stephen. Quick question around the level of in and out commuting which is taken as existing and what do we forecast? Well I think this is obviously something that we are going to keep under review with the COVID and so forth related impacts but we can tell you what our current assumptions are on this Caroline I think that's when you can probably pick up. Well actually it's a very sounds a very simple question with probably quite a long technical answer but we use a transport model that the county council prepares which has all sorts of clever assumptions built into it including around commuting and so on both now and into the future so I think that's one of those questions we've probably better to take away rather than to try and answer here. Good idea and there is a lot of evidence based published around that so I'll put up the contact details in a minute and you can write to us and we can pick that up. A couple of questions around sustainability one around the willingness to challenge government around water supply and the MPPF allowing other sustainability issues to be a basis for for challenge of government targets and then well maybe we should actually there's slightly different different questions so that one is really about at which point do we challenge government and what do we think the sort of the grounds are for that. I think our challenge to government around the water supply is not that you know we're saying that we think the government is sort of wrong about something but it's really that we need their help to bring those water supplies on more quickly. Maybe Stephen or would you like to say a little bit more I know the connection is bad about this but yes I'm sorry about my connection dropping out of the last the contribution before last that there's a really important conversation happening and someone else has referred to it in terms of the ox cam arc and some of the environmental principles that underpin the the local councils are trying to push into government to underpin that so there is a challenge being mounted on some of these assumptions around what is the good growth and some of you as I've been highlighted might have made comments in terms of the ongoing consultation around a vision obviously one of the strong people aware of for greater coverage particularly is particularly areas of information on the Stephen has won out a bandwidth at the most important bit of his statement. Stephen are you back at all? No I think I think we're going to have to give up even as lost there thank you very much we will pick up the the rest of questions that we don't get around to in written answers I'm just going to put up the contact details now as well so that you can have a look at and note those down. You'll see there the website address for where you can find out more information where you can access the digital plan you can access the maps and so forth through our website and also our local plan email address and please do feel free to email us with any queries we have a wonderful team went ready to answer them for you and and so forth so we're always happy to clarify anything or help with any queries through that email address. I'm mindful that we are rather starting to get out of time now so I think we should probably start to wrap up here we can see a few other questions we will take note of them and we're sorry that Stephen's answer about the Oxcam arc and about government wasn't comprehensible we will put a fuller answer to that on our website when we do when we do do the written responses to all the other Q&As here sorry we haven't got around to all of them but we hope it has been helpful for you and this website will be up on sorry this webinar will be up on our website shortly once we've we've got the recording processed and so forth thank you all very much for attending.