 gwneud allan i chi ddim hwnnw ei bod gilydd. Dweud y wneud yn wneud siaradau, mae yna yw rydyn ni addrwydd y awrfyr lle, a pethau o ran hwn i amdano y dyfodol ac mae gennych ymddangos cyfle. Rwy'n ddiddordeb yn fwylo gwaith. Mynd i chi i'r meddwl chi, fyddi'r meddwl yng Nghyrch, sef y gallwn i'w ddyn ni'n meddwl i draws oedaf sinol i'r gwybod y ddechrau ac mae'r modd i'r gweithd, ysdyn ni'n meddwl. One of the things that we did want to say before we start off was just a reminder for you to tell your parish clerks that the 17th of April, there's a parish clerk event which will be held in the council chamber at Canbourne. So please, this is specifically for parish clerks, I think we've had around 30 that have already accepted. It's during the day, you will get a chance to meet a number of colleagues from both the planning service and other service that work with us, but there will be specific training for the parish clerks on some of the more topical things that we frequently come across and hopefully we can help and it's a two way process that we want the parish clerks to obviously have the opportunity to talk to us as well. We will be holding another event for parish chairs that will be later on in the year, so probably around October, but just putting that on your agenda, please ask them to confirm that they can come along, so that will be great. I have got apologies, apologies is from a colleague, Councillor Katie Thornborough, as you know we're a greater Cambridge Shed planning service with Cambridge City Council and Councillor Thornborough usually comes along but unfortunately can't make tonight. So I'll move next, Anna, was that a question about the event? No, it was just to observe that I just wanted to remind the person who prepared the agenda that it's Lee Hillam, not Lee Hillman, and as you can see his name, which is on our screens. Thank you, Hannah, that had already been brought to my attention by Councillor Brian and I have already amended the agenda and given my apologies to Lee. Okay, that's fine, that's fine. Thank you for pointing that out, Anna, that's really helpful. I can see that Toomey's joined us, so we'll do our introductory now as normal where we introduce officers, so if that's okay, I'll start off with Toomey, who is the exact member for planning. So Toomey, I think everybody knows. Good evening everyone and thank you for joining us, hope you can hear me clearly enough. Yes, Toomey Hawkins, South County District councillor for Codicot Ward and been responsible for planning. For the last years, there we go. Thanks Toomey. So I'm Heather Jones, I'm the Deputy Director for Greater Greenbridge Shed Planning. So I'm just going to pick officers as I see them on the screen and they can introduce themselves. So John Cornell. Good evening, John Cornell, Natural Environment Team Leader for Greater Greenbridge Shed Planning. Lee Hillam. Yes, I'm Lee Hillam, I'm the Principal Operations Manager for South County District Council and I look after services such as street cleaning, awarded water courses in viral crime and services that are front line to the public. Thank you, Lee. Bev. Hi everyone, you already know me but I'm supporting the meeting and apologies again for the hiccups we've had with Zoom but hopefully we're all right now. Nancy. Hello, my name's Nancy Kimberley, I'm a Principal Planning Policy Officer. I'm sorry I've got a bit of a cold so my voice is a bit hoarse this evening. Thank you Nancy. Nicolle. I'm the Senior Websites Officer in the Communications Team so it's nice to be with you this evening. And then I think we've got John on the call as well. John Dixon Planning Policy Manager. Thank you John. So I think that's all the introduction for members and officers so Bev have we got any other apologies? You're on mute, Bev. One isn't there. Councillor Katie sends her apologies. Lovely, thank you. So our usual format so we'll go through the presentation. At the end of each presentation you'll have the chance to ask questions. We would ask that you put them either in the chat or put your hand up and we'll try and manage that. And then at the end of all of the presentations there'll be an opportunity for an open forum for questions. Tumi, do you want to take over chair or are you happy for me to continue? No, I'm happy for you to carry on. Thanks very much for doing that. One thing I wanted to say is can we have on the chat if people could put their names and the parish councils that represent that will be very helpful for us so we know who's attended please, thank you very much. Lovely, thank you. So our first update is from John Cornell I think who has to leave a bit earlier tonight so John, over to you. Thank you very much Heather I was wondering if you were going to remember that if I was going to get kicked to the end again but well done. So I've got a presentation for you this evening about biodiversity net gain again but particularly around the biodiversity metric which is the table, it's a form that's used by our ecologists to measure this and it's going to be a little bit dry maybe but we'll do our best to get through and hopefully there'll be some interesting questions at the end. So I'm going to share my screen now with you all and then hopefully we can make it work. So let me know if this all looks as it should. Okay. Good I can't see any of you anymore so it's all just gone it's all just gone a funny colour but anyway as I said so biodiversity net gain measuring things up. Let's name the presentation so let's remind ourselves. Well, where are we? We are I think hang on a sec I think we're somewhere where my PC doesn't want to do what it should that's interesting let's do that then okay. Apologies. Right so here we all are what a wonderful place isn't it isn't it lovely that's our home and of course there's a great deal of us there are 8 billion of us currently and counting. About 67 million people in the UK. Do you know it would take you 200 lifetimes to eat 8 million bananas now. I mean that was that that was a fact that I shared with some school kids the other day. It just gives you a sense of just how many 8 billion is it's a very, very big number. Biodiversity on the brink and we have a lovely place to live but unfortunately we're doing our best to mess it up. So million species are threatened with extinction right now more than any other time in history disappearing at an alarming rate 1000 times the norm and the culprit the bad guy is is us humans. We're consuming producing travelling living in ways that are not really very sustainable. Now I do apologise I've got pictures of tropical rainforests in my presentation and of course we're not in the tropics but broadly speaking the same kind of thing is going on we are losing habitats. You know at an alarming rate and part of that in the past historically has been through development and what we're trying to achieve in greater Cambridge indeed reversing that. Not just protecting our habitats but actually enhancing those habitats and ensuring that we can put back more than is lost through development. Of course if we would fly over have a look down it all looks very green and lovely doesn't it. That's south Cambridge district there with the boundary and the city of Cambridge in the middle about 940 square kilometres about 300,000 of us 180 per square kilometre I could go on with statistics. But I don't want to bore you. It looks very green but it's mainly farmland there's not much land for nature. If we were to overlay where our developments are taking place we've got quite a few large developments these numbers may be a little bit off there. Not quite as off as Mr Gove would have had you believed a couple of a couple of months ago but nevertheless about 50 to 60,000 new homes between now and 2041. So we need to put these in the right places we need to ensure that the plan decisions are balanced. The need for economic growth and need to protect our biodiversity etc etc lots and lots of competing variables. If we were to map this out spatially we could see we've got Camborn here growth in Camborn. We've got Long Stanton and North Stow there at Water Beach. A lot of fringe sites and some other bits and pieces going on. That's where the developments broadly taking place. If we're to zoom into Camborn this is a lovely aerial shot and it shows I think that's Upper Camborn and some nice green area. Look at that. This is achieving balance and the way that this balance has been achieved for Camborn is actually by accident would you believe this lovely green area that you can see. Should have been a golf course apparently I'm told it was never developed as a golf course. And so now we have a wonderful country park which balances the urban development there that you can see and the natural environment which is not just good for nature, good for people, recreation, carbon sequestration. The list goes on and on and this has happened by accident really in a way in Camborn. But what we're hoping is through biodiversity net gain we can achieve more and more of this kind of thing in the developments that we have in Greater Cambridge going forward, not by accident but by design. You may have heard about biodiversity net gain I'm sure you've heard about it already. Btw, I think that gain is a new approach to development aims to leave the natural environment in a measurably better place, better state than it was before that development took place. It does sound counterintuitive but it is possible and it's about nature recovery now. It's not just about sort of putting back what we've managed to damage. It's about putting back more than is lost through that development. So it's stepping beyond protection and into enhancement. That's what biodiversity net gain does. Now I could give you a graphic here that shows it quite simply. In the old days we have this no net loss model of protection biodiversity. That's that green blob. Imagine that green blob at the top is your development site. It's a field. Put your development in the middle of it and what you're looking to do is essentially replace what you have taken. That model was called no net loss and unfortunately what used to happen more often than not is it would result in net loss for a number of reasons. The new model, biodiversity net gain model, seeks to not just replace what is lost through development but to add a little bit more. The Environment Act states that's going to be 10%. That's now mandatory for most developments in England and it ensures that by taking this approach of net gain that we can hopefully little by little add more and more quality habitats in the places that people need them around developments and in places where that biodiversity can thrive. This follows something called the mitigation hierarchy model. I told you it would be dry, didn't I? Mitigation hierarchy above all, if you can avoid doing the damage in the first place, you avoid it. If you cannot avoid it, you minimise the damage you do. If you cannot minimise, you rectify, you cannot rectify, you reduce. Finally, if you can't do any of those, you offset the damage. This is where biodiversity offsetting comes in. A different way of visualising that would be to look at this. I guess it's a bar chart. Along the y axis, you have your net impact on biodiversity, positive and negative. Along the x axis, which goes across the screen, you've got a line which is your no net loss line. As we go from left to right, your biodiversity impact is first avoided, minimised, restored. This final piece here, offsetting, crossing that line of no net loss into offset, we have a positive impact on biodiversity. That's the theory. We need to measure this. One of the reasons why the no net loss model was so poor was that different developers, different ecologists used slightly different ways of measuring that baseline and measuring what they were doing. That inconsistency often produced very different results, varying results. What we now have is something called the biodiversity metric. It's been produced by DEFRA, the Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, and it introduces a consistency into the planning process, which should allow us to more confidently predict, measure the impact on biodiversity and the remedial mitigation for that impact. The biodiversity metric is a spreadsheet. It's an Excel spreadsheet, not particularly complicated, you might think, but it is complicated. It's got algorithms and all kinds of other stuff in it to ensure that these biodiversity units are calculated correctly. As I said, it ensures consistency. It uses habitat as a proxy for biodiversity value, and it's designed as a tool to aid decision making, but it's not a substitute for expert advice. We will still need ecologists trained, competent people to interpret what's gone into this tool. It doesn't change your override mitigation hierarchy or other protections, policies, licensing or consents. It's a new tool in our toolbox, and it looks a little bit like this. This is a bit of a screenshot. I'm not about to open one up and start working through. It will be asleep within minutes, I'm sure. Essentially, the tool is based on Excel, and it's looking to record four different things. Habitat size, so how large is the habitat? Habitat condition, what is the condition? Is it a functioning habitat? What about the distinctiveness? Is it particular ecological importance? What about the strategic significance? Is the habitat local priority only, or is it located in the priority area of habitat creation and enhancement? If you go to the government website and look at their guidance, it's a 76-page PDF, by the way. Another challenge for me to cover this in 15 minutes today. The first point is the first principle. A competent person is required with the skills to perform specific tasks of completing, reviewing the calculations. What they're saying is that this is something that you obtain through training, qualifications, experience, or a combination thereof. The folks doing this for us in the district are trained ecologists. We've currently got two of them, two full-time ecologists, another one within the city of Cambridge, and we are in the process of recruiting for yet another, partly because the council, its members, its officers, are very, very seriously. We've got to get this right. We've got to ensure that we don't allow development to damage our biodiversity out there in the district. We're really doing all we can to ensure that we've got the resources in place to make this work. A little bit now on how it works. Measuring biodiversity net gain, we need to measure a couple of different things. We need to measure the baseline. The baseline is the condition of the site for any development takes place. That's the baseline. We're looking for enhancements and calculations of habitat creation after that development takes place, and that could be either on-site, off-site, or a combination of on and off-site. We're essentially looking for area units, hedgerow units, and in some instance, watercourse units, although watercourses will be probably rarer. These three types will be assessed independently within the metric, and each will need to show at least a 10% increase as per the Environment Act. So 10% is the new mandatory figure. Now, I say that, but having a chat with one of you this morning, actually, I did have to point out that, at the moment, 10% mandatory biodiversity net gain is for major developments only. The minor developments is coming on board on the 2nd of April, so next week. Up until that time, it's just majors going forward. It will be minors, and then next year, it will be NSIPs as well. So it's all heading in the same direction. Okay, so we have your baseline, and then we have your post-development creation or enhancement of biodiversity. All of these things need to be measured using the biodiversity metric. And just an example here to give you the sense of how complicated it can be. For woodland habitat, for instance, there are 13 different condition criteria, which I've listed along the left-hand edge of the screen there, just for woodland habitat. Each one of these criteria will have a score. That score will be assessed by a competent person and ecologist. That score will go into the metric, and the metric will spit out something, hopefully, that makes sense, and aggregate those scores into biodiversity units. I must say that this is where, there's a little bit of alchemy involved here. I don't fully understand how this works in the unit. It's taken a PhD at DEFRA to build this thing, and we have confidence that they've got it right. But this is the reason that it's not something that we would encourage ordinary Joes to just pick up and start messing around with. You really need to know what you're doing. You need to have the training. You need to have ecological training and understand what's going on before you start playing around this thing. Talking about units, as an example, units are calculated as an area multiplied by distinctiveness, multiplied by condition, multiplied by strategic significance. All of those things, it's almost like baking a cake. They're the ingredients. They'll go into the mix, into that DEFRA metric. That will bake the cake, and it will spit out something that will tell us that, in this instance, it's four units, four instance. Those four units, whether that's something we're talking about as a baseline condition, existing habitat, or whether that's host development that's needed to be replaced, it's the same tool that's doing that job, the same tool that's telling us that's what's there before development takes place, that's what's lost by development, and, therefore, that's what's needed to be replaced, either on-site, off-site, or combination. I'm trying to think if there's an easier way to explain that, but maybe we can get to it in questions. No, thanks. So, okay. So, out comes the output from the measurements that our colleges put in, and the local district ecologists in the planning team will check that output. They'll check the metric. The metric does have flags. It verifies stuff as it goes in. You can't just put nonsense in, and fingers crossed it will be fine. It will verify. In addition to the metric verification, we have just purchased some software from a company who built a system that does even more checks to ensure that things like trading rules have not been circumvented. So, we're doing our best to ensure we have competent staff. We've got the systems we need in place to make sure that what's put in is not rubbish. So, from that, our ecologists will review is the project exempt from B&G? Has the correct metric been used? I won't go through and read this ad infinitum, but you can get a sense of these are the kinds of tasks that our ecologists will be undertaking. Yeah, there's more as well. Red flags, orange flags, user errors, all of these things need to be resolved. This is before it gets the planning committee. So, we really have to ensure that the quality of the information coming from the developers ecologists has been checked and is good to go. Just a little bit on trading rules. So, trading rules in B&G, you can't down trade. You can't substitute a high priority habitat, for instance, for a lower quality habitat where there's more of it. There are very, very tight trading rules built into the system to ensure that we're not being hoodwinked by losing a particularly important piece of habitat over here. But guess what, over here, we're going to give you acres and acres of grassland that scores lower on the metric. So, the very important trading rules are in the system and they're flagged. The metric flags any errors with red boxes where trading rules have not been met with habitat distinctiveness, for instance. There are some exemptions to by the best in that game. Just a few, I'll go through them. So, permitted development, urgent crown development sites exclusively sealed for B&G score zero. Impact or impacting habitat in an area below the minimus which is 25 metres squared or 5 metres of linear habitats, householder applications, small scale self-build and custom build and by the best in that game sites enhanced for wildlife. And then just a brief reminder that we can deliver by the best in that game on site we can deliver it off site or we can deliver it in a combination of those three. What's happening in south Cambridge at the moment is... Well, it's happening all over England actually is habitat banks are being set up for off site delivery and the reason for this is that what we've found talking to our ecologists and talking to other ecologists in other parts of the country the smaller your development is the less likely you are to be able to deliver your net gain entirely on site it just doesn't stack up and every small developments of just a few homes or small areas of land which have been developed it just becomes unviable for developers to put their net gain on site it therefore goes off site to a strategic habitat bank and becomes part of a larger strategic offering which can then in time in time give us some additional local wildlife sites and this is how it works your first year you strip the arable wildlife habitats planted and then as you go on over time, year 10 you get this establishment of better wildlife habitats just a couple... I'm just conscious of time so it's coming up to half past now so I think that's 25 minutes and there's a lot of questions coming in so how close are we to the end? To the end well really I was just going to talk briefly about the nature network but we can skip that we can go over that that's a little bit about what B&G is going to add and then just my final two slides really so fantastic opportunity developers to deliver higher quality GI and other settings etc and then LPAs bring online it's just really explaining what we're doing but I think the last point and the important point to make here is that we want to work with parishes and if there's something that the ecology team can do to get you I don't know better quality information in a more timely manner to help you make your decisions let's do that that's all I've got for you, how's that? Wonderful thank you John, I'm going to start the questions now and I'll go through the chat we did have just to say we will share the presentations and obviously this is being recorded and the recording will be shared as well so there was a question from Kirsten Rayner from Gamlingay Parish Council that she submitted in advance I think that might have been answered but I'm just asking if not there's an opportunity to ask it Kirsten I know you're on the call I took one thing from me was NSIP you mentioned NSIP John for those who aren't aware NSIP is a nationally strategic infrastructure project just to say that's what that acronym stands for so Kirsten do you want to just ask your question and I think people might find it helpful it might be a different question now because I've recently talked to John this morning about the answer to it so I'm sorry it might be a slightly different question that you're expecting but just to clarify it you're saying that the base data that you use is from 2020 for all sites that's the base data that you use can you just clarify where you get your data from and from what date well that's not entirely correct so the way that it would work typically is that if a site is being developed we will have what the developer will employ in the colleges to assess the biodiversity on the site prior to any kind of land clearance that's how it's assessed but what we understand to be the case is that there's some naughty people out there what they'll do is they'll clear the land and then they'll say oh look there's nothing to see here now if that's the case and it comes to us according to the Environment Act we will assess the site as it was on the 30th of January 2020 so that's a provision that anticipates that some developers will try to do that prior land clearance and they're not going to get away with it it's in the Environment Act it's already covered and the way that we would do that is we would use a combination of air photography any data from the parish any local pictures put that all together and have our ecologists assess the site and we'd assess it conservatively in a way that ensures that we're not losing anything or that we're covering our bases that's how that works Super that's very helpful thank you and the other question was about so you did mention about sites sealed sites don't actually have to seal surface sites is that something where there's contamination can you just explain what you mean by that anything where you have zero biodiversity you might have some grass growing between some cracks but that's what we mean by sealed sites anywhere where you just it's a perhaps it's a former industrial site there is nothing to see or tarmac tarmac absolutely anything that's a non-permeable surface for which you would not expect to see any kind of biodiversity will score zero in the metric definitely thank you very much thanks so I think David Reeves asked a question how do you prove BNG has taken place and how long will it be monitored for and by whom so I think you've 30 years so 30 years so briefly sorry I'm aware of time so it's monitored by the local planning authority so that's why we have the ecologists we do to undertake that monitoring annually any problems with that monitoring that we find we would go back to the provider and we'd say you know what this is not as it is meant to be and they would have to either replant or mitigate in some other way so we have a central function that's why we need a strong competent team of ecologists to ensure that what we're being told is happening on these sites is actually taking place and it's monitored yet over 30 years thank you and then we have Sharon and I think this question Sharon do you want to ask the question yep I mean our parish is going to be affected by the east west rail if it goes ahead so who monitors that although I think that might be what you're calling an incident because it's going to have a massive impact on biodiversity in southern Cambridge and you know who's going to enforce the 10% well currently the n-sips aren't covered under the 10% mandate as I said earlier n-sips will come in in 2025 however what we are finding is you know not sorry so if it's coming in so at the moment they're only at the statutory consultation well they're not even at that yet so by the time assuming it goes ahead then it may well be covered if it's coming in by 2025 yep so a couple of things to say one is that with linear sites they're very different from housing developments when you've got linear site you've got an impact which is very thin and long and stretches across vast areas and so it's a bit more tricky because how do you mitigate for that along the entire length what we find in those instances is it's best to take the mitigation to collect up all of that mitigation and to put it in one habitat bank as well as obviously doing what we can along the route of the site but because it's 2025 it's an n-sip it's just not currently covered what I would say that's positive is that we do know that working with some developers they want to play ball they absolutely want to do the best and they won't always go by the book they'll go above and beyond when it comes to biodiversity in that game we might well see that with East West Rail I doubt it's somehow based on their current um yeah based on their current sort of setup no okay thanks thank you and I think Tumi has made a comment it's not at the stage yet when it will go ahead and it's likely to be covered as we've said so that's fine I think we'll take one more question in the chat which is Anna then we do need to move on because we have got a number of other presentations tonight I'm sorry Johnny it's always very interesting when you come and talk to us what we will do is John will respond to the questions separately we will respond our lovely Bev will make sure that you will get copies and answers to the questions as well as the copy of the presentation so I'll just take the last question Anna do you want to talk about calculations to be backed up by site assessment yes I just asked will the calculations be backed up by site assessment because the maths or the algorithm as you said might imply more improvement than actually happens on the ground unmindful that the role of an ecologist used to be very much boots on the ground an area mapping and assessment whereas this metric looks very desk based I'm sure our ecologists are highly qualified in this regard Anna Councillor Bradham I think what we're doing is we are providing site visits for all of these it's absolutely in the model that we have boots on the ground we can't do stuff from space there are people that tell us that we can you can do certain amounts with remote sensing absolutely is possible we can get down to habitat levels condition our ecologists are out there on the ground visiting pens and paper rain and wind that's what we're doing I can assure you that we're not circumventing we're not short cutting that's why we need the team that we have thank you John that's really helpful and thank you for your presentation I think everybody really really enjoyed it I certainly did and we will make sure as we said we'll circulate the slides as well as the recording so I'm going to quickly hand over to Lee Hillam because he's patiently waiting so this is another really interesting area for me about awarded water courses so over to you Lee being fantastic if you can give us an update thank you Heather I'll just try and share my screen we could see brilliant okay I can't see you so sorry about that so awarded water courses I did think that I would turn up and talk to people and probably wouldn't know much about awarded water courses but I can actually see by the attendees list that actually I know many people who know things about awarded water courses and actually a few people know probably a little bit more than me if you're not familiar with awarded water courses there's one on this first slide here I think I can see someone on the call who will know where that is and that is our awarded water course in Fendreighton so I'll just move on so what is an awarded drain I think when I spoke to Heather and the planning department about awarded water courses they were equally interested about what an award drain was and about its importance and at that time we were talking about concerns and considerations to do with checking and planning applications and what not so an awarded drain is an historic is a historic thing and what we're talking about is drainage ditches culverts and the conveyances of water if you like they were awarded so the term award comes from the early enclosures acts and historically awarded water courses were and still are actually really important drainage channels so they would have been important in the 1800s when they were awarded mainly for agriculture and things like that so a main drainage channel through a parish or through an area whereby people relied on that water course to drain the land so that they could grow food there are many awarded water courses around Southcams have probably got the most awarded water courses and we've got 275 km of them and we have an in-house awarded water course team Lee can I just sorry to interrupt can I just point out that am I right in thinking that awarded means it was awarded to a particular body to look after it that's correct Hanna yes so the term awarded means exactly what you've just said the commissioners of the day who were the people who were relied on in the community to make sure that things happened awarded these ditches so that's where the term comes from awarded them to certain people and if you look in the awards documentations that are held at the archive we will see that they are referred to as the public drains so they're not always awarded to the district councils that's a quite a people tend to think that when they see the term awarded water course they're always awarded to the councils and that's not the case so they can be awarded to the allotment holders which are people who are in the land so the council does have a statutory obligation to maintain the awarded water courses and there have been legal cases over the years whereby people who have had drainage channels awarded to them have challenged those awards to say that they didn't believe that they were relevant nowadays and what not I suppose the most recent case would have been with St Ives rural district council in 1960 where they challenged the term awarded and it went to court and it was deemed that the term in the award documents of surveyor of highways meant the district council so there are many legal cases for self cams awarded water courses there are also a set of land drainage bylaws which are really important because the bylaws are something that the bylaws are something that people have to follow for things like ensuring that buildings and structures are not put too close to a water course the basic of planning is that the planning authority and the LFA do the checking so when a plan is submitted the county council do ordinary water course consents and then a consent is required for an awarded water course from self cams district council to make sure that all of the considerations for the award are covered and the main consideration really is for the award is to make sure that the channel is viable so a planner will look and do the checking or the LFA will the ordinary water course consent covers things like if you're planning to do any works on a water course such as installing a bridge or installing a culvert or installing a head wall so those are the considerations for an ordinary water course consent and then the bylaw consent from self cams district council covers things like the distance that you're putting things from the water course to be able to maintain it and its viability going forwards so that's quite an important part because what tends to happen is a developer will get permission to make a connection and everyone will assume because of attenuation and so on that the water course is fit to take the water down the channel but of course the water course has to be maintained correctly the correct maintenance has to be applied to ensure that the connection that the developer is making is viable and it's draining properly and so on so the bylaw consent is something that I like to promote greatly because it's sometimes the bit that gets missed off but we're working on working on that with the LFA and with the planning authority so another misconception is riparian responsibilities so some people believe that when awarded water courses or if they have an awarded water course adjacent or abut in their property that everything to do with that water course is the award holders duty and that's not the case so if you are and if you have an awarded water course near to your property it doesn't mean that the council or the award holder owns the water course and they are more likely just to maintain it so there are riparian responsibilities if you're not familiar with riparian responsibilities that the word riparian just means that the bank owner if you like owns the water course another misconception is with water courses then it catches people out is that whereby a water course is adjacent to your property even when it's on the outside of your fence line and it's not mentioned in your deeds you are still classed in law as being the owner of that water course unless your deeds say otherwise so quite often or not people will live with a water course on the outside of their fence line and it may they may have the highway on the other side of that ditch as well and people will quite often live in a property for 20 years or more and not realise that that ditch actually belongs to them and it's not a highway consideration so the term for responsibilities for the highways ditch is usually that if the ditch only takes highways water then it's more likely to be a highways responsibility but most of them are riparian owned by the nearest land owner so just moving on quickly just before we leave this slide this was a picture that I got from the association of drainage authorities which showed what I believe to be an early award maintenance and in fact as you can see by that box in the background there's a small hatchback car there so it's not quite as old as I thought but a good picture there of early award maintenance in action so if you've never seen an awarded watercourse document this is Heston's award documents that we still refer to today so most parishes will have an enclosures document book you can see there going back to 1809 and an enclosures map as well and this is where the awards are written down so if you ever want to see or need any information on the awards you can visit the archivists in Ely and ask to see your parish award book and it will tell you all about the awards and many other things to do with responsibilities as I said before duties are placed on parishes and a surveyor of highways which has been determined as the district council which you can see there in the second bullet point just move on here you can see some South Cams district council nowadays use tractors, flails and excavators to maintain the watercourses not probably in keeping with what John said regarding ecology and habitats and stuff like that and such machines like this are not always favourable but South Cams awarding watercourses are very diverse so if you go towards the north of the district you'll see typically their very honed deep watercourses that take water out to the river and if you move into the south of the South Cams area you'll see quite often or not spring fed watercourses often chalk streams and very precious habitats out that part of the district in the south of the district all of which need to be maintained very sensitively and very differently so we don't have a one shot approach to maintaining watercourses some of them are really important habitats and we work with colleagues in the wild trout trust and other nature organisations to make sure that we maintain the watercourse appropriately to where it is and what it is and what habitats it's got in so this is the watercourse team South Cams have got their own watercourse team so we don't use contractors the watercourse team are on call 24 hours a day every day of the year and they will be maintaining watercourses all over South Cams you may have seen are blue new Holland tractors and we've got several excavators and a few 4x4s and what not so those are the watercourse team so as I said before 275km of watercourse we carry out lots of repairs to our watercourse infrastructure at the moment we've got about 10 or 11 outstanding repairs which is damage that's been caused by the many winter storms that we've had this year so we're just turning into the phase now where we start to shift from maintenance into repairs coming into the summer we also look after the web's holes sluice pumping station which serves around 13,000 households in South Cambridgeshire mainly from Camborn, Bar Hill Artons Drove the water that comes down that part of the catchment and in the bottom left hand corner you can see what that pumping station looks like so that's an important infrastructure and we also provide flood protection for the vulnerable as well so the teams will are on call as I've said before for flood protection and the delivery of sandbags for the vulnerable as well so all of that service is provided for around about £444,000 so if you've not seen an award map before or are not aware of awarded watercourse as you can see on here this is our GIS layer which is on the council's network and there you'll see a few popular areas for drainage the Swayverse North Stowe and Willingham and obviously all of the blue lines are awarded watercourses so you'll notice a few strange things probably from that map that not all of the watercourses are joined up there are odd little sections where there might be half a mile of watercourse and then nothing connected either side and when the award channels were awarded by the commissioners of the day that would have taken into account that there were lots of other responsibilities for watercourses as well so you will have internal drainage board responsibilities you'll have main river responsibilities and so on and they all tie together so awarded watercourses are not necessarily end-to-end watercourses they're often little bits and pieces that were deemed as being really important at the time to the commissioners awarding so for us the watercourse service we do seasonal cutting and maintenance which is our annual maintenance from late July to mid March obviously that takes into account ecology with respect to the birds nesting and other considerations like that the works that we carry out typically are flail mowing diesel in weeding and handworks we operate very similar to an internal drainage board and then as I said before we carry out just coming into the repair period down mid March to late June our awarded watercourses are categorised A to D and A requires probably multiple maintenance visits down to D which is next to no interaction at all that will obviously sound quite odd because these are important channels but some channels are only like 100 metres in the middle of a in the middle of a farmers field they're not connected to anything nowadays and so on so those ones are sort of what fall into the D category A's are obviously need lots of attention that's really important because for development we need to make sure that people apply for a bylaw consent when we keep our eye on planning and development because what we don't want to do is someone to connect to one of our channels that is categorised lower down we need to make sure that we continually review and match the maintenance with what's required I spoke about ecology considerations and partnership work in before the wild trout trust and so on and I've also said about developments so that's that's an example of one of our larger channels again Coville's drain in Swaithersey so over the winter storm periods the banks quite often slip or require maintenance in there on the left you can see some of you will recognise the side view of Patrick Matthews it was my predecessor and that's in Brookslip there on the left hand side and Coville's drain on the right so I respect that drainage is often a really convoluted and difficult subject to deal with this was a presentation that was put together much longer for members that I did do in the chamber and there's some good contacts there for drainage issues and sewerage obviously falls to angular water highways to Cambridgeshire County Council the water courses if you like, i.e. right parian considerations go to Cambridgeshire County Council flood and water team and also very important to report flooding of land and property to them because they investigate and carry out and write a report on it to conclude their findings of any investigations and then of course anything awarded war course comes to me so I think that is it that's wonderfully it was really really interesting thank you for that good to hear it and again we will share the presentation so you're still sharing your screen if you want to stop that would be great so we've got an opportunity I think for questions I think there's some really positive comments about you and your team and the brilliant work that you do and you've done in Swayze so thank you and lots of really good and positive comments there I think the only one I don't know if there's any actual questions for you directly just trying to look down to be honest so there was Councillor Carla Hoffman but that's about Marley but she'll talk to you offline on that then there is one is a stream I think you said something is a stream an awarded water course that's what needs to be established first so that was in response to somebody complain about talk stream to major talk stream ok Martin has a question where can we get a copy of our local water course map and the ownership yeah so the county council are responsible for all ordinary water courses and what's meant by that term is that anything that's not main river they've been doing a lot of work over the last 18 months because there are lots of drainage responsibilities and I believe in the next week or two they are just ready to publish an online water course identification kit and what that'll mean is is that all partners including self-cams have inputted their water course information into one place so anybody, members of the public and so on will be able to go on to the lead local flood authorities website and identify every water course as being either riparian IDB awarded or what not so the important place to look for that information because there's no link available at the moment but there will be Hillary from the LLFA has informed me that there will be if you go just type into Google Share County Council flood and water team it will bring up their website and you can follow links there to very easily to water course information That's brilliant, thank you Lee and likewise if anybody does want the awarded water course information I am obviously the keeper of that so I can give you a map of your parish if you want that That's what I was going to ask Lee to get a map of the awarded water courses in a parish That's great if we can come to you Yeah, that's no problem at all just send me an email and I can do you a snip and send it back to you And I think someone else has mentioned that what you've just meant what you've talked through there about that system Lee and that sounds really positive really great and they'd be keen to have the link I'm sure we'll send a link when that's in place Okay, and to me you've just got a link in as well Fantastic, thank you Okay, so thank you very much Lee, it was really very interesting again, another really interesting presentation so thank you for joining us tonight, we really appreciate that Okay, you're very welcome to stay till the end but we appreciate if you need to go, that's fine I'm just going to swap the agenda slightly and ask Nicole to come in because she's only got effectively a five minute update so Nicole if you're there if you want to just do your quick update and then we'll allow you to sign off thank you for being patient and then we've got our own team John and Nancy to do about water so, okay Thank you, I'm just getting the right link Here it is I'm going to share my screen So some of you may know, some of you might not know but we are currently redesigning the Southcams website and the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning website and what I just wanted to show you today is a really quick overview on a first draft of what the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning website will look like and there will be more opportunities for you to feed in when we've got further down the process but if you do have any feedback or you have any kind of things that really frustrate you with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning website at the moment please feel free to email me and we can make sure that all of that feedback is taken on board as part of the redesigned process but I'm just going to share my screen and show you the first draft now and I'm happy to have any feedback now or alternatively feel free to email me after this meeting So this is the proposal for Greater Cambridge Shared Planning so I'll talk you through the homepage and the different elements that are on the homepage now so one of the big things that we're doing and we're doing this on the main Southcams website as well is we are creating sections for the different user groups that might come to our website So we have residents, businesses and developers in the top navigation bar here and you will also see we've got accessibility tools and careers so accessibility tools will be like a translation service it will enable users to magnify the website it will enable them to use a screen reader and do anything, change the colour contrast and do all of those things residents, business and developers kind of says exactly what it is on the tin if you click on the residents section you'll see all information relevant to residents if you select the business section you'll see all information relevant to businesses and so on so we're looking at the residents tab at the moment the other two tabs will follow the same kind of layout so as you can see we've got view, apply, report and book and they will essentially be the hub of your links of your self service opportunities so for example view under there you will have view apply, you might have apply for planning permission report you might have kind of report a breach of planning compliance and a book you might have book a free app appointment or book a HSBA appointment or something like that as we move further down the page we've got a what is called a hero section so at the moment it's really hard to probably tell what this content is going to be because it's just filler content but these will be customisable and these will be based upon the top calls that are coming into the contact centre or the top searches that people are doing on Google so for example it might be household or small business advice it might be local plan it might be the planning application process what have you so we can customise that and that is just hopefully to push people to find the content quicker than needing to phone us email us or do any of those kind of things then we've got in my area so the in my area will be providing localised information to our residents or developers or whomever comes to our website depending on their location so that will tell residents any planning applications that are in and around their area it will also explain whether you're in a conservation area what your property constraints are any true preservation orders around you or anything like that so that's just going to provide them with some quick information on the first home page of the website if they enter their postcode to save them going through the website it will be struggling to find that information underneath we've got our services so then that's kind of like the main hub of the website so what is it that people might come to our website for so as you can see we've kind of got check if I need planning permission the planning application process planning compliance and so on and underneath those sections that's where you'll get to your main content pages and as you can see we've got 12 and I think we've covered pretty much everything from a residents perspective that they might need as we scroll down a little bit more we've then got latest news so they'll be like your press releases they'll be related to planning specifically and then on the right hand side you've got events and committee meetings so they will be any events that the planning service are holding we'll be able to add those in ourselves and it will also talk to modern.gov to feed through any planning committees or any committees that are relevant to the planning service Finally at the bottom you've got about planning so that is all of the sort of videos that the planning service are creating, helpful tips and tricks to kind of help you with your planning application or anything that might happen within the planning service so that will be a link essentially to our YouTube where we have a planning playlist so there's still more videos being created at the moment but that just gives you a little bit of a taste as to what that section will be and that's it really that's the website that's the home page, we haven't got any further than the home page Thank you Nicole, that's really really helpful I'm just going to say there was a lot to take in there so this is a really early draft that you're seeing so it still has to go through all of the development and everything else but this is kind of the principles and it will look very similar to the Southcams website so we wanted to make it the same kind of template if you like so we're using the same template but what we're trying to do is really hone in on those big high traffic points where members of the public are asking and trying to get information or what do they use the website for so it would be really helpful in your own parishes if you can feed back to Nicole any of those kind of points that you think would be really great to have this prominent on the website or this is the really the one thing I keep using the website for those sorts of things are really helpful for us to know so we'd really appreciate if you could feed that back separately to Nicole and we will put her email address in our notes Anna, can I bring you in? Councillor Anna Bradburn So just a real quick thing for Nicole on that one you know the top tabs across the top of the page for resident business council they might be meaningful to planners but when you're an ordinary Joe blogs you don't know whether your query fits under a resident, a business or council so I just just want you to think about the naming of those tabs because unless you know where to look you don't know where to look but the second thing is something much more important than that I think in times gone by district council used to share its asset mapping with the county council so it was displayed on the public asset layer of the county council mapping and then they stopped doing it because they didn't want to be responsible for updating the public asset mapping which is such a disadvantage because it used to show what assets were in the ownership of either the county council or the district council or the city council and that was extremely useful I've put a description in the chat so if you wanted to respond separately that would be fine Okay thank you I haven't read that oh yeah just looking at it now thank you I queried it with county and they said they didn't want to be responsible for updating the data but you must be updating your data all the time so it would just be really helpful if you could share that data with county so that that mapping layer can be maintained on county mapping I think that's something we'll probably need to take offline Anna but I agree I think there is something about us working together and how and what does that look like because the data will be updated it's just there might be liabilities that they see by you know presenting it on their website as well and that's something we'll need to take offline but I don't think it's but the point is I don't think it's presented anywhere else so actually I can still see county assets on the mapping but I can't see where district council owns land which is really useful as a district council yeah yep okay we'll take that back and we'll see we have multiple layers I think it's just understanding what we need so thank you thank you very much Nicole for your patience and yeah we'll leave you go now and we'll call our last presenters sorry John and Nancy I took chair's privilege there I'm so sorry about that and slip Nicole in but hopefully that's okay with you both and over to you so very well I just saw my screens out yeah I'm John Dixon so I lead the policy team and we're working on the new local plan but today I'm going to talk to you about water supply because it's become a huge issue over the last 12 months really for my team and there's an awful lot going on and actually awful lot has happened on the issue in the last couple of months so I'll run through an update of what's changed and I'll then give you an update of a report that we took to council members a couple of weeks ago on our local plan timetable so well we are obviously not the body responsible for planning for water supply there's a range of bodies involved including the environment agency but our water company covering the entire of Cambridge South Cambridgeshire is Cambridge Water and they are responsible for producing a water resources management plan but above that there is now a regional water planning process where water resources east produce a water resources plan for the whole region covering the period up to 2050 and the regional plan really shows the problems that are coming up not just around Cambridge but actually at regional level but also over much of the UK these are some extracts from the regional plan which you can find on the water resources website but what it really shows is that they've explored the water needs of the region up to 2050 and identified that actually when you look at the amount of water needed there's significant deficits in terms of the demand versus the supply the whole region has been classified as an area of being seriously water stressed an awful lot of our water bodies are falling short of the good ecological status climate change has very much been documented as starting to having an effect on weather patterns and the availability of water resources but in our particular area we've also got the chalk streams the incredibly rare habitats need a higher degree of protection so really at the regional level and the local level water companies are grappling with a whole list of issues the chart on the right of that slide really shows the problem so the blue line running on the top is effectively a do nothing option so the demand would gradually creep up over the periods 2050 um which then leads to that deficit um the what is it purpley coloured line below that starts to show what you could do through managing demand so can you reduce leakage can you make usage of the water more efficient but the line at the bottom the sort of orangey line shows actually we need to do more than that we need to be reducing the amount of water that we abstract from the environment in order to protect those um protect the wildlife and protect the quality of water courses so what that shows is the need to have a sort of stepped approach to reducing the amount of abstraction so there's a huge issue to deal with across the region and the regional plan really starts to put together the response to that um in the Cambridge area the biggest interventions for us are in 2032 there'll be a water pipe connecting us to Graffam water and the north so the Cambridge can start to benefit from water resources across a much wider area because historically Cambridge has abstracted its water from the chalk and hasn't been really connected to the wider network there's also proposals in the mid 2030s to bring forward a ffens reservoir which would start to capture more of the water before it is then taken out to the the north sea and therefore enable that water to be used um really instead of taking it from the chalk aquifer that we currently do at the moment so there are major infrastructure plans in place to bring forward supply so you've probably heard as well or seen in the papers there's been some issues around the very short term so before that pipeline is connected um where the environment has objected to a number of applications, planning applications for sites, they're actually already in our adopted local plans um so coming back to the Cambridge water management plan this is the key document really that's going to look at those issues and um the new plans got to grapple with all those issues that I mentioned they published their original plan around a year ago but it was subject to objections by the environment agency and therefore have asked them to revise it and now they're onto their second revision so a new version was published about a month ago and we now wait to see what happens because it can only be adopted and finalised when it's approved by DEFRA but the issue we've been grappling really is how to deal with that period before 2032 when the new uh strategic connections come on stream and that's really caused by the EA seeking reductions in abstraction in order to protect the quality of our water courses so when this issue really came to light obviously it caused great concern because it's affecting how we can meet the needs for homes and jobs of our population so our leadership council leadership very much wrote to government saying that action needed to be taken to resolve these issues and I guess one of the major responses to that was July last year the establishment of the water scarcity group and that really brings together all the key stakeholders with an interest in water supply issues so DEFRA the environment agency off what water resources the water companies the councils all coming together to take action to resolve the short and long term issues really following to the importance of the issue and the importance of Cambridge to the nation really um it's being chaired by Dr Paul Enster who is a water resources east independent chair and uh the government have now committed around 9 million pounds in total towards supporting its work um in December we had further updates through a written ministerial statement by Michael Gove um they announced that they would be reviewing building regulations uh with I think a consultation coming out soon um really setting out measures that will allow councils to require much more efficient um standards for new development and in the meantime they made quite a significant announcement in the fact that they would support councils requiring greater efficiency from planning applications where the water issue was holding up development so previously it had been very difficult for councils to go beyond what was in the standard building regulations um but this was quite a change so we are already um in planning applications pursuing and achieving um water efficiency standards below the building regulations um which which is really good for um saving water um things have moved on again um with a series of statements accompanying the UK budget um about again about three weeks ago um so as well as the case for Cambridge which is around um looking at the government's Cambridge 2040 aspirations which did to an extent address water issues there was two other documents published um one was a joint statement um setting out the commitment of the councils, the government and those water stakeholders uh to resolving the short term issues around Cambridge regarding water and the other one was an update on the work of the water scarcity group going through all the measures they're exploring both looking at water supply uh and reducing demand so just very briefly those statements went through uh how they might look at speeding up delivery of the graph and transfer and delivery of the Fends reservoir um they set out how they're going to explore strategic resources over the long term so these issues can be addressed going forward and they are looking at wider water management so looking at um agriculture and nature based solutions so that's looking at um how they can actually help water um get back into the choreographer by looking at land use and bringing forward projects you know working with local farmers to help do that I guess in the shorter term more directly they're looking at a water credit scheme so that will be looking for developers to effectively contribute funds which will then be used to um retrofit building so go in and make existing buildings more efficient because a lot of older building stock actually uses a lot more water because of its fiction fittings than newer developments alongside uh bringing forward a credit scheme they're also already bringing forward a pilot scheme so some of that funding I mentioned will be used to go in and retrofit buildings to monitor how effective it is so you can actually work at how best to retrofit and properly understand the impacts of those schemes um it also shows the work being looked at water efficiency but also water reuse so one of the problems we've had in using water efficiently is that there's again been a lot of regulations um making actually actually hard to water reuse so what I mean by that is using say um grey water from your bath to flush your toilet or taking rain water off your roof to do it so what they're doing through this project is actually looking at how they can change regulations to allow that to happen and a lot of this work is actually feeding into national um guidance in those building regs so we are being used really as a pilot nationally and a lot of the learning that's happening in Cambridge will be rolled out nationally um they're also looking more and more at how they can roll out smart meters so not just having Cambridge water have got quite good um metering rate so houses with water meters already but they're also looking at how we can bring forward smart meter well out so you're probably more familiar with your power having that but obviously it's important um for water to see what water you're using but it can help them identify where there is constant flow in dwellings so they may be able to write to you and say we've noticed your meter is constantly running can we come in there and fix your toilet so all these measures I have to say I bring significant pace a lot of money is being spent bringing forward specific consultants to work on these projects and the water scarcity group is making a rapid pace on these items um so coming back I guess to our local plan what does it all mean for us well we're very much part of liasing with all these groups and working our own water efficiency policies because we need to understand in planning for development that there is sufficient water supply across our plan period to meet the needs that we've identified through our plan making process and considering how our development trajectory fits in with that um looking at our local plan timetable as I mentioned report was considered by members about a week or two ago where we were providing an update on our local plan timetable and the last time our currently adopted local development scheme of a timetable was last updated in 2022 and government asked all councils to update their timelines so we've done that but we identified a series of uncertainties that made us made it difficult for us to identify um a very specific programme and all of these are external factors so the water issue I've just gone through in detail but clearly also challenges for our plan looking into the transport issues um and the um uncertainty I guess created by the Cambridge 2040 plan um and also we're grappling with a brand new local plan making system being developed by the government and new regulations about how we prepare our local plans are expected to come out later this year so what we've done is we've agreed an indicative timetable um where we would be looking to be what the government are terming a front runner under this new system so our indicative timeline anticipates we would start this um process in 2025 so clearly that's later they were anticipated in an original timeline but the benefits we see of the new system are in its structured timing of the stages you go through in plan making actually the overall process might end up being quicker than if we stayed with the original plan making approach some of you might recall how long it took our previous local plan examination to finish so I think the overall examination at the end of that process took us around four years so the new process is intended to have a fixed timeline for that end process so in many ways whilst there may be delay in getting on to that new system by running the new system our hope is that we may actually catch up at the end so you'll find we have published an indicative timeline now on our website and we've committed to members to keep them updated and when we're able to firm up that timeline we will come back and publish a new report and that's the end of my presentation thank you John again another really interesting presentation which we'll share thank you Nancy as well for staying on tonight so we've got literally five minutes left for questions has anyone got any questions for John and Nancy councillor Anna Bradman thank you Heather thank you very much indeed John for that very succinct presentation do you think that there is any risk that we won't be able to develop in the way that we've been told to by Government because of the scarcity of water so my understanding I think a lot of progress has been made regarding the water scarcity group so all those measures really are addressing the short term but also work is going on looking at the longer term so 2040 plus so whilst in many ways we still need to see the outcome for these processes I am actually reassured that significant resource is now being directed to addressing water supply in the Cambridge area simply as a recognition of how important Cambridge is to the UK and the UK economy so I hope that all those measures I've set out will enable us to show that we can meet need sustainable but clearly that will be an issue we continue to revisit as we come back to you and prepare the plan thank you John thank you then Councillor Carla Hoffman has put a question in the chat how has the potential new sewage works been looked at on saving or reusing water so again not quite within our remit but I understand they are exploring whether there is potential for water reuse from the new works so clearly that could contribute to using supply and now there's a lot of innovation going on that regional plan it's worth a read so not direct to this area even looking at things like desalination particularly in more coastal areas so there's a huge now push I think at the UK level about how we can use our water more carefully and just to add to that the Cambridge waters water resources management plan does take into account some water recycling from the new Milton water treatment works if that goes ahead good thank you Nancy okay so I think that's about it thank you all thanks very much for staying with us there's quite a lot of information there I think for everybody so a lot of good really good presentations that have just come to the end as we said we will share those we will make sure we answer any questions in the chat that we've not answered and we will share the video as well so please expect to see that and then just one final please please ask your parish clerks to come and join us at our event on the 17th of April that would be really really helpful we've got lots to tell them lots to show them and lots of really great things that we're doing across the service as well to try and improve how we communicate and interact with our residents and yourselves okay thank you very much final word, sorry we do want to engage with parish councils we're here to work with you because you know we're here for your areas and we will definitely want to work as a team so please feel free to send us questions contact us if you have requests and you know if you want us to talk to you at your meetings yell thank you very much to everybody to all the officers for those very helpful presentations thank you Anna thank you everyone good night everybody good night