 Thank you very much. Good morning everyone and welcome to this meeting of South Camershire District Council's Planning Committee. My name is Councillor Henry Bachelet and I'm the regular vice-chair of the committee, but members we had a recent change in chair. Councillor Pippa Haling stepped down from the role, and Councillor Peter Fane took the role on. Obviously Peter Fane is not here today, sent his apologies so I will be sitting in the chair as the vice-chair. But what that does mean members we do need to appoint a temporary vice-chair for this meeting. I've asked councillor Judith Ripiff if she would mind taking that on and she's willingly agreed. So, Members, is it acceptable to everyone that councillor Ripiff takes the Vice-Chair for the Meeting? Agreed? Thank you, councillor Ripiff, if you'd care to join us at the front. I would like to thank councillor Pippa Haleyings actually for her time in the chair, because it's quite a very demanding time-consuming role and she did it very ably and very professionally. And, you know, from the committee, I do thank her for her time in the role. Okay, just a bit of housekeeping members and then we'll get started. Members, please note that every, sorry, those present in the council chamber, please note that everything on your desks, including your laptop screen, is likely to be broadcast at some point. The camera follows the microphone after it's switched on, so councillors and officers are requested to wait a few seconds before speaking to allow the camera to catch up with the microphone. Please ensure you have switched off or silenced any devices you have, so that they do not interrupt proceedings. And if the fire alarm sounds, please do you leave the chamber and make your way down the stairs? Do you not use the elevator? The safe assembly point is next to the marketing suite halfway down the business park. Can those participating in the meeting via the live stream please indicate you wish to speak via the chat column? Please do not use the chat column for any other purpose other than indicating a desire to speak. Please make sure your device is fully charged and that you switch off your microphone unless you're invited to do so otherwise. When you're invited to address the meeting, please make sure your microphone and camera are switched on. When you have finished addressing the meeting, please turn off your microphone and camera immediately. Speak slowly, clearly, and please do not interrupt or talk over anyone else. Members, please note that if we need to vote on any item, we'll be doing so using the microphones in front of us. Only members that are present in the room are able to vote. Okay, committee members, so now I'm going to take a roll call. So, members, I'll call your name if you could turn your mic on. Wait a few seconds to introduce yourselves, please. So, as mentioned, my name is Councillor Henry Batch. I'm one of the councillors for Linton and I'm the usual vice-chair of this committee and the temporary vice-chair for today, Councillor Rippith. Good morning. I'm the temporary vice-chair today and a local member, sorry, councillor Judith Rippith, a local member for Milton and Ward to Beach Ward. Thank you, councillor Anna Brydman. Thank you, Chairman. I'm councillor Anna Brydman, another local member for Milton and Ward to Beach Ward. Thank you very much, councillor Dr Martin Cahn. Hello, councillor Dr Martin Cahn, one of the members of Hysdan Input in an olddrib park. Thank you, councillor Joe Sales. Thank you, Joe Sales from Melbourne. Thank you very much. Councillor Jeff Harvey is planning to be with us all, be it I understand he's running a few minutes late, so he will be joining us shortly. Councillor Dr Timmy Hawkins. Good morning, everyone. Timmy Hawkins, a member for Codicot Ward. Thank you, councillor Deborah Roberts. Good morning, Chairman. Good morning, everybody. Deborah Roberts, district councillor for the Foxton Ward. Thank you, councillor Heather Williams. Morning, everybody. My name's Heather Williams and I represent the Mordans Ward. Thank you, councillor Dr Richard Williams. Thank you, Joe. Good morning, I'm Richard Williams. I'm the member for Wittlesford triplo heathfield and Newton. Thank you, and finally, councillor Eileen Wilson. Good morning, thank you, councillor Eileen Wilson. Member for Codicot and Mampton Ward. Thank you. So, we have a quarat meeting member, so we will be proceeding today. We also supporting the committee today. We have some officers in the room with us. On my left, Stephen Kelly is the joint director of planning. Stephen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. We have Mike Huntingdon, who's a principal planner. Morning, everybody. Thank you. And Stephen Reed, who's our legal officer. Morning care, morning members. Thank you very much. And also joining us online, we have our democratic services officer, Lawrence Damari-Hulman, who will be clarking the meeting today. Morning chair. Yep, Lawrence Damari-Hulman, democratic services officer. Morning to all our members and officers, and thank you to our members of the public who are taking the time to speak to us today. Thank you very much. Members, if you need to leave the meeting at any point, do indicate to me, so that can be recorded in the minutes, if you would please. We'll be taking regular breaks throughout the day, dependent on where we are on the agenda, but if any members do need a break, please do indicate to me, and we'll do our best to accommodate. Thank you. Okay, members, we should have our main agenda pack, plus also a supplementary document that I believe we have paper copies of in front of us, as well as electronically. If members feel they're short of any documentation, any time again, do indicate, and we will do our best to make sure you're up to date. Okay, members, given the nature of the application we have in front of us today, I would like to propose two motions to you, if you would, and those are the same motions I proposed at the last meeting, where we looked at the first North Star application, Phase 3A, and one of those is to give them a high level of public interest in this, and the number of public speakers we've had registered, I would like to put a motion that we allow all public speakers who have registered to address the committee before us today. So I'll propose that, Councillor Heather Williams, you second? Yes, Chair, I'll second that. Thank you very much. Members, can we do that by affirmation? Great. Great, thank you very much. And second motion is the same one that we put forward last time, which I thought worked quite well, and that's how we structure the debate today. So usually we don't have questions of clarification for officers during the debate, but given that there's quite a lot of information in front of us, some of it detailed, I would like to offer members the chance after the officer's presentation to ask any questions of clarification. Also then, I would like to try and group the sections in the report when we get to the debate, so that we're a bit more focused in our discussion rather than jumping from one point to another. So they will be sections one and two, which is principle of development, land use and parameter plans, then section three, access and transport, then sections four, five, six, which is employment assessment, housing delivery and social and community infrastructure, and finally sections seven to 10, which are environmental considerations, cumulative impact, financial obligations and the planning balance. Sorry, Chair. Could you just give your whisk through those so quickly? I'd just like to mark them up. Could you just get those again? Sections one and two? One and two, yeah. Three. Three. Four, five, six. And finally, seven to 10. Thank you very much. Okay, so I would like to propose that motion to the committee, please. Would anyone care to second? Councillor Williams. Happy to second, Chair. Thank you, Members. Members in agreement. Agreed. Thank you very much. Okay, with that then, we'll move on to agenda item two, which is apologies. Lawrence, please. Thank you, Chair. We've received apologies for absence from Councillor Pippa Hailings and Councillor Peter Fane. And their subs are? Apologies. So Councillor Joes Hales and Councillor Anna Bradlam have substituted today. Great. Thank you very much. Okay, declarations of interest, Members. Do any Members have any interest to declare pecuniary or otherwise? I don't see any. Obviously, if Members. Sorry, Councillor Heather Williams. Just to say, I think last time the Greater Cambridge Park Ship came up, so just in case it does again, that I'm a member of the Greater Cambridge Partnership Assembly. Great, thank you. I think that's noted. Okay, well, Members, if any other interest become clear to you while the meeting's going on, please do indicate. And we'll take those then. Okay, with that, we'll move on to the substantive item on our agenda today, which is item four, which begins on page five of the printed agenda. And the application is North Stofaise III, be on station road in Longstanton. Excuse me. The proposal in front of us is an outline planning application for the development of North Stofaise IIIB, which comprises up to 1,000 homes, a primary school, secondary mixed use zone with associated infrastructure around it. The applicant is Holmes England. We have a raft of key material considerations that we need to discuss today, which are detailed in the agenda. The reason it is in front of us today is because it is a large strategic site within the district. And the planning officer who'll be presenting it to us today is on the screen in front of us now, Mr Paul Ricketts. Paul, good morning. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Members. Good morning, everyone. So if you'd like to introduce your report and then hold on the line for any questions and clarification, if you would please. Thank you. We'll do. As you can see, I'm the case officer for the planning application. It is as described by the Chair, but I'll read it out now. The applications for is in outline and has been submitted by Holmes England for permission for the development of North Stowe Phase 3B comprising up to a thousand homes, a primary school, a secondary mixed use zone, which will include the following uses, retail and associated services, food and drink, community, leisure, employment and residential uses. There's also approval requested for open space and landscaped areas, engineering and infrastructure works, all matters of detailed in terms of appearance, landscaping, layout, scale and access are reserved for further submission and approval. This application is subject to an environmental impact assessment and has been underpinned by three parameter plans and the site plan. Phase 3B is edged in red, is approximately 47 hectares inside and is located in the northwest of North Stowe, Newtown, Phase 1. The site is bounded to the north by the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. To the east, immediately joining are the approved digital park and Endurance Estates development schemes. Further east is the Long Stanton Cambridgeshire Guided Busway station. The B1050 bounds the site to the south, beyond is the northern edge of the village of Long Stanton. The surrounding area is predominantly occupied by farmlands to the north, west and southwest of the site. The application is accompanied with the following parameter plans, land use, movement and building heights. These will now be taken in turn. Open space will be provided at the northern edge with the guided busway and to the west with the joining farmland. There will be a central area of open space focused on the existing central cops and hedgerow. A secondary mixed use zone shown hatched is proposed north of the primary school location which is shown by the star. The residential uses, coloured grey, are located throughout the site. There is proposed to be a single vehicle access point in the north, in the south, sorry, in the south eastern part of the site from the roundabout junction of the B1050 station road. Land is safeguarded to allow potential access for emergency vehicles, pedestrian and cyclists to the east into phase one. This is shown by the orange arrows. Pedestrian and cycle links and access are proposed throughout the site, again shown in orange arrows to the north and to the east at the adjoining digital park and adjoining state residential schemes. The building heights within phase 3B will be predominantly two and three stories. These are shown in yellow. A two story zone is proposed along the south eastern edge with phase one. The southern edge of the B1050 will be up to three stories. It is envisaged to provide different heights here to help with eligibility. There will be two areas within the scheme that will be up to four stories in height, a set piece green space shown in the orange circle and then more rectangular secondary mix use zone close close to the school. Site density is proposed at an overall 40 dwellings per hectare. This will be achieved using best practice urban design principles to ensure variety, interest and the sense of place. The development will secure a range of financial and unfinancial contributions to ensure that the scheme is policy compliant. Key deliverability here is the forward housing of 40% of dwellings. The planning benefits from the application proposal have been evaluated as set out in paragraph 567 to 589 of the main report. These are primarily economic, social environmental benefits. Officer recommendations that the committee agree a delegated approval to the joint director of planning and economic development of outline permission 20 forward slash 02142 forward slash out as amended subject to the planning conditions and section 106 planning obligations are set out in the committee report and amendment update sheet. This finishes my presentation. Chair, thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. Members, as mentioned at the start, we now have an opportunity for any questions of clarification for the case officer. Equally, it's probably worth noting we also have a representative from the highways department on the line and also a member from the environment agency on the line as well. Should we have any technical questions that are better placed, better directed to them. So members, over to you for any questions of clarification for the officers. Councillor Bradman, please. Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to ask two questions. One is on the heads of terms on page 111. There's reference to village traffic. It just says village traffic schemes. Initial payment for design of £10,000. But I just wanted to check how many villages does that refer to? And is it all of the surrounding villages or just one? And is it referring to the villages outside or the town itself I think it's the villages outside? And there's another question. Is, well it's, but if you feel this strays into debate that's fine. I'll ask it in debate but I just wanted to ask there does seem to be a conflict of view between for examples what the Swavesy Internal Drainage Board has said about what's adequate with drainage and elsewhere the lead local flood authority and the environment agency have said. And I just wanted to know whether we've got any clarification about which of those is to be relied upon. Okay, well I think the first one's best, the first question is sorry, is best placed. Put to Tam Parry from Highways who believes on the line. Tam, good morning. Hi, good morning everyone. Are you there? Okay. Did you manage to catch that question? Tam, you've got my heads of turns. I did thank you. Yes, yes. So it does refer to 11 villages around North Day and the money split into two portions. One for the design. Sorry Tam, one second. Sorry Tam. We've had a request for an increase in volume. Okay Tam, sorry, as you are. Sorry, is that better? Yes it is. Good. Yes, so the money is split into two segments but it's for 11 villages around North Day and there's a design sum and then a sum for measures themselves. So between phase 3a and 3b there's 900,000 in total for traffic calming in surrounding villages. So my aim is to get the money for the design early on. So on page 111 it refers to village traffic calming schemes in the plural and it refers to £180,000. But then in the comments it says village traffic schemes initial payment for design of £10,000. So does that refer to 11 villages? So that is the design money so that we can work with the villages to see what they need. So that would be an initial sum and then the remaining 180 would follow. Sorry but that is for 11 villages. In other words, rather less than £1,000. Yes I I can't find page 111 or at least the 111 I'm looking at is different to yours. Yeah. It's the third page of the heads of tomes. Okay I'll do my best to find that. I'll hand you the B tam if that helps. That does help. Let me whilst you carry on to the next item if you like shall I just find that and then dig it out? Yes please if you can come back for it. Okay we'll take your second question about the difference of views between the various drainage authorities. I'll think Mr Kelly's going to take that one. Thank you. Yes thank you chair. Um we've got the IDB here to speak later on and obviously there are questions to them. There is a an objection from the IDB. There isn't an objection from the Environment Agency and the Lead Local Flood Authority. I think it's probably a matter for debate rather than clarification at the moment. I think it's probably helpful to hear from the IDB and indeed the applicants on this before we discuss it further. That's fine. Thank you. I'll save it for debate. Thank you. Councillor Heather Williams please and then Hawkins. Thank you chair. I think it's safe to talk now. It was just if we could have perhaps a slide up again because one of the things that lots of local members are raising is around the heights along the B1050 I believe. So just wondering because it's quite difficult. The colours are very very similar. On things. So if we could just have highlighted where the two story buildings are in essence. Is this the diagram? That's this. So I don't know who's sharing that Lawrence or Paul if you could just maybe indicate roughly where the two story buildings will be. It is in the yellow chair members. So where the indication is it so along the B1050 going a bit too high there Lawrence. Come down. But it's where the yellow is. So there's two different colours here. The yellow predominantly or I'm calling it yellow. You may call it something else. And then there's like an orange peach. So there's two into the two areas that that rectangular and then the circle is four stories up to four stories. And the rest is two to three stories. Does that help? I think Mr Kelly wants to come in on this as well. Yes. So so the vast majority of the site is fair to say is up to three stories. And what you perhaps doesn't come across so well in our screens is that the area bounding the previously built phase one development that you can see in the bottom right hand corner both the northern side of that and the western side. So where that red cursor is now are two stories. And then the two kind of brown darker colour areas are up to four stories. But hopefully that's helpful. The area along the 1050 is three up to three stories in terms of its form, which is where obviously you've seen comments in the report where people are concerned about that. Thank you, Tam. I saw you appeared a few seconds ago. Are you ready to respond to the question from Councillor Bradlin? Yes. Yes. So the money from phase three B works very much together with the money from phase three A. From everything that I understand from the applicant, three B is following from three A. So we've got 40,000 from three A for the design work with villages and 10,000 from three B for the design work with villages. So that sum of 10,000 is correct. OK. 10,000 is for three B. Yes. Is for three B, yeah. Yes. Thank you, Tam. OK. Next question of clarification. Councillor Dr Timmy Hawkins, but before it's probably worth noting, Councillor Harvey's now joined us and that was at 10.20 just for the minutes. Thank you. Councillor Hawkins. Thank you, Chair. Through you. Actually, my question kind of relates to the first question that Councillor Bradlin asked and is on paragraph 441 on page 76, which talks about impact of surface water. Arrangement being undertaken and agreed with the IDB, the EA and the LLFA. But then there's objections from the IDB. So, sorry, I just had this big question mark on this paragraph. I don't understand what it's talking about. Paragraph 441, page 76. Thank you, Chair. I think there are two issues here. The IDB are here. This morning. I think in terms of the surface water scheme, so the scheme for designing surface water discharge, I think there is broad agreement about the system that's being proposed. I think where the fundamental, there is a question mark about whether that surface water disposal normally you hold water onto a site to manage runoff rates. But I think the hydrology of the swavesy drain is such that there's a question about whether or not it's better to actually discharge water faster whilst those other effectively held bodies of water elsewhere that feed into the swavesy drain happen. I think the purpose is the drainage conditions to try and manage that discussion and the further design process. Where the IDB differ, I think, and the basis for their objection, I'm sure Mr Willisbyn can help you when he gives his presentation, is in the issues surrounding up and strove and the consequences of foul water treatment for the management of the waters in the swavesy drain. So I think that's the reason for the difference at this moment in time. Okay, thank you for that. Next question from Councillor Cahn, please. The question for Pam, really. It's about highways. The proposal is for a single access of a roundabout, which is on the B1 and 50 nearly at the main north-stow end of the development. There's also another roundabout at the other end. I just wondered what the considerations were and why they had chosen not to have two accesses and including an access, direct access to the roundabout which might provide for those people that are using a more direct access and produce less traffic. I just wondered what the considerations are. I can see the 1s plus and minus and I just wondered why you thought about that. Okay, well, time's appeared on our screens. Hopefully you'll be able to respond to that. Fingers crossed. Yes, we did discuss that with the applicant, but where the first roundabout is, which I think is the one you mean to the left-hand side of the site, that's not actually the land between there and the site isn't within the ownership of the applicant. So it wasn't possible for them to put a vehicle of access from that roundabout into the site. So that's why there's the one access from the roundabout proposed. In terms of the internal layout, would it be possible to provide provisions so that one could perhaps be put at a future date if it would be necessary? That wouldn't be outlined, but I just... I don't think the parameter plan allows for that because the parameter plan has an area of green area to the left-hand side, I think. So I think that's ruled out. Dresden's appeared. Okay, I think Mr Kelly does want to have a brief comment as well. Thank you. Hello. Yes, just to highlight that obviously the current parameter boundaries of phase 3B are consistent with your local plan policy. The area of land that Tam refers to is outside of the local plan boundary for the development and obviously would be a departure to bring that land forward from your local plan. And I think that's the reason why the parameter plans at this stage would not reflect because they would imply an extension of your local plan, which isn't necessary in our view, but obviously limits the access options Thank you for that. And we have Councillor Richard Williams, please. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. A couple of questions. They are slightly dependent on each other. The first is it concerns the hydrology and particularly the impact on the River Terrace deposit. The representation we've got from Longstanton notes the 1-2m drop in groundwater levels, but it notes also that the baseline data that's calculated from dates from a time after dewatering of North Stowe. So my first question for clarification is is it there for the case of that 1-2m drop that I think we talked about in the other application we dealt with on this site relatively recently is on top of the dewatering? And if so, could we get some figures on the total level of fall in the water line on the River Terrace to deposit as between its natural state and what it will be afterwards? And then I think that the environmental impact assessment seems to regard the impact as not significant or I'm not sure it looked specifically at the impact on the River Terrace deposit. So could we get a bit of clarification as to what exactly the environmental impact says about this and whether it in fact looked at it at all? Thank you. Thank you. I think we're going to come to Mr Kelly first then we'll probably throw over to the environment agency after that. Thank you, chair. Yes, so the significance in terms of the environmental impact assessment it did look at the underlying ground conditions in this site which are different to the case for 3A in terms of the boundaries of the River Terrace deposits and the River Terrace deposits in this part of the site I understand are in a different relationship with the ground so that they're they're in cases deeper. What the application and environmental assessment has done is it's considered monitoring it's currently undertaking monitoring of groundwater levels on the site and they have produced a piece of a report that was a supplement to the planning application that discusses effectively the implications for groundwater. Their conclusions at this moment in time is partly because only approximately 40% of the site is underlain by the River Terrace deposits the whole western end is not and the depth of those River Terrace deposits are different. They're between they're much closer to the surface in relation to 3 into phase one and elsewhere they're a bit deeper in this case. They do come relatively close to surface is that the impact will be less significant and it certainly won't extend beyond the boundaries of site 3a sorry 3b What the conditions propose on the basis of that and Mr Ireland might be able to come in from the environmental agency but what the conditions propose is based on existing monitoring and I know there's some comments have been made about well is that monitoring information up to date and so on but based upon the existing monitoring that is pre-development any implications from de-watering will then be able to be assessed and although it's quite the ground is quite impermeable and the water flood risk assessment the water assessment concludes that the conveyance of a lot of that water from that impermeable area away from the site in formal surface water drainage will limit the amount of recharge of the groundwater aquifer. There is a perceived limited impact beyond the site boundaries and as I said there is a monitoring regime in place to make sure that any de-watering and the implications on groundwater in the river teres deposits is addressed. I don't know if Mr Ireland can comment further I'm sure the applicants will also be able to give further clarity on this when they speak. Sure. Adam, good morning. Good morning, chef. Good morning everyone. Good morning everybody. Any comments on that particular point? I was nodding as Mr Kelly was speaking there really in terms of being a lot different to the 3a site that we discussed the other week notably in terms of the hydrogeological connectivity between the various deposits across the wider area and very much is in more more isolation and hence the the conditioning requirements for the monitoring on the site itself but no Mr Kelly is correct in terms of his assessment there and in terms of the yes the ongoing monitoring and obviously addressing that through the conditions going forward. Is that, I couldn't remember is that covering your questions or no? Well all very helpful very useful I don't really get an answer to the two direct questions I asked but whether it is the case that that fall in the water because I know those comments do relate to 3a I'm sure you're right about that. Does that apply to 3b that the one to two meter drop would be from the dewatering level or not or does that not apply to 3b it only applies to 3a? I don't think in fact for the purposes of Mike Mark correct me for the purposes of this environmental assessment they make the same conclusions as they do for the previous 3a. One of the important distinctions between this site and 3a is that in fact the groundwater and water flows in a different direction so the water flows north westwards from all of 3b and it flows in a different location. I think the previous report that was referred to an accompanied application for 3a indicated a one to two meter impact from dewatering in this case because the river terrace deposits are deeper there's a question mark about whether there will be a need for dewatering in quite the same way because of the level river terrace deposits go down to around five meters before you hit them and so my understanding is that there isn't a forecast of a reduction in groundwater levels although perhaps it's a question to ask the one of the speakers who is the drainage specialist for the applicant when they speak. Okay thank you for that we have councillor Wilson please Bridget. Thank you chair. Bridget. I'm looking at empyrograph 331 on page 58 about the gypsy and traveller provision at new communities and it says that an assessment was carried out in 2016 and identified no need for gypsy and traveller pitches during the plan period but we've seen several times year after year unauthorised encampments setting up on people and travellers and gypsies being shunted from place to place and I'm quite concerned that we're saying that there's no need to make provision for them we had an encampment in our village last year and it was quite distressing to the travellers themselves being pushed from pillar to posts and I wonder how no need was identified when this is something that happens on a regular as a regular column Thank you. Thank you I think Mr Kelly is going to take this one as well. In relation to gypsy and traveller needs across the district as a whole the 2016 survey didn't identify a substantial need partly because you might recall the government changed the definition as part of that needs assessment we're in the process delayed unfortunately by Covid at the moment of identifying need for the next local plan process what our policies say for the accommodation of gypsy and traveller need and obviously we'll work closely with the housing team once we get the study is that in certain circumstances some of that need might be met on strategic sites as well as in locations across the district at this moment in time there's no policy requirement to make explicit allocation on the back of the needs assessment that we have obviously as I think the report sets out this site is not expected to come forward until some time towards the end of the decade and obviously we're working with the housing team on the housing mix and the housing needs we may well need to incorporate future need into either this or any of our other strategic sites but right now there isn't an identified need that we would suggest means that we need to safeguard land in this site Do you want to come back? No, thank you for that explanation Thank you Councillor Bradman I've got a question mark next to your name Do you want to come back on anything? Thank you chair I was refraining because of the suggestion that this would be better covered under debate but I just wanted to clarify that there is a discontinued there's a disagreement in the report because in paragraphs 185 to 187 the SWEVC IDB object to the application that's on my paper page 38 but in paragraphs 163 and 164 the lead local flood authority basically say it's okay and in paragraph 175 the environment agency says it's okay but then when you go on as Councillor Hawkins does a paragraph 441 the IDB there's this weird statement that well no sorry it's a perfectly acceptable statement but I don't understand it that the IDB would prefer to see water discharged quickly this is 441 paragraph the IDB would prefer to see water discharged quickly into the SWEVC drain such that it can enter the river grey two system in advance of peak flows so presumably what Mr Kelly was saying the peak flows would come when the suds basins were full so what they're saying is initial surface water needs to go off into the drain so it can go out to the grey tws but the problem is and has always been that at websholes loose if the river is high because of the tide or because of prevailing weather conditions it can't get out there so I know there are monies in place to improve the websholes loose but the concern would be how is that going to work that the IDB would prefer to see it discharged quickly in conditions when it can go out but what about when it can't go out and then presumably the slower impact of water from the sud systems would come when it's been held on the land for a while and I can see it says Swaybacy has generally Swaybacy internal drainage board has basically agreed that with the EA and the LFA but it just says should such a solution not be achieved due to for example the maintenance of the off-site watercourse then it's proposed that existing greenfield run-off rates are currently you know are maintained so there's a huge need to get this right and I'm not sure I understand how it's intended to be done there's a disagreement within the report about whether it's okay or not I'm sorry if this is really kind of debatish stuff but I think Mr Kelly's going to come back I think there are there are a number of I mean I think you might want to ask some of these questions to the applicants but in essence you're right there is broad consensus around the surface water drainage strategy between the IDBEA and LLFA and the applicants and the conditions that I think we've put in in place seek to recognise that the decisions about whether it's rapid discharge or it's effectively slowed discharge can be made in due course the difference between the LLFA as I said earlier and the EA and the IDBEA relate fundamentally to concerns I think around foul water so in this respect in terms of surface water management but there is broad agreement you're right there may well be investments required as part of the surface water strategy for Webtoil's Loose as well as for the Swavesy Drain and that's a matter that the IDBEA and Angli Water and EA will need to explore us as they go forwards we can't offer certainty around any more certainty around that and that's the purpose of the planning conditions I think is to try and make sure that that solution in due course is is a solution that is addressed that yeah that's sorry the applicant can also set out how they're approaching this with those parties if necessary because in here we know don't we and it repeats it in a number of places but most notably in the reason for 33 surface water infrastructure works is you know we're not allowed to increase the risk of flooding downstream to you know by the virtue of any development we might or might not give approval for so that's the concern that if the drainage system was not able to release the water into the great ooze that's the problem isn't it look I'm sure we'll you're entitled to rely upon the advice of the agencies in this in this matter because it is a very technical issue and what what the report highlights is that on this point there is unanimity in terms of there is a appropriate resolution to account I can see the conditions are very comprehensive okay thank you thank you for that and councillor Khan please a lot of the points were brought up actually in what the council random said but something that just worries me is the the fact that the site is only four and a half meters above sea level which with the sea level range in wash I think it's something around between five and seven meters which means that you're not far off high tide level we're predicting by the end of the century a sea level rise around a meter maybe wall which means that you're talking about reducing the the ground water level by one and a half meters so perhaps two and a half meters you're talking about quite a long period of time actually the water levels the ground water levels being below high tide level is there a question of clarity no yeah there is the question I wanted to know is of what to what extent the problems of rising sea level and have a what period of time the provision is being made to talking about houses which are likely to last probably 150 years you're talking therefore problems in the future may be quite serious it would be that the period of time of which you are unable to discharge could be really very long period of time if the tide level is that much higher because you're raising the base level at which the river goes and therefore the period of tide the water backs up the river having more deep position problems are clearing than we have had so I just wanted to to the extent to which that has been taken into account okay I don't know who wants to take that one Stephen or maybe Mr Ireland Adam are you online hi sorry yeah did you get that around rising sea levels and have that been taken into your consideration it will have done in terms of the fact that the the surface water drainage from the site itself and again hopefully the applicants will be able to address this later on as well but there'll also be the requirement for the surface water drainage system to effectively consume its own smoke in terms of have sufficient capacity to deal to accommodate the volume flood water that comes from the impermeable areas to be discharged so within the site itself there will be that need for for those appropriate areas and volumes of retention also factoring in the issue of climate change as well you're right in terms of the amount of and the rates of discharge and also was alluded to by councillor Bradnham there as well that there will be issues relating to how it's engineered in terms of how quickly we can get away what's the what's the formal engineering which will be addressed believed via the via the conditions thank you for that Adam okay Members that concludes all our questions of clarification for officers so we'll now move Stephen sorry chair just to say that as councillor Harvey joined following the initial presentation my recommendation is that he's not able to vote in relation to this matter I suppose that's down to councillor Harvey ultimately whether he does or not but yeah you've heard a recommendation but you know please do feel free to so join in with the debate regardless the the presentation was relatively brief and councillor Harvey didn't miss very much of it and will have read most of it if he's read the papers I mean it is completely up to councillor Harvey whether he feels in a position to be able to vote on it or not I trust him to make that choice himself so yeah welcome anyway Jeff okay with that members we'll move to our public speakers we will start with Mr Keith Wildersbyn who's from the IDB so all those questions we had a second ago might be might be an opportunity to ask the IDB directly Mr Wildersbyn good morning good morning so I think you're probably familiar with the process by now three minutes to address the committee and at the end of which I'm sure there'll be some questions for yourself so if you wouldn't mind staying seated at the end that'll be that'll be helpful thank you so if the IDB has responsibility for the drainage of the eternal drainage district in Swayvesey we also manage the maintenance of the environment agency drains in Swayvesey including the up and strove on Swayvesey drains we therefore believe we have the best understanding of the drainage system government planning policy is that cumulative impacts of flooding on local areas which are susceptible flooding should be taken into account that advice from relevant flood risk authorities such as IDBs should be taken with regard to proposed 3Bs sorry according to joint EA south council district council flood risk assessment study Swayvesey has 195 properties at risk from flooding with regard to the proposed 3B surface water discharge into the Swayvesey drain which joins the great ooze at websholes loose please note that websholes loose can be closed for periods of up to four weeks on a regular basis no discharge can be made at these times from the Swayvesey area into the river therefore any extra discharges of water from the development will impact on Swayvesey village this will obviously get worse with climate change as a minimum we believe that the north stow 3B development should be conditioned in the same way as two sites in Swayvesey village this provides for onsite storage for the extra site generated volume of water while websholes loose is closed the EA have agreed that a telemetry system for this will be installed at websholes loose this telemetry has a capacity at four six sites the strategy on the two sites was conditioned by the greater Cambridge planning authority and subsequently by a government inspector on dealing with appeals council Hawkins has knowledge of this condition Adam Island it appears did not later this week I have a site meeting to look at issues around the discharges into the Swayvesey drain with the great regional flood defence manager and I believe Adam will be in attendance and also in attendance will be a member of the regional flood defence committee the applicants gave assurances that a planning application would not be submitted before the IDB had signed it off there have been no meaningful discussions with the developers or their agents since January 2019 the sustainability officer and the lead local authority have stated the IDB should agree with the discharge rate and the EA have expressed concerns about the proposed scheme members will have seen their objection document dated 18 February 2021 I hope they will also have seen the document stated dated 19 June 2020 and 16 July 2020 Can you start concluding please? Sorry? If you could come to a conclusion please We believe in an Austo fleet 3B flood risk assessment is flawed I expressed our concern with the far water discharges from this site into the Swayvesey volume limited channel Stantec quoted that figure not me at the north Sto3A planning meeting on Friday the 28th of January note please 3B houses were not modelled into the LDS 239 litres per second capacity this needs to be addressed Thank you we near the end In conclusion we believe the drainage proposal from the developers are flawed and should be rejected until further work is done with consultation between developers the EAE the planning authority and the IDB the same was undertaken on phases 1, 2 and 3 of north Sto to enable more sustainability proposals to be worked on The extra flood risk to homes in Swayvesey is a grave concern we believe far too important to leave the delegated powers Thank you for your attention Thank you very much Okay members questions or clarification for the IDB councillor Hawkins and then Ratnam Thank you chair and through you Thank you for your presentation A couple of questions for me at this point you said that the sluice is closed for about four weeks Is that four weeks I mean how often does this happen and why It happens dependent on the river levels the Great East River levels if the river levels are high the sluice is closed and therefore the levels in the Swayvesey coming in to down the Swayvesey catchment flood over the Swayvesey area and until those flood levels raise as high as they use the doors can't open until the use drops Can you give me an example say last year 2021 how often that happened Over the Christmas period it happened on two occasions but both for approximately four weeks the environment agency could give you the exact figures of the opening closing of the doors Okay so this is what causes the risk to the 195 houses as you mentioned Yeah Second question for me is there was this meeting that should have occurred which said was agreed will take place Have you been given any reason why it hasn't between all the organisations I don't know that wasn't that wasn't the decision I could make We have pressed for these meetings of all this these organisations but they haven't happened Thank you Councillor Bratton please Thank you chair and thank you very much Mr Wilderspin I also wanted to pick up on that I wanted to understand what was the agreement you said that the developer said promised that they wouldn't submit the application until an agreement had been come to between the SWAVC IDB and the Lead Local Flood Authority and the Environment Agency and can you just clarify again for us what that agreement was supposed to secure The agreement was supposed to secure the fact that any discharges from this site wouldn't make matters worse in SWAVC The developers have have taken the early discharge of water out of context This was to be aligned with an exemplar management system of the SWAVC drain so that the waters could get out early which isn't there at the moment especially down at the discharge end near Webb's Hole and we also said that once that discharge had taken place because we could have further precipitations while the doors were closed that the site should be capable of retaining all the water from that site until such time as the doors opened again In other words we wanted to clear as much water from the site as we could so that it didn't have to store all the original storm but then the doors then they wouldn't be able to discharge until the doors opened again Yes and I'm very aware that during 2020 we had a similar problem where it was possible but only because of pumping to discharge into the river Cam from my area because the river of course you'll know folks is higher than the surrounding land so do you know if any agreement has been made for this storage basically this would be deliberate flooding of land because you cannot pump it out at the Webb's Hole's Loose do you know if any discussions have been had about that at all making provision for that online storage No all it appears that the developers wish to store is the normal rate that would happen on the site that wasn't constrained as far as it is and I think that's all they're prepared to store Thank you very much Mr Wildersman Thank you very much We have a question of Councillor Roberts and then Harley Thank you Chairman and through you Chairman to our participant Can you tell me I think you said that it was something like nearly 200 houses in the village had the potential for flooding Is it across the village or is it in one specific area of the village that you think that that possibility could occur please It is actually through the middle of the village and it doesn't only affect the 198 properties it also affects electricity substation gas governor and the sewage pumping station which would affect a far bigger area than 195 houses Thank you and then Councillor Harvey please So Just interested though in terms of a long-term climate change mitigation is it feasible to install a pump at the point so that we can clear the water when the sluice is closed There is already a pump at Webb's Hall sluice but that pump is solely to deal with the sewage discharges from we discussed this at the last meeting The problem is if we have further surface water entering the system while that pump is running it impacts on its ability to pump the foul water flows that it was designed to do and the only way that you could make it better is to put in a massively larger pump than the one that is already there Thank you Fett and Councillor Richard Williams please Thank you chair Thank you Mr Wildersman I just want to ask you a very quick question If this application goes ahead as planned without any of the mitigations you've talked about can you just give us an indication of the likelihood that you think that we're going to see significant problems from certain to very likely to possible I think it is very likely because of the last especially because of the last comment so I made it it's going to impact on the effects of the pump that is already designed to pump the water from the foul water flows of course the foul water flows are complete cross-catchment flows and are not the slavisee system was not designed to take that in the first place anyway Thank you Thank you and another question from Councillor Hawking that's pleased Thank you chair for letting me come back Mr Wildersman when we're making your statement you did mention I couldn't quite write it quickly enough a potential condition that you thought would be appropriate can you remind us what that was In slavisee there are two sites that are conditioned to once the doors at Wedgesoul slues are closed those sites have to store all the water from from that they generate on their sites until such time as the slues opens incidentally this is also what happens on phase one two and three A of North Stoke because they are conditioned that those the system there if the outfall from those systems is in flood they cannot discharge Does that answer your question No Do you want to rephrase Sorry I don't understand if it doesn't answer your question what it is you want to know I think there are two things there you answered a different question Maybe I misunderstood I thought you were requiring us to put a condition on this if we were to go ahead with it Did you? Or did I misunderstand that? Yeah No I did I said that was that was a minimum of what we thought would be required and that condition is that the 3B site should retain all its flows of water until such time as the web's whole slues opens Is that what your answer is? I think that's what he was Thank you Okay thank you Councillor Brandon please But in addition to that Mr Wildersbyn I think I sketched down very quickly I think you also mentioned the following and I just wanted to clarify whether you thought these would be useful additional conditions This was for the telemetry at the web's whole slues you said there was a six site monitoring system but then later on you said it wasn't there yet so that's one thing the telemetry at the web's whole slues you've also mentioned separately perhaps we need a much bigger pump because you said that the existing pump is simply to deal with the foul water sorry the sewage outflow and and then you went on to the fact that the developer had promised that they wouldn't submit their application until that was agreed so do we also need a condition dealing with telemetry and thirdly a very much bigger pump What happened? The two sites in Swavesy village were conditioned as I've described and unfortunately one of those developers went ahead with developing their site without consulting the environment agency on how this the telemetry from their site would work and we now find ourselves in the situation where there is a hold up on the telemetry for the one of those sites so therefore I know the telemetry isn't in site in place at the moment but it is supposed to be being put in place there are legal agreements going forward at the moment I think obviously two of those sites have been taken by the two sites in Swavesy so that their telemetry can link up with the EA's telemetry that leaves four more sites so perhaps what we need to consider is a condition to ensure that the telemetry is in place before this development goes ahead yes is the short answer to that but I mean there was a condition there before on the other side and they just didn't so that the conditions that are already in place are enacted before this development goes ahead yeah yeah okay and what about the very big pump idea my concern at the moment is that as I mentioned cumulative effects is a big concern to us at the moment the IDB on pre-planning applications is talking about further 50 hectares of industrial site the parish council have talked about another site which is another 20 hectares of industrial site so you can see where I'm going we have the plan for the next greater Cambridge plan whatever it's called which is probably going to put the most of their development in the north Stowe area the surface water from that could possibly or no not coming down into the slavisy system could come down the other side of the slavisy system in what we call the covald drain and the foul sewage could come through to swipe through to up and drove in slavisy as well so cumulative effects are going to probably destroy everything we might do now so in the future I don't know what the answer is so if I make sure I'll stop after this so the rain is the same and so the incident rain from rainfall and surface water is the same whether it's developed or not it just depends the speed with which the water goes into the drain is affected by the development but what development brings onto the site is sewage requirements so that will put more pressure on the up and drove system won't it so you're looking to the future about this larger pump sewage flows will put more pressure on obviously but also surface water puts more pressure on if I if I had a plant pot here a big plant pot and I get a glass of water and I pour it in that big plant pot you won't see any effect on this table if I get that same glass of water and pour it on this table that water is going to run straight off the table that is the difference with how water flow comes into an area so it's we're talking about the speed of discharge into the drain relative to ground falling on the ground okay thank you that's fine thank you okay I think that's all the questions of clarification for Mr Wilderspin so we say thank you again for your time and answering all the questions and with that we'll move to our next public speaker who's joining us online Mr Daniel Fulton are you with us Mr Fulton yes chair thank you good morning I believe you're probably familiar with the process public speaking three minutes to address the committee and at the end of which there may be some questions of clarification for yourself so if you'd stay on the line that'd be helpful okay thank you so I've been working on these two north throat planning applications for the past month the local planning authority has created a lot of problems for itself with the poor quality of its officers report which are completely full of contradictions just looking at one paragraph 452 says that the impacts on the local terrorist deposit are not assessed because they're a are assessed as not significant and are not within the not within the environmental impact assessment so it's obviously been recognized that the impacts on groundwater both locally at the river terrorist deposit and in terms of drinking water abstraction in the cam chalk aquifer are material planning considerations the amount of time that this committee has spent debating them at the last meeting is indicative of just how important the primacy of these planning considerations is and yet for key material planning considerations to be assessed as not significant in the scope of the 2017 environmental impact assessment regulations simply just is not it doesn't make any sense how can something that is a material planning consideration and environmental impact not be significant enough to require assessment under the EIA regulations that's the first point the second is that friends of the cam have written to Mr Kelly several times now asking him to clarify a number of factual statements he said about the cam chalk aquifer at the last meeting no response has been received there was a time when this council would engage with groups and try to correct records and try to correct matters that have been mistaken on the records and try to do the best it could to put factual information before the committee um the council is no longer doing that and I don't know if that's because of staffing problems or exactly what the political dynamics are but there are a lot of problems here the last thing I'll just add is I'm extremely concerned by the inadequacy of the assessment for provided by the environment agency the environment agency was has apparently not considered the HR Wallingford reports as part of its review of the environmental impact assessment because they were not provided to the environment agency as part of the environmental impact assessment process whether or not the environmental impact assessment is adequate is first in the first instance a matter for the planning judgment of the local planning authority that is the 11 members of the committee and I think the facts are pretty clear on this I'm also extremely concerned at the amount of influence that Holmes England has with the environment agency it pains me to say this but I just the environment agency seems to be ignoring all of the environmental information that is inconvenient for Holmes England and this is something that will obviously have to be addressed at the national government level but I'm just very concerned thank you for for listening to me today thank you very much Mr Fulton members do you have any questions of clarification for Mr Fulton no I don't see any so yeah just leaves me say thank you very much for your comments this morning and we'll move to our next public speaker who again is joining us virtually Mr Bruce Robjans Mr Robjans are you with us hopefully yeah we can hear you we can't see you if you can't get the camera to work it's not a huge issue as long as we can hear you yeah there we go we've got you okay great so as with the other public speakers three minutes to make your case to the committee and then at the end of which if you'd like to stay on the line in case there's any questions of clarification for yourself okay so I'm Bruce Robjans from sorry Mr Robjans as you were I'm a Willingham resident and the first thing you wanted to talk about was shops or the lack of them all of the phases show shops on their details but with more than a thousand residents in the first phases they still haven't got a shop if they need a pint of milk they've got to get in the car we shouldn't be allowing any more houses without at least a few shops and you can prevail on the developers to do something about that secondly is GP provision all of the residents at present have to use the surgery at Longstanson and this hasn't got any GPs either those GPs come from William we shouldn't be having any more houses without GPs on site I listened to the presentation for phase 3a and like a lot of other residents was horrified what I heard especially when you wave that application through I've heard nothing about sustainable drainage you've allowed the developers to concre over half of Cambridge when this isn't necessary you could be using permeable paving in lots of these areas and then you wouldn't be putting so much water into drains you could be having rainwater harvesting and there could be solar panels on every house if you ask for it but they're just being allowed to do as they like that's mainly what I wanted to say thank you thank you very much for that and there may be some questions of clarification for you members do we have any councillor Hawkins thank you chair thank you very much for your presentation I just wanted to check with really you you are aware that this is not the permanent sort of put it this way this is a planning permission for the development to go ahead as a whole but the details will be with the reserve matters application later on so issues like permeable paving rainwater harvesting solar panels these are details that will come later on with the further planning permission for reserve matters are you aware of that I am but I'm just looking to what you've already allowed to be built and these things are not happening it didn't happen on the on phase one it didn't happen on any of the bits that are where people have now moved into so are we going to make the same mistakes again okay I hear you thank you thank you councillor Brandon thank you Mr Rogers if I hope I've got your name right I wondered whether you'd seen paragraph 164 of the planning application which does reflect a requirement a future requirement for permeable paving in fact it refers to it the other way round it says that the site is split into two catchments which both drain northwards to the swavy sea drain and impermeable areas across the site will be limited to 62% for residential partials so that leaves 38% will be permeable then it says it will be limited to 40% for schools so that would leave 60 as being permeable and then it will be limited to 100% for primary and secondary streets so none of those would be permeable so there is provision for permeable paving and I like you I'm very keen that we should put as much permeable paving in as possible but I just wondered if that reassures you at all well I'm afraid you know what's happened already doesn't give me any reassurance at all that the bits that are permeable are things like claim films the roads and the parking areas are not permeable and they could be I know it's more expensive but developers don't want to do it and you have the opportunity to make them do it and thank you that you're making a point that I was going to make in debate so thank you very much no uh okay thank you mr Reuben I think there's all the questions for yourself so thank you very much for your time this morning and for giving us your thoughts thank you for the opportunity okay we'll move on to the next section of our public speakers which are which is the applicant so I'm hoping we have joining us online mr Michael Bottomley who's the agent hello good morning hi morning mr Bottomley and I believe you're also joined by your drainage consultant from Arcadis is that right yes that's correct I'm going to introduce the majority of our statement and then pass over to Maddie at the end to introduce herself and answer any questions about drainage okay that's great thank you very much so the usual three minutes and then there'll probably be some questions for you at the end of that so if you could both stay on the line that'll be helpful thank you great thank you very much so thank you for the opportunity to speak today my name is Michael Bottomley and I'm a planning consultant for Tibboards representing Homes England Homes England our non-departmental public body sponsored by the department of levelling up housing and communities Homes England's role is to accelerate the delivery of housing across England to provide more people to ensure more people have better access to homes in the right places this means that as a public sector master developer Homes England are seeking to deliver also in the public interest Phase 3B is a fully allocated housing site and will deliver the final 1,000 homes within the new town The preparation of the outline planning application and the prince forces development include a focus on delivering a healthy and sustainable community with affordable housing and open space Phase 3B is located to the north of the B1050 with the sediment edge of Longstanton adjoining the southern edge of the carrot way A defined building edge will be introduced along the B1050 to create an outward looking instinctive engines to north stone whilst at the same time incorporating setback elements and appropriate green space and landscaping Primarily access to the site will be a vine improved roundabout and the master plan process proposes a network of pedestrian and cycle paths to provide direct and legible routes across the site and into phase one Biodiversity net gain will exceed policy requirements and green space will occupy a third of the site as well as protecting existing trees and hedgerows Phase 3B has rigorously followed the environmental impact assessment process with the scope agreed with the district council and county councils and other statutory consultees to ensure that the likely effects of the praise development on the environment are understood and taken into account The drainage strategy for the site will result in inherent betterment attenuation provided on site will minimise a runoff to the mean and annual greenfield runoff rates but up to and including a 1 in 200 year rainfall event plus 40% climate change in line with best practice Over and above this the proposals allow for additional storage to include constituency for higher rainfall events In terms of potential groundwater connectivity within the eastern third of the site only management strategies are proposed such as discharging groundwater locally following any license dewatering It is unlikely that the development of Phase 3B will affect groundwater levels on the adjoining land Val drainage arrangements have been agreed with Anglian water and water supply has been secured for the whole of north stay The technical team who worked on the proposals are on hand to answer your questions including Janis Hughes who is the project director for technical environmental and transport matters Dean Harris who's the planning manager for Homes England Philip Harker who's the infrastructure leader to Homes England Katia Sillow who's the urban designer and master planner and I'd also like to introduce Drange expert Madeline Davies Hi all Maddie Davies from Arcadis on behalf of Homes England so I'll be on hand today to deal with all the queries you've got in relation to drainage and groundwater Thank you That's great thank you very much for that Okay members so any questions of clarification for the applicant or their drainage consultants who's on hand Councillor Roberts then Williams Thank you Chairman and to you Chairman Good morning In the public interest Interesting statement really Is it really in the public interest? Have you listened and I'm sure you have this morning to the concerns of the experts the local experts internal drainage board regarding the possibility of major flooding in Swayvesley itself These people are not amateurs They have intense and personal knowledge of the land situation around Swayvesley over Willingham which is a very special situation Can you tell me how much concern have you got with the information that was relayed to us by the internal drainage board I'm not sure who wants to take that but if any odd you want to comment Shall I take that one Mike? I do You're on mute Dean You're muted Mr Harris Apologies Dean Harris from Homes England just on hand to answer questions and direct them to our consultant team I was going to ask Maddie to answer that question please Yeah that's fine We've liased with the IDB previously and we are aware of the concerns with flood risk to Swayvesley On that basis we've developed a drainage strategy that's according to the requirements of the MPPA it's in line with best practice as agreed I think you've previously said with both the LLFA and the EA the discussions we've had with the IDB previously are that they would like water to be discharged out of their wider catchment at a faster rate than the mean annual greenfield runoff rates which is best practice and limiting it limiting runoff to be in line with the current greenfield runoff rates That is something that we've said we can look to explore further and has been conditioned so we can see what the impacts of letting water off the site at a quicker rate could be downstream and that's something that will work with them through the conditions of the site to try and achieve If letting the water out at a higher rates increases the flood risk downstream in Swayvesley that's obviously a concern which is why we have the current strategy of mimicking existing greenfield runoff rates Okay I think councillor Roberts wants to come back You said that you've previously had discussions with the internal drainage board but to my recollection the internal drainage board one of the things that it was very concerned about was the fact that they haven't of late had any meetings at all by and sounds it never mind meetings of any importance Now this is a really serious worry I'm sure to myself and lots of my colleagues who know Swayvesley in that area very well and it seems to me why are you jumping ahead of the gun I mean this has got to be talked about very seriously and in some depth and I would have suggested before you put in this application and started running the air that you should have actually had much more debate with the internal debt drainage board why are you putting this forward now when there is obviously such concern from experts about the impact it seems to me that you're just totally ignoring it you're talking about you know oh best best best means etc but you know in reality and you're not just sort of barging this through So a question around consultation there I think I'm not sure who'd like to answer that Yes me chair the application has been under consideration for almost two years now and the master plan has been in preparation for over four years so there has been considerable dialogue tens of meetings of all the different and stakeholders and so there is a housing crisis which we are working to resolve but we appreciate that development needs to be sustainable and the impact on the joining communities needs to be considered hence that level of engagement and collaboration which has been undertaken over the the last few years and will continue to be undertaken as detailed proposals are put together assuming planning permission is course quaranted Okay So building houses is more important than houses and people who already live there being flooded Okay I don't think you need to come back on that Thank you Councillor Richard Williams please Thank you chair I've got three points really just following on about the internal range board it references made earlier to an undertaking that had been given that plans wouldn't be brought forward until there was an agreement with the IDB I was wondering if you could comment on why that didn't happen Secondly one of the things that's been suggested picked up by a few other members is that it might at least in part be possible to address this through a condition requiring the water to be kept on this site at the points where it can't be discharged I'd welcome your reaction to that and whether you'd be comfortable with such a condition and then thirdly to pick up the point I was talking about earlier with the River Terrace deposits and the aquifer Now the eastern 40% or so of this site is on the secondary aquifer the middle part or most of the western part is on this Amphill play which seems to be unproductive I have looked at the Arcadius report or the note from January and it talks as Mr Kelly ref runs earlier about the water level being 4 to 5 meters lower but can I get a bit of clarity as to where on the site that those readings come from because from reading your report and the different make-up and structure of the clay to the aquifer I would imagine that there would be different readings in different parts of the site if I read your report correctly so a value bit of clarity on that and maybe as well on the question I asked earlier as to whether it there is going to be any what the cumulative impact would be on the water levels here particularly on that eastern side where it's above the aquifer Thanks I think three questions there again I'll leave it up to you three to decide who's going to answer which Thanks Chair They all sound quite technical to me I'm going to leave that to the expert Maddie Davies if that's okay Yeah that's fine Okay so to answer the question about any change in groundwater levels so that we've said the aquifer affects only a small portion of the site and I don't know if it'd be helpful if I show a plan of the site and I can point at that Yes I think that'd be helpful if you could so hopefully let me know when you can see that We can see it So this is the illustrative master plan for the site and the aquifer that everyone's been talking about affects sort of broadly this area of the site and runs sort of in a northwards direction so that area that's the base on the sort of sands and gravels and there's limited connectivity in those sands and gravels for water flow through that area Now we have said that there's a a range of depths of groundwater within the site that is because this end of the site is actually higher than this end of then the western end of the site which is predominantly green and open space At this end of the site levels are at about I think five meters AOD whereas where we've got the school and the site access we've up at about nine meters AOD so a significant level drop across the site The aquifer in this area is actually quite deep and when we did our initial investigations on site at this end groundwater levels were probably about five meters deep The this two thirds of the site the western two thirds that's predominantly clay and therefore you don't get the same movement of water through that media as you might do through the lenses of sands and gravels that affect this end of the site So what we have said is as a result of developments that in line with the requirements of EA licensing If for whatever reason any excavations are significantly deep and may impact on groundwater levels in that area any groundwater that has to be extracted is put back into the ground within the site itself therefore it will not make any fundamental difference to groundwater levels upstream or downstream because it will be put back into the site in the same area Once the site's developed and we have a positive drainage system in that area we have said that we will look to recharge groundwater and have sustainable drainage systems like permeable paving that can look to put water back into the ground in this area if that's feasible as part of the detailed design Did that answer all three questions? I don't think so I think it certainly answered one of them The other two were around whether you'd be open to accepting a condition around holding the water on site and then the first question as I understood it was around again around consultation with the IDB and the understanding that the IDB should be in support of this before it came forward before us so those are the other two Okay, so we did have discussions with the IDB, EA and LLFA at the beginning of this process and agreed an approach to drainage at that time the IDB were keen that we discharged surface water runoff from this site at a higher rate than the existing Greenfield runoff rate that would only be feasible if the downstream network off-site which is not the responsibility of Homes England was capable of taking that increased flow if it has that capacity some a methodology for understanding the capacity of that downstream network was agreed by all parties and an initial assessment has been undertaken as to what that increased rate could potentially be and that has been submitted as part of the planning documents and the FRA Further discussions have had been had with the IDB since that date but as we were unable to come to an agreement on what the increased rate of discharge would need to be it was agreed that at this it was agreed with the LLFA and the EA that working in line with national planning policy guidance and best practice was the preferred approach limiting runoff to three litres a second a hectare which is the mean annual Greenfield runoff rate for all events up to and including the one in 200 year event now the 200 year event is over and above current best practice current best practice is only the 100 year event and we should note that we've made an additional allowance for storing additional runoff due to climate change that's an additional 40% we have also made an allowance for events over and above of that so we have some additional free board built into the design we think that gives us the flexibility to be able to store water for the extreme event that we've been talking about that people are concerned about and provide a solution that is over and above current best practice but whilst also enabling us to work with the IDB going forward to see if their desire for an increased runoff rate i.e storing less water on site is potentially achievable as part of the detailed design so just to note that affects downstream assets that are not the responsibility of homes england can i through you chair thank you can i just ask you to clarify a point because i think in the debate and reflecting on council williams's question we perhaps haven't explained this there is already and on that illustrative plan that you can see there are two large onsite storage ponds for surface water which i think equate to something around 20 000 cubic meters of storage on this scheme can you clarify that for the committee because i think in the flood risk assessment the provision there is a design solution for onsite holding water and the flood risk assessment i think notes that in consultation with the IDB that scheme and the management of the discharge from that scheme either allows for greenfield runoff rates which in many respects are existing rates of discharge therefore should have no impact on the IDB's concerns or on a faster rate of release based upon the storage capacity that is available or indeed the whole and i wonder if you can just clarify that point because i think there might have been some misunderstanding and i recognise that as officers we didn't explain that there are two very large attenuation ponds on the site so i wonder if you can just help the committee with that yes i can confirm so to confirm the drainage strategy includes these areas that you can see here which are strategic attenuation basins and will hold water back and let it out at that low mean annual greenfield runoff rate on top of that before water gets to these features each development parcel will include sustainable drainage systems which will further look to mimic existing greenfield runoff rates and slow water down that could be the permeable paving that was talked about previously could be swales water will then slowly percolate through to these strategic basins and that's where they will be held and let out at that low rate so at the moment if you had 100 year rainfall events you'd probably be getting about 11 litres a second for every hectare of site running off the site and downstream into the swavesy drain we would be holding that back and letting it out to slower rate 3 litres a second a hectare even in that extreme 100 year rainfall event that allows for climate change as well an additional 40% and as I said we've also sized it not just for the 100 year event but for the 200 year event as well Okay, councillor Williams does that answer your questions Sort of chair and just a couple of quick clarification points Just one and I do mean this neutrally the IDB doesn't feel it's been consulted since 2019 so I was wondering if you just clarify as to why you're saying you've consulted them but the IDB is saying they haven't been consulted how can that be just on that point about those attenuation ponds obviously that's not foul for that's just surface water so yeah that obviously that's correct on that one thank you so really it's the first point about the consultation I don't know who'd like to take that Dina you're happy for me to answer that Yes please maybe Yeah, so we have had a number of meetings with the IDB I think the quirks of the matter is that the rate for discharge the higher rate for discharge wasn't agreed prior to planning because that requires a lot of modelling of the downstream network and the rate was not we were not able to confirm that the downstream network would take that higher rate of discharge we have been speaking to the IDB about the wider north stow development as well including the other phases so we have had a number of meetings I'll allow Keith to come back on this but I think their concern is that we have not formally agreed this higher discharge rate that they are keen to have but it is conditioned Okay thank you for that Councillor Bradman please Thank you chair So I have three questions I'll just say them quickly first so that you can make a note Why isn't there more permeable paving? Number two is what happens to suavecy You say you've made provision and you will monitor it Now the problem is if the provision you've made is not adequate what actually happens at suavecy is that those 195 properties look as if they might get flooded and that's one would hope we would do something before that happens and thirdly where is is this are these two attenuation ponds you're referring to are these the storage that is being envisaged or are we talking about additional storage and I might come back with more detail coming back to the first one the permeable paving Mr Rodgent made the point and he's quite right I quoted some figures for impermeable areas will be limited to and various percentages and he quite rightly made the point that that is simply because they're not you're not making any provision for permeable paving on roads or pavements and that would seem to be perfectly sensible The 40% he alluded to the fact that's simply because you're allowing the 60% to be the playing field and the 62% for residential parcels he made the point that the remainder of the 38% is of course the gardens but actually we ought to be making permeable paving the rule throughout a development and I say this with experience because there are two developments in Water Beach one of which has permeable paving throughout the other which doesn't the one with permeable paving never has a problem with water and there never appears to be a problem with water on it and I'd asked the lead brother authority why is it that these two properties are very these two developments are very different and she said well that because that one has permeable paving the other one every time it rains heavily it has two three enormous balancing ponds and when it rains very heavily these fill like huge lagoons right to the top and every parent who has a child you know I think the question's been asked let's see what they have to say can we just think about more permeable paving what happens to Swaybusy and where's the storage okay thank you who would like to attack those three please chair if I can just say a few words on permeable paving happy to accept an extension of the design code condition on this absolutely happy to aim for best practice subject to a couple of limitations I think county will have a view on whether it's appropriate for adopted streets and we have to obviously comply with those requirements and also our technical experts would have a view on whether it's appropriate across the whole site as it were but certainly happy to be aiming for best practice on permeable pavements and surfacing within private parking areas and things like that so chair would it be possible to make a condition on that sorry just when we get to the debate okay so Maddy has you made my mind that's going to pass the tricky questions over to you if that's okay that's all right we're just building on what Dean said there the federal risk assessment and drainage strategy does make reference to the incorporation of sustainable drainage features within all parcels including permeable paving so that is very much a system that is being promoted as part of the development and will slow water down so these strategic basins are simply the last part of the drainage strategy for treating water on site so it's not the only feature it's just the last part so permeable paving certainly will be considered as part of the wider development in terms of water downstream and how that will affect swavesy as we've mentioned a number of times if we're limiting the discharge from the site to the existing mean annual greenfield run-off rates that's the rate of run-off you currently get from this site so we're mitigating that run-off as best as we can within the area that we have control over to answer your questions councillor so and the storage yes so the storage within the basin they have been sized to take the 200 year run-off from the site going back to your points about areas of permeability and impermeability areas with which are permeable greenfield will run off as they naturally do those basins have been sized to take all of the run-off from the impermeable areas so any additional permeable paving would be over an above that and that will store that water for the 200 year event with an allowance for an additional 40% due to climate change and we've built in some residual capacity over an above that it will then let the water out at a slow rate the existing mean annual greenfield run-off rate of three litres a second per hectare for those areas so yes those basins do provide the storage if the IDB wanted more storage over and above that rate that would need to be in addition to what's shown here okay thank you Members I've got one, two, three four more public speakers then I'm going to have a break at that point and then we'll come back with our parish councils who have some comments five public speakers so next we have Councillor Hales Councillor Hales Thank you quite a few of my questions that have been answered and they were going to be mainly around the one in 200 year calculations and I think Maddie has said that the 200 year is more stringent if you like than the 100 year I'll take a word for it I don't understand the calculation behind it but if you get a moment or a week to explain it then that would be nice what I will say actually is Mr Rogers, one of our previous speakers made reference to the developments that have happened already and the house is now occupied and what have you and the lack of community provision shops et cetera and I don't suppose it was a throwaway comment by Mr Rogers but actually it's a pretty worthwhile one if it was I would like to take it up with the developers and that is the provision of PV on the roof so of all housing not just affordable so that would be my question to the developers through you chair thank you so again not sure who wants to take that one up around provision of PV chair renewable energy provision is part of the proposals so there will be PVs across the rooms regardless of tenure as such so I believe that's accommodated within the proposals and the suggested conditions okay thank you for that okay what percentage place that's a good question I was going to suggest I direct it to my colleague Janice Hughes in terms of the percentage I think the percentage is more aimed at percentage of the energy requirement rather than the percentage of roofs as such is that right Janice Yes I think we've presented an energy strategy which seeks to achieve better a sort of target of 19% of energy efficiency beyond the building regulations with potential for it to be considering more and that's based on a mix of solar PVs as well as a source ground heating so that will be dealt with with an energy strategy for each parcel of land in order to achieve those targets and that needs to be dependent on the type of homes and the mix but the aim is that the strategy is all electric provision and solar PVs and a source ground heating on all properties as appropriate so I think it's hard to put an actual percentage on roof space or numbers of units but it will be seeking to achieve that high target of energy efficiency for both building regs Myon Thank you I'll take your point with regards to the if you like the building requirements I know the legislations as we speak but just wondering whether or not this would be an opportunity for you to given the the current cost of energy with the expected increases that we discussed this I think last time they were here in my head um I just wonder whether there's there's any merit in in making this as much of a 100% coverage of roof space so that it doesn't really matter whether it's an affordable mid-range top-end whichever you like home that they have the provision not to take from the grid and provide battery storage within as well but the other part of my question to the chair through you was about provision this was what Mr Rogers was saying is that there are large numbers of people that have to get in a car for a pint of milk and the shops have not either been encouraged or even built forward within the established areas that have already been occupied so my question would be what are you going to do as the developer to make that provision upfront so that the existing population can access areas as well as the next to be built a chair through you I think that's kind of to be picked up as part of the other phases the preceding phases of north Stowe the district council has a role now in delivering the phase one local centre and there are exciting proposals for that and we have our own town centre strategy where we're currently seeking a partner to deliver the first phase of the town centre with proposals including local convenience store and a market hall so these things are coming and in the meantime there are these kind of meanwhile uses of north Stowe foodies that we know about etc that are very successful and working well so I don't know that that's necessarily a for phase 3B to resolve by the time 3B is developed I'm hoping there will be some great facilities at north Stowe okay thank you for that response we'll move on now to councillor Ripeth I just want to yes on their answer to this question have you or have you not had a meeting with the Swaysie IDB since February 2019 I imagine that's for Maddie yes we have had meetings with IDB since 2019 they weren't solely related to the discussion of 3B but they did cover 3B okay so I'm going to have to sort of take it one person says one thing another says another I just want really a comment if I may chair that since has been quite sort of how can I put it drastic flooding in Christmas 2020 in the district as a whole and I imagine quite close from what's been said to Swaysie I just think it would have been perhaps a good idea because obviously the situation is ever changing and has potentially changed since that last major meeting which everybody agrees on did happen I don't think any need to come back on that thank you councillor calm please question of clarity again coming back to the issue of of sea level rise over the period of time and the fact that it was commented that even now sometimes they can't discharge into the river for four weeks at a time so while the I'm glad to see there's a large area of storage on site I just wondered that if the sea level rise is as drastic as it's often predicted being over the lifetime of the housing that will be developed we could see much longer periods when it's impossible to discharge because the sea level if you raise the level at the sea bottom of the river it will back up the river and cause problems the extent of that is not predictable part because it also depends upon development in the whole of the catchment of the river and upstream it may be that actually even being feel right to discharge it is a problem and you might be wishing to close off all the strategy of the store so I'd be interested to know how much period of time you could actually just not discharge at all within the storage that you've got and what if in the future it was necessary would you be able to increase the capacity of your storage ponds so that you could do it perhaps for a longer period Thank you I think I was pretty directed at yourself and Eddie Apologies for that so the two parts there about the sea level rises as we've said we've allowed for climate change 40% that is at the upper ends of the currently understood significant impacts of surface water runoff as set out by the EA they have a range 20 to 40% so we've allowed for 40% that is in line with best practice the second part of the question about how long could we discharge no water from the site that is not something that we've assessed as part of this applications I'm not able to comment on that point Thank you Did you want to come back counciller is that okay No I can understand that it's not actually something one could require it's just that it was a point of interest and I just wonder what the flexibility there was in the site and particularly whether you could increase the capacity were to be measured whether it could be increased at a future date if it was considered to be beneficial Okay Within the space available there is some flexibility this is an outline application we've tried to make a conservative assessment of space required for that attenuation and as we said we've sized it for the 200 year event so it is more conservative than you would have on other developments that are simply limiting to the 100 year event Okay Members we're going to pause for a second while we one of our members has had to excuse myself for a minute so if we give him give him a minute to come back and then we'll we've got set us and we've got two more questions from members and then we'll have a proper break okay Maddie are our members now returned I don't know if it would be possible to very briefly repeat that last point just so you know all members have had all the information at the same time I don't know if that's possible Yes that's fine So the two points that are two queries that were made one is about the sea level rise and effective climate change as I said we have allowed for an additional 40% storage due to climate change and that is at the upper end of the EA's scale of how climate change will increase runoff from developments so that's in line with best practice the second point was can we or for how long can we hold back water on site without discharging any runoff whatsoever as I said that's not something we've assessed as part of this application so I'm unable to confirm that point but what I can confirm is that we have sized that space to allow for the 200 year rainfall events including the 40% for climate change that is over and above what other developments would allow for they would only allow for the 100 year event and we have we have designed it conservatively to take the runoff from all impermeable areas on site so if we do include permeable paving and such that allow groundwater recharge they'll limit runoff that will go down stream and therefore there'll be extra capacity in the space that we've made available Thank you for that again I appreciate it Question of flight from councillor Heather Williams please Thank you chair and maybe to everybody's surprise not a question on drainage I'm afraid so I'm just I'm looking at this the Google earth imagery of the area and on page 161 the map which does show about the heights now in the past it's been important and also many would say necessary to give that degree of separation to long stand and sort of a a divide of green space or something or other and obviously in this area we are very very very close to long stand in itself I'm just wondering is there any reason other than commercial because we don't take that into consideration why there is necessity to have the ability to go up to three stories and therefore increasing the impact on the existing residents of long stand term for vast areas of the site with the exception of a little bit of protection for the north stay residents themselves I'm already near the station road so just wondering what the logic is there share chair if there's something that I'm missing if there's a need to have such high buildings and that vicinity so close to that to the border of long stand and thank you chair okay thank you sir to make a question around justification of the building heights please chair we were applying for up to three stories and within the area there will be a range of building heights between one and three stories there are large verges on both sides of the the b1050 and the framework for north day requires kind of confident edges and hence the proposal to allow for buildings in places up to three stories to create that kind of legibility and announce the development if you like I was going to bring in a colleague from tibbles a catcher stiller an urban designer to elaborate on my answer if you think that's appropriate yeah if it's helpful certainly hello everyone I'm Katja stiller from tibbles and thank you Dean as Dean said there will be a requirement for design codes which will set more detail design guidance for that edge and at the moment we are applying for story heights up to three stories which would be up to kind of 11 point meters around 11 point meters in height the distance between our red line our boundary of the site and the buildings on long stand in around 77 meters and we have allowed for a area between the existing road and our first houses of around 29 to 30 meters as set out on the parameter plants and in the design principles documents so we expect to enhance the landscape structure along that edge and create also a kind of five meter minimum of five meter open space on that edge and then there will be a variety of building heights that as Dean said kind of will create and kind of entrance and announce this new town while also respecting the differences and the buffer and the distances to the existing developments the strategy of creating confident edges was set out within the very early planning strategies and design strategies for this new town and we are complying with that so I hope that answers your question at this point Okay, thank you and finally Councillor Hawkins please Thank you chair and through you three things I'd like to highlight on page 89 we talk about gas the last sentence in that paragraph 525 says for phase 3b however it is intended that all dwellings will have electric heating but then at the same time you are extending the gas pipeline to phase 3b what's the point because it seems to me you will end up putting in gas when you know that from 2025 gas heating is not going to be allowed in the country that's the first question the second one is to do with construction vehicles going through Willingham I know that when I had a meeting that was a year and a half two years ago now about the problems we were having with construction vehicles you were not part of it because you weren't part of phase one however we know that there's still problems so will you be making sure that your construction vehicles come into your site don't go through Willingham and third thing is I think it was Mali who said the IDB condition to keep water on this site will be an additional requirement to what is provided now so my question is are you prepared to create that additional space thank you Jen okay Dean three questions for you there one around is the gas line necessary running around the movement of construction vehicles and the third one again around the condition around on-site water thanks Jen the gas requirement I think is just the preference in relation to cooking some people prefer to use gas to cook it will be a low requirement but certainly not related to heating happy to accept lorry routing obligation in the proposed section 106 this was discussed at length in relation to 3a and I can understand would be a concern in relation to 3b so happy to accept that obligation in relation to additional water storage on site I think the issue is to do with kind of practicality and the impact it would have on the master plan the ability to deliver the homes on the site as it were I will obviously pass over to to Maddie to to give you kind of chapter and verse on the practicality of achieving additional storage as kind of suggested by the IDB so I'm hoping Maddie will be able to elaborate yes so I think ultimately it would depend how much additional storage is deemed to be appropriate at all developments coming forward in the wider catchment going to be providing four weeks worth of storage for any rainfall event that might happen in any given four week period so that's something that would be quite difficult to assess and could potentially have an impact on the master plan as as Dean has said okay I think you got answers to the three questions there did you want to come back sure um thank you chair it might be difficult to assess but not impossible are you willing to even consider it because it doesn't sound like that from the answer you've just given I mean you might have a master plan now whether that master plan needs to change because you need to prevent problems for existing communities then surely that should be the best practice shouldn't it chair if I can just answer that initially obviously I think the critical thing is here the improvement on greenfield run of rates there will be improvement as a result of the development and I know that's difficult to kind of comprehend sometimes and imagine but that is the proposal so in a sense the wording that could happen in terms of surface water drainage is the site remains undeveloped because greenfield run of rates will be flashy in the way that Maddie has explained there will be significant variation and at times there will be you know a significant amount of run of from the site that will be managed as a result of the proposals I I'm happy to consider a condition where we look at additional storage on site and Mr Kelly will have an idea as to have practical that is but to some extent it's also the opposite of what the IDB are also asking for isn't it in terms of quick discharge quick discharge requires virtually no storage on site so we are in danger of covering you know multiple scenarios here when I think the the proposal in itself covers the the policy requirement and exceeds the policy requirement as a bottom line okay that's fine I think you've answered the question there okay and our very quick final question from Councillor Bradlin please thank you I'm just skirmishing up a few different things that I wanted to check up on one was to do with health provision and on page 113 there's reference to the health care provision in the heads of terms and I just wanted to clarify there's there's an undertaking to provide space I think floor space as north dough grows apportioned to phase B and there's an amount of 900 000 pounds and somewhere else there's reference to a hectare edge oh no that's right that was the other thing that's faith but I just wanted to check with you is there because the gentleman from Willingham pointed out how very stressed the long stanton surgery is and I just wondered oh and this kind of for the officers but I just wanted to check whether there was any indication that this was going to be dedicated space for a doctor surgery are we or are we just talking about spare shared space for things like injections or whatever so that's one thing what is the nature of that health provision likely to be the other one was it was on para 153 we're talking about faith space at 33 and I just wanted to check there's a provision for 0.1675 hectares of space but there's no money for it and I just wondered whether we have yes here we are a paragraph 153 it says would also like to highlight dedicated faith provision either in phase 3 be itself or an extension to the adjacent phase 1 community facility and then in the heads of terms it's referred to at page 113 I think under community that's right it's just refers to dedicated faith space I just wanted some clarification on what why there is no money associated with this space for faith yeah I think that might be better directed at officers to be honest yes exactly I did wonder that sure so I will ask if any officers want to come back on that and just come back after after the session probably helpful I just want to confirm the position on that okay that's fine all right well with that members we've had all our questions of clarity for the applicant so Dean and team thank you very much for that and for fielding all the questions if you wouldn't mind holding on the line there may be some questions you might be able to help us with during the debate part of our of our meeting this morning so with that members it is coming up to quarter past if we meet back in 10 minutes so about 25 past and we'll we'll move on with the next round of public speakers thank you thank you everyone welcome back to this meeting of South Cams district council's planning committee we are just coming to the end of questions of clarification for the applicant and before the break we had two questions from councillor Bradman in which I believe Mr Kelly was going to come back on and I'll hand over to him now to do so thank you chair yes in respect to the question about faith provision South Cams district council has actually agreed a process for how we allocate faith provision across new developments and understand from Claire Flowers who's who we've been in contact with that in March 2020 we cabinet agreed a process and essentially we ask for the land to be made available for provision and then the council itself goes through a process of bids and consideration of of parties who wish to wish to get that piece of land to which we then allocated through that process in respect of the health infrastructure unfortunately I don't have any further details than that contained in the schedule the expectation is that the phase to the civic hub on phase two is the kind of cornerstone of health provision on north stone the health parties have been that the health authority have been consulted around the proposals and I think indicated they didn't see a need for provision explicitly on phase three b but they are looking at the way that health provision is provided obviously it's a healthy new town across the site as a whole and we're working continue to work with them on that there is scope within the terms of the permissions in fact whether it's on phase one or phases three a or indeed phase two for floor space to be set aside for those uses but we're not making explicit provision other than the financial contributions associated with this as to exactly where that happens because it could happen in a number of locations okay sorry we're going to have to adjourn for a few minutes we have a medical issue thank you very much everyone welcome back to this meeting of south cambridge of district council was planning committee we've just had our lunch break and we are still on the public speaking section of the agenda before we stopped we had some clarification from Mr Kelly on two points that councillor Bradenam raised around faith provision and health care provision Mr Kelly did respond but councillor Bradenam before we had to stop I really wanted to come back on those points and just gather my thoughts yes it was sorry I'll come back later if I remember what it was it was I think it was that the question was it's still only 0.1475 of a hectare and that does that just mean one room for the for the faith provision and a 1.0.1675 hectares but no money and and Mr Kelly has explained that the district council picks that up at a later stage oh I know what it was sorry thank you for bearing with me it was in paragraphs 169 and 170 which in our paper agendas is page 36 this is the the comment about the Cambridgeshire and Peter for clinical commissioning group and it says the justification for a new health centre for north Stowe is well documented and this letter does not repeat these earlier comments blah blah blah but it confirms the need for this application to be responsible for a financial contribution within an S106 agreement towards the construction fitting out and revenue costs associated with a new health facility and in the heads of terms we've got 900,000 pounds but the question in my mind was have we allocated enough space in the community hub to allow that 900,000 pounds to be spent productively I think Mr Kelly is going to come back I'll try and come back on that the simple answer is I can't tell you this second unfortunately on that matter my understanding is as the paragraph makes clear that CCG will work continue to work with the planning authority on that the money is based upon a calculation that they've used just one second and the contributions are set out in the schedule and to my understanding the CCG has been engaged in that conversation as appropriate Can I just clarify is that 900,000 pounds that's on page 113 of the heads of terms for healthcare that's a contribution to the expansion in phase 2 isn't it? It's not provision here in 3B or even 3 No it's not for explicit provision in this particular phase the expectation is that it's part of the civic health in phase 2 and the contribution is proportionate to the impact and the need for additional facilities associated with the population of this Thank you Okay thank you very much well with that we're now after a lot of patience on their part we move to our marriage councillors starting with councillor Warren Wright please who's speaking on behalf of Swavesy Parish Council councillor Wright to be very patient with us as he sat through the entirety of the last meeting just to speak on this item so we we thank him for his patience and for coming back again to speak to us today so So thank you I'm sure you do but I do need to ask if you have the authority of your parish council to represent them here this afternoon Yes I do Great thank you very much so as I said to the other public speakers three minutes to address the committee at the end of which there may be some questions of clarity for members of the committee for you so whenever you're ready please Okay thank you thank you Mr Chair member of the committee and officers Swavesy is an historic linear ffent edge village with just one road running through the village from the A14-1307 services right through to over all the villages amenities are along this road including three working farms and the primary school We're also home to a Mick George waste disposal site with its associated traffic There is also one road coming in from Fendraiton and of course Rampa Road leading to North Stowe and Long Stanton All these roads were designed to basically take horses and cart movements and enable farmers access to the fields Rampa Road is already taking an unprecedented increase in traffic must of which is HGV construction vehicles Official figures for the last week in November and the first in December show an average of 4,500 plus movements daily with almost 5,500 movements on Friday peaks We are currently in discussions with Tam Pari and his team regarding this situation and projections of traffic when the North Stowe build out is complete The carriageway edges are constantly being eroded resulting in many dangerous dips and holes especially as there are drainage ditches alongside the road There are also five brick-built culverts underneath Rampa Road all of which are of an age a lot older than myself and probably goes back to when the Dead Sea was only sick One transfers the water outflow from the Utton Stowe sewage works and the others transfer suds as crucial to the village drainage system The collapse of any one of these culverts would cause absolute havoc to our local transport system not to mention our village drainage system The parish council requests that immediate action is taken to restrict any further increase in traffic using Rampa Road by imposing a ban on any construction vehicles in addition to heavy goods vehicles using this route and that cameras be put into place to enforce this In addition that traffic calming measures be installed on both Rampa Road and Boxworth End in order to improve road safety and to deter and restrict further increases in traffic movements when the North Stowe build out is complete Swaybuses traffic problems are soon to escalate with the development of a further 70 dwellings in the village which will only be able to access middle watch via a T-junction which is some 10 yards from the Rampa Road middle watch boxworth end junction The villages developing neighborhood plan indicates that 75% of our residents use their own vehicles to access their workplace and not the guided bus as so often stated by developers Furthermore 850 plus students are bussed into and out of the village college on a daily basis Plus the primary school in the village which is located by the middle watch school lane junction and with no official road crossing currently has more than 300 plus pupils The parish council fully supports and agrees with the IDB statement as presented by Mr Keith Wilderspin and there is one I do have a question for everybody here something which has recently come alight and I think speaks volumes maybe about the developers and what's going on in North Stowe The secondary school in North Stowe which is in its third year now it's two and a half years in is in actual fact tankering sewage out of the premises twice a week Does anybody know what's going on and why this is happening have they not got the infrastructure in place so far and the school has been open for two and a half years I'm open to any questions if you can answer that one I'd be very much obliged Okay I will ask members if there's any questions a clarity first of all please on your comments Members any questions to the parish councillor No sorry councillor Hawkins then Roberts Thank you chair and through you thank you Warren for your statement I wasn't quite clear about the five culverts that you mentioned and their function in transferring stuff Can you explain that please Okay well the major one is in actual fact up in the strain which takes all the the treated water from the sewage farm the sewage works at up in the strain which is going to have to take everything from all the north so build out in addition it takes everything from Camborn including the two and a half to three thousand houses that will be built there and we've had no confirmation yet but it is I should say it's about a thousand to one on odds that it will also have to take a born airfield site of four thousand dwellings because the bottom line is that all they will have to do is put a connection line in of about a hundred feet underneath the born airfield road and it will link into the existing system and bring it all down to Swaybusy so the cumulative effect on the outflow from the sewage farm in Swaybusy will be absolutely monstrous in a couple of years so that is one of the culverts and the other four are basically just transferring surface water drainage from around the area and what a lot of people don't actually realise if you look at a map of the area from you've got the over ridge which then comes down to where we'll obviously phase 3b Norsdow all the way along the actual Long Stanton bypass up to Barhill back to Lullworth and even water from Boxworth and Collington actually flows into the river at Swaybusy and a lot of that actually comes down the Rampart Road some of it goes the other way into Covelstrain so the amount of surface water that actually flows through the village is a lot more than people would think okay and as I say there are five culverts underneath Rampart Road bringing thousands of gallons of water through the village to go into the great river Great Ooves at Websolesloose Thank you for that Councillor Roberts please Thank you Chairman through you Chairman Good afternoon We heard that something like 194 houses in Swaybusy have got the potential for flooding and I took on board that you've just said that you'll support the concerns of the internal drainage board can you remind me roughly how many houses you have in Swaybusy so we can understand the percentage I would think it's maybe about 400 but if you could sort of give me a clarification of what houses numbers we're talking about and are your residents already aware that they are in a situation of potential flooding and are they finding any difficulty in getting insurance for their properties Thank you Okay thank you I think currently there are something in the region of about the 1200 maybe 1250 dwellings I'm not 100% sure but it is about that figure We have another total development of 70 and another I believe about another 20 it's almost another 100 to go with permission which would take us up to about 13 to 1400 actual dwellings and are people aware people are becoming a lot more aware the paperwork that was sent out regarding the neighborhood plan has made a lot of people aware of it a lot of people have moved in in actual fact that's about 19 years ago we had a big scare and people had moved into a new estate and the doors were ringing and they were asked to move everything upstairs in the village a lot of people people tend to expand their houses if they can in Swaithwyth because they want to stay there you know nicely to say but people are becoming more aware but I don't think at the moment I don't know of anybody that's had to had trouble with ensuring their premises but the problem is as you know if we do get a flood and we get say even 30 or 40 houses that are in actual flat flooding then everybody in the postcode will have serious trouble getting flood insurance and we have had a couple in actual fact we did have three four dwellings on the rampa road junction have been in actual fact seriously under water in the last couple of years last Christmas being the one for a couple of days thank you for that and councillor Wilson please thank you chair you mentioned that you have the Mick George waste disposal site in Swaithwyth is there another route that those hgbs could take that use a roads rather than using the roads in the village no because unfortunately the wastage site is down one of the village byways inside the village it's by I don't know if you know Swaithwyth at all it's by Swampond which was the site of the original inland Saxon port there is no A route that they can come into or B route the only way is either rampa road either through Fendraiton they'd have to come off for the services junction or they'd have to come through over and strangely enough permission was granted last Friday and they have downgraded it to 60 traffic movements a day and they have permission to grade 75,000 tonnes of waste a year now that is only 1500 tonnes a week on a five day week so there you go we'll have 300 tonnes of waste coming into the village and you can imagine the size of the vehicles that are going to have to be doing that and also Swaithwythsy is a nightmare especially at the school run now you can basically queue up at the market street in Swaithwythsy and it can take you 10 or 15 minutes to get down to Dr Surge at the other end of the village okay so it's a major thing thank you okay thank you for that I don't think there's any further questions of clarity I have asked your question to officers around the your question around the school so you're not in a position to answer that fully today but we do have an undertaking for them to take that away and come back to you on that so we don't have an answer today but one will be provided to you thank you Councillor Bradman thank you chair and through you I'd like to ask you sort of a combination of when was the last time the centre of Swaithwythsy flooded and how frequently does that happen it's been the odd problem with odd houses now and again but the last time the major flood in actual fact was 1947 we do have serious aerial photos of that incident and I don't know there wasn't as many houses flooded because there weren't as many houses there now but the sites that were flooded are all developed now thank you so um did you have any serious flooding in winter 2020 sorry that's christmas 2020 um there were five or six yes winter 2020 there were five or six houses around the rampa road junction with middle watch and there were two if not three dwellings further up box within that actually had problem with uh that we were getting sewage coming in because the sewage block is because the lines haven't been flushed out completely and we do have we do have a lot of the modern-day sandbags from the council to to give out and a lot of houses do have them as a preparation that's great thank you very much and there's no further questions of clarification for yourself so thank you very much again for being so patient with us and we will move on now to our next public speaker who is paul littlemore who's speaking on behalf of north stowtown council and should be joining us online council a little more are you with us hello chair I hope you can hear me hello there good afternoon excellent so before we kick off can I just double check that you have the permission of your town council to represent them here today yes I do yeah great um and as with the other public speakers three minutes to address the committee and then there may be some questions of clarity for you at the end so if you stay on the line that'll be handy perfect thank you chair and if you're ready please okay so north stowtown council objects to this application in its current form I've written comments outlined several areas where in our opinion improvements and strict planning conditions are required for this application to be acceptable our principal concern is around site access both for residential and for construction traffic the current plans accommodate only one route in and out for motor vehicles on the b1050 roundabouts the other potential potential entry and exit points identified in the planning documents through either endurance estates or digital park are not guaranteed to be delivered as the applicant does not own these plots we seek clarification of access plans to ensure that this junction does not become a bottleneck and as the only confirmed entry point is not deemed to be sufficient to support a thousand houses we'd also like to see a clear strategy for separation of residential and construction traffic during the phases of construction which wouldn't leave roadways and cycle paths unfinished until 3b is complete in its entirety as we've seen in phase one we're also concerned as to how the new development will affect traffic on the b1050 this road is already in our opinion close to capacity and an extra 1000 houses will significantly add to the traffic already using it we request that an adequate traffic monitoring plan be put in place and mitigation measures are documented which can be imposed if this road does become overwhelmed on the hotly on the discussion points around groundwater and drainage we note the concerns from other consultees about the Swaysy drain being able to cope with the outflows from phase 3b in addition to that of 3a and up and strove given the longstanding concerns in the community around drainage strategy and groundwater levels we would request that agreement from these consultees be sought prior to approval we also agree with long-standing parish councils comments around the building heights along the b1050 that face long-standing village in that these should be a maximum of two stories rather than three to limit the visual impact from long-standing village on construction management we request that there's an adequate SEMP in place prior to the start of any construction in this case with specific restrictions to prohibit construction traffic going through long-standing Willingham or Norstow phase 1 as well as to mitigate noise and dust until these concerns are addressed and conditions put in place to mitigate them Norstow town council cannot support this application and thank you for your time today thank you very much for those comments members any questions of clarification for the town councillor councillor Bradman then Roberts thank you chair thank you very much um I'm sorry I do call it as I can't read little more thank you he's still a little more if we were to seek restriction of traffic so that it didn't go through Norstow phase 1 Willingham or long-standing which route would it use so that would be that would be the B1050 straight out towards the A14 okay so there is there is a possible route. Okay thank you very much thank you councillor Roberts thank you chairman good afternoon councillor little more you said that you would want to see a condition implemented and put into place and implemented regarding the concerns about the water and are you meaning also that that I think you said that agree you know it had to be an agreement before it happened are you including the internal drainage board in that consideration yes I am yeah I think all part or the council's opinion is that all parties should be an agreement prior to approval but if you sought to seek that as a condition personally I would probably find that acceptable but I can't comment on behalf of the council because we didn't discuss that okay thank you very much I don't think there's any further questions for you so thank you very much for joining us this afternoon for your time Members or for those watching it's also probably worth noting long stance and parish council have sent in written comments which committee members have had site of so just because they're not here today doesn't mean they haven't made comments on this application so I just wanted to make that clear and also on that note the local members councillor Trang Johnson and Mallion have also sent in written comments again which committee members have had site of and I trust to take into consideration when we make a decision today okay with that members that concludes our public speakers we're now moving into the debate as agreed at the beginning we're going to try and structure this in sections for I hope smoothness beginning with sections one and two of the report which relates to the principle of development land use and vision and the parameter plans obviously members we do have officers with us in the room and online if we do need any any further questions to on on any of these sections to help us but also we can give points of view across as well councillor Heather Williams please thank you sorry mine my comments relate quite a bit to a section 2 and led to my my line of questioning earlier the I am very concerned with the ability to be able to go up to three buildings so close to Longstanto and I understand what they're saying it's up to they might not but I think we do have to work on the basis of what we're approving is that they could put three story buildings across there you know we can't really say yes but we hope you don't use it although I think I have said that in the past when it when the council's attendant but for this and when you look at the other boundaries you know there's been a significant buffer and I'm I'm thinking to policy NH1 which says a conservation area and green separation at Longstanton and when I heard the representative it's like there's going to be five meters right or 77 meters including the road that concerns me I think you can probably have things closer than what they have been in other areas but it isn't a great deal of green space in between I would have been much happier had there been a sort of tiered approach sort of we can see that obviously it is possible to have up to two stories because there's a very very tiny bit of it just around the station road area had that extended along I think that would have been much more satisfactory and you know we are putting a lot of houses on that on that piece and with existing residents there and they're going to have a lot to contend with and they're the ones that are going to have to live with it and I don't think it's unreasonable from what the representatives are saying and from a design point of view as well we know we've got some four story peaks in there but I'm in if that makes sense we've seen it on I think it was on Water Beach and other places where you literally you're building in you're almost creating a sort of mountain effect in itself and then you get your landmark buildings or whatever we want to call them so I think the principle of development chair you know we all accept that this is the right place for housing but how that housing is done is still up for question and I'm not convinced on those plans as it is right now I think there's too much flexibility I don't say design plan but essentially we would be allowing up to three stories which means we are allowing three stories across all of that and I'm not not satisfied with that chair okay thank you for those comments next speaker councillor Bradner please yes in fact that's what I was going to raise I would like to see a wider buffer between the existing houses in the station road area between the backs of those houses and the start of the up to three story buildings so I'd like to see a wider gap sorry not a gap but a wider area when they would still just be two story I can see some of the properties on station road itself are actually three story but I think one of the concerns that are our local members raised was a need to maintain a green separation between these areas and I just think it would be preferable if we could have lower buildings on this frontage between the the new development and the existing development at station road and I just think we should be looking at that and I wondered whether we could explore whether that's possible Mr Kelly might want to comment on this one I just I mean I think I understand what you're highlighting the slight there's two things the parameter plans are on the only a handful of documents that are being part of the process of consent for an application like this and I'm hearing a concern around the heights of those buildings along particularly the edge of the edge of the site the slight challenge is that actually on to the areas of open spaces there are two elements to the parameter plans along the one at 1050 the first is where the open space comes down from the central cops and the second is at the site entrance in some respects the there is a reasonably strong argument for at least highlighting those points in the site's edge where people would then turn in where the entrance is into the site and so on without making a substantial gateway because otherwise in fact the two stories that are in the parameter plan is only seven meters high which is in fact lower than two stories on north Stowe phase one which are up to nine meters there are two trying to think through if the committee of mine didn't have a concern that they want to see two story buildings along that frontage then there is arguably scope to qualify the parameter plan with a condition for example notwithstanding details of the parameter plan of whatever reference number it is all buildings along the site frontage of the v1050 I mean there's I shan't go into wording now but there is a way I think of crafting a condition that would create the first 10 or 20 meters into that site to be no more than two stories that would be splendid but yes that would be the most welcome I think but actually an I am absolutely allergic to there is a phrase in planning which refers to a sense of arrival in other words big buildings on the edges but the bit I was actually concerned about was this sorry I'm showing you on my thing it's this little strip around the back of this quadrant on station road which is the only bit that is two story and remember the case officer took some time to show us it and I'm just wondering if that could be a bigger area of just two story to protect those houses on the station road area from being overlooked quite so I know it's not technically overlooking but it's just that feeling of being very close by and whether we could just make that area of two story buildings a bit wider just two comments on that the first is certainly the two story buildings that are shown in these parameter plans are in fact lower than the houses that are on that phase of development which are up to nine meters in height as I understand it I think it's hard to justify from a kind of either a landscape perspective because obviously the setting is those existing houses clearly one of the things that we're not we haven't got in front of us and one of the key pieces of work that will happen in the event that a consent is granted is a piece of work around the design codes for this site the whole site will be coded in which the relationship between those two sets of properties will obviously be worked through and there'll be consultation with the town and parish councils but also with those local communities I think there's a danger of predetermining what that acceptable arrangement looks like and how far it would be necessary to take three stories or two story homes back into the site I think the parameter plan is trying to convey the fact that those properties will only look on to properties of a similar size and format as indeed they already do in relation to those within the site I don't think it would be reasonable to unless there was a landscaping argument to argue for that in that case and the landscape appraisal that accompanies the application identifies that obviously as you get somewhat different in some respects the B1050 but as you get close to the properties on that part of the landscape the influence of north stow phase one and all of its infrastructure actually really doesn't create a case for limiting the form of development there Thank you, third point I'll take your point on that but you Mr Kelly, you also mentioned I think your mic might have died and we'll get you up your back so I was thinking about the frontage onto the B1050 and in the same way that I don't particularly like arrival buildings that tell you you've got somewhere I would like as if possible to maintain the hedge along the B1050 wherever it's possible I don't know if the landscaping currently allows for that but if it's possible to do that I'd like to think we could is that possibility? Yeah so it doesn't propose its removal at this moment in time obviously safer it approves an access point into the broad site as I said it's an element really for the design coding in fact in the break I was just looking at Campbell West design coding and clearly these types of considerations in terms of breaks and views and vistas into the site and matters that the design coding process can consider and certainly there's nothing in the application as far as I can see that requires substantial removal of that hedge where it's meant in time Splendid Thank you Thank you for that Councillor Wilson please Thank you I want to refer to the movement of construction vehicles This is a Probably the next section I think Councillor on the test and transport So members we're still on sections one and two which is principle of development land use and vision and parameter plans Councillor Williams is on these two sections Yes thank you chair It was just on this section I just wanted to clarify the area that I was referring to where I think that the two story there should be two stories sort of phasing it in is actually the impact it has on kids present and eaten way and loft house way it's so it's a long stanton side as opposed to the station road current north stow it's the impact on long stanton along I think that's the B1050 along that road there that's my concern as opposed to with these sort of other phase of north stow because we seem to focus on the station road area so just wanted to clarify that's my area of concern chair Well if Mr Kelly could clarify that was part of his comments earlier Yes so that was what I was I was referring to when I said there is obviously it's in the parameter plan as three story you could qualify that any consent by reference to some form of a condition that prevented it from being higher than two stories for a depth into the site were you minded to do that I think that the only point I would make is whether or not it's desirable to achieve effectively buildings with taller buildings behind it particularly when you get to those open spaces when you get to the open space breakpoint and the access point but that would my comments were recognising your concern around the relationship with long stanton Okay thank you Okay no more speakers on sections one and two members sorry Councillor Hales before we move on Thank you chair it's just something Mr Kelly just said this is obviously outline yeah so when would the reserve matters be taken because I think if I remember the applicant said or somebody said on the screen that it was possibly busy in this decade right so that's quite a while some of us may not be here some of the top table may not be here and I'm kind of wary that we are here today and if we have thoughts that we would like to condition now but perhaps in the future future colleagues and what have you might say well they don't apply anymore so we might change them when it comes to reserve matters but to put the protections in now that we've heard people talk about so I'm just wondering whether that was lawful looking at Mr Reid and whether it's the will of this committee thank you Don't know if any of the officers want to come back on on that particular point regarding conditioning now just to give you our heads up I'm talking about like the hedgerows and the council Bradlin was talking about I'm talking about the two or three story buildings whether or not we do that If I could just obviously the use of conditions is in terms of what you can use them for is set out quite clearly in the legislation you're quite right that the applicants I understand don't intend to get to this element of the scheming for at least five to eight years before we start to see development happening and as I said there is a design co-process and the proof of reserve matters to follow if you however on an online planning commission if you want to define the parameters of the all of those subsequent operations then you need to impose conditions at this stage of the process imposing a condition that applies a limitation to the grant of permission is entirely consistent with the use and purposes of conditions as long as they satisfy the tests including they're recently related in scale and kind to the development and they serve a planning purpose I don't know if Mr Reid wants to comment further I think I'll just add that notwithstanding Mr Kelly's comment if you did impose a condition it would still be open to the applicant to appeal the condition in which case then it may be that matter would the condition and it's reasonable that the sector would be tested in a planning appeal okay so with that members moving on to section three of the report which deals solely with access and transport so councillor Wilson I think you had a question around vehicle movements and then councillor Bradnham thank you my apologies for that jump in the gun yeah this is something I brought up when we were discussing phase three A is that the construction vehicles leave the site and they go along the B1050 to the A14 and then they can then rat run through other villages on their way to wherever they're going at the moment there's a gravel pit that's being exploited at water beach and we've been told we've been it's been that the HDVs going between the gravel pits and the construction sites will not go through Cottenham they are going through Cottenham so I would like to see some sort of condition that none of those HDVs that are ferrying gravel from that gravel pit at water beach to the construction sites or returning the soil to the land to fill backfill the land at water beach can goes down any roads such as the the dry dreten and Oakington mode or the B1049 that they must go along the A14 and the A10 okay Mr Kelly's coming in but just to just to say because we recall the conversation that we have last time around systems I think condition 39 on the construction environmental management plan I think might be tweaked slightly under part C of that to we did talk about whether it's ANPR or GPS based kind of monitoring but I think if there's a concern around it you could insert because I think one of the speakers also asked for ANPR into part C after signage strategy a requirement for control systems because as you recall we discussed well actually is it ANPR or is it GPS monitoring and so on I think your point also goes to though and I'd like Tam Parry to comment if you can around the approach to managing traffic through villages clearly we can only put a condition on this development and the way that construction traffic arises from from that and you've highlighted the issues on water beach but Tam I wonder if you can outline the approach from the county's perspective on how we'll see to manage through traffic particularly heavy vehicles beyond just the site entry and exit which I know is is the concern Hi yes so in terms of heavy vehicles the key way that we we look to manage those is really through the construction environment management plan that we've just been talking about and up until now the plan has focused on the route of access being the B1050 and the A14 and then for phase 2 the seven access road rest of the new road being built by Holmes England from Barhill into Northdale from Rich there is a construction access routes into the town so it's reasonable to add to that condition that all construction vehicles should be approaching using main roads perhaps the A14 A10 and then the other road roads in the surrounding area and no B roads or minor roads Okay does that answer your question in part? Yes I'm very interested in the ANPR and solution because although I have been advised by McGeorge that the HDVs won't be going through our village it's very difficult to prove that they are when they're going so fast and quite often their registration plates are covered in mud so I've got lots of villagers looking out for numbers and times so that I can report back but it's proved almost impossible so far so I think the ANPR and GPS solution would be very welcome Although if you've got a muddy licence plate the ANPR I probably wouldn't pick it up either but there you go but I see Mr Kelly's beavering away editing conditions for us at my side so before we make any decisions on anything we'll obviously run through all the various conditions we're editing and adding just to make sure everyone's content with what we've we've been talking about today Councillor Williams please Oh sorry I think it's Heather Councillor Bradman apologies Thank you and it's a pertinent time thank you chair because that's a similar thing to what I was going to ask which was to pick up on the representation from the local member for talking Councillor Bill Handley at paragraph 113 and also later on in paragraph 122 where but variously the members are saying please could we avoid construction construction traffic going through the villages of Longstanton Willingham or over and could we add that to condition 39 which is on our page 144 could we make it explicit not just A and B rows but could we just say that they shouldn't construction management traffic shouldn't sorry construction traffic should not go through the villages of Longstanton Willingham or indeed the other one that was raised was North Stofaise 1 clearly that would be very unwelcome and could the gentleman from the parish council said could there be monitoring on the B1050 to monitor the weight of traffic on the B1050 to see if this was working so that you know we protect our existing villages not sure if any officers want to come back on that point Tam I see you've appeared yes I like a geni in a bottle yes so in terms of monitoring we're looking to put some sensors around North Stofaise that will pick up number plates of vehicles it normalises the number plates but it does help you help us to be able to track vehicles and where they go so I can broadly tell hopefully in the future when the system's in place the routes of vehicles that they're taking and the class of vehicles so whether it's a car or a hgv so I'd be able to say to to South Camp there are lorries going from North Stofaise through Oaconson for instance but I couldn't tell you what their number plates are but we can just no I'm not asking about sorry sorry Anna I'm not asking about number plates I'm asking for a transport management plan that says vehicles coming to and from this site for this purpose of building this new phase should not go through Longstown to William or North Stofaise 1 okay I think we've got Mr Kelly is taking note of that and I think he's having a look see whether it's possible to actually identify villages that construction traffic can't go through now Councillor Williams please thank you chair so I was just going to suggest that for consistency that we did apply a condition last time on the other phase I personally would like to see a like for like condition that mirrors what we did that way we're consistent we gave ourselves flexibility if new technologies came along rather than being prescriptive I can understand the desire to list villages but I think actually that might open the gate to justifying that it can be in other villages I think the traffic management plan there is a very for this a very simple easy method A14 B1050 it can be done very smoothly it's not as complicated as some of the other areas we've seen so I think we want with the traffic management plan you know that will come forward we'll get those details but I think we should be mirroring what we said said last time in that conditioning but like I say if we list and then you know we've not said Lollworth which is or Swavesy or I think if we start listing villages we could get ourselves unintentionally then actually sort of almost excusing displacement elsewhere so I will be a bit nervous on that score chair Okay now thank you for that appreciate that comment Okay members transport highways any further comments or debates on this Okay so we're moving on members to the next three sections sections four five and is this on highways okay it was just the bit I raised before under the village traffic management I think it's under this phase which was in the heads of terms is that that was £10,000 I think for assessment wasn't it so if we needed it would be linked the reason I'm raising it now is it would be linked to that condition that we're just talking about so because obviously if we're making by condition 39 we're making it obvious that we want the vehicles to go on v1050 onto the A14 and let's hope they won't go through the other villages but and thus hopefully traffic calming would not be required but we can see that that might be needed depending on the flexibility of the condition 39 so I'm just hoping that that provision in the heads of terms is going to be sufficient to deal with the problems that might arise as the construction goes ahead okay yeah I think that is that what it's for I don't know if anyone else just wants to clarify that I don't think it's not not necessary but if Tim perhaps wants to yeah happy to yeah so the overall between phase 3a and 3b there's 900,000 pounds to address the potential impact of traffic and the villages surrounding to north so the intention there is that the the larger villages like Longstowns and Williamson Srowsea Gertan Oakington would receive the more for share of the funding than the smaller villages the intention is to um disincentivise traffic from using roads to go through the villages and encourage the traffic to go where it should be which is on the A14 and the major roads around the area not not the little roads going through the villages so really the same applies to the HGVs if there are traffic coming measures that we can do colleagues of mine would be would find acceptable to limit HGV movements and then there will also on the table with this funding okay thank you Tim that's clear all right members with that we will move on now to the next sections which are four five and six which relate to employment assessment housing delivery in social housing delivery and social and community infrastructure I do think we've had much debate on this so far to be on this members but if anyone does wish to raise anything now this is the opportunity councillor Bradman please I think I've understood the application correctly to say that there will be 40% affordable housing on this development and I just wanted to say I'm very glad to see that and I would hope that that wasn't eroded as the development builds out which has sometimes happened in other developments so I'm very glad to see the 40% good thank you anything further members okay we'll move on to the final grouping of sections which is section seven to ten and then corporate environmental consideration the cumulative impact financial obligations and the planning balance okay members over to you councillor Roberts then Richard Williams please yes and here it comes the elephant in the room I don't think I can go along with this application as it stands I think that we have a responsibility to those people who are there already first and foremost as opposed to building houses for people who aren't there and businesses that aren't there and there are so many question marks over the water problems that it seems to me that this is absolutely premature there may be solutions but they're not there yet and the thought of the possibility of nearly 200 houses going under water at Swavesy they will be using that port again won't they at the end of the village at the over end of the village it just seems to me that it is a disaster waiting to happen we seem to have a developer who's I think admitted that the provision of houses you know all these houses that we need for these people who don't actually exist in the district is their main consideration I don't think it's actually the main consideration of us as a planning committee we are there to balance it out but at the moment I think that there is such a possibility of a real disaster waiting for Swavesy that we should either defer this and it's such a great disappointment to hear that fact that the internal drainage board told us that I know yes we've had Covid but there's been no real meeting of physically on mines since 2019 and yet here we have this thing in front of us today I think if we could defer it and let all these people get round a table I just think that the developers are treating the internal drainage board as though it's a complete sort of non important non entity and in fact I think it's the most important factor in the expertise that is actually in front of us the internal drainage boards have been keeping those areas safe from flooding for decades and decades now and they've got a very intimate and knowledgeable understanding of the situation around those villages which is, you know, it is there there is a huge amount of water that needs to be sorted out, moved about contained and then released and I think at this moment in time we need to get that sorted out first it may hold this back for a while but I think that's how it should be I think, as I say we have a moral responsibility here to actually make sure that we are not putting something in place there that is absolutely going to cause havoc in another area so I think I don't know whether anybody is happy if we deferred it otherwise I shall be definitely voting against it thank you Chairman OK thank you Councillor Richard Williams please Thank you very much Chair Actually, Councillor Roberts has said a lot of what I was going to say I am very worried about this drainage issue I mean one thing that's really come across to me both in the previous application and this application is how delicate the area that we're dealing with here is it is not a place that is naturally dry we are dealing with a place where you have to pump the water up to the level of the river I think you just look at it you think I would just land like everywhere else but it's not it only stays that way because of the work of people on the internal drainage board and a lot of other people to keep it that way so we're dealing with an extremely sensitive landscape and a very sensitive area we are putting more and more development there I do feel it's a little bit a little bit a little bit you know we talk about Bourne we talk about Cambourn we talk about North Stowe but it's cumulative and it is having an effect and I feel it's a little bit reckless to approve applications like this without being absolutely sure and without having the experts on the ground telling us that it's safe to do it I don't say that lightly but I do think it's reckless to carry on improving these applications now at minimum I would want a condition along the lines of what we talked about earlier that the water could be stored on I mean foul water as well as surface water could be stored on-site when it couldn't be when the sluice gate was closed and when it couldn't be pumped into these at Swayvesley I think that would be a minimum and personally I would like it conditioned that development wouldn't commence until the IDB was satisfied that it was safe certainly without that condition there is no way I could support this I just think it's far too risky thank you thank you very much councillor Bradlam thank you chair well we've had a lot of discussion about this and even from the last time we looked at 3a this came into our thoughts as well but we cannot escape the fact that and I will read them out in turn as they appear in our agenda papers paragraphs 163164 the lead local blood authority has said they had no objection in principle and you know providing there are conditions to ensure that the surface water is managed properly at paragraph 175 the environment agency advises that there are no concerns that sorry advises that the concerns that were raised against a number of planning applications relating to utterance drove have been addressed and that there is no material reason in terms of foul water drainage to prevent permissions being granted at paragraph 441 we're advised that there are discussions ongoing and we that was confirmed although there had been a difference in opinion as to whether discussions had been had there was an undertaking we heard verbally today between the lead local flood authority the internal drainage board and the or which other authority lead local yes and the swaith sea internal drainage board to discuss how the water would be managed at the swaith sea drain and at the and the outflows from utterance drove and what would be happening happening at web souls loose so my feeling is that in the past drainage wasn't perhaps managed as well as it is now I know historically we're thinking about drains through our landscape and we're worried that things are being changed but actually drainage planning is much better now than it used to be and I think given none of the statutory authorities have objected whilst we may feel nervous about this we have to trust the judgment of the statutory authorities and if the lead local flood authority and the environment agency are not concerned about the outflows uh and I think myself I think we have to trust their expertise in this I notice and this isn't a criticism but I notice that the person speaking to us from the swaith sea internal drainage board was indeed the chair of the internal drainage board but not the chief engineer and so I just wondered if perhaps there was a difference in understanding between the chief engineer and I'm not saying a dispute I'm just saying a difference in understanding so my my I'm sure the gentleman the chair spoke to us from his heart and from his own knowledge of the locality and indeed you will remember I asked him a number of questions about the locality but if the drainage board is being reassured in these discussions I think we must take the statutory authorities view they will take steps that are necessary to make sure it's that the water is handled properly thank you Councillor Heather Williams please thank you chair so looking at this as a whole there are merits like and it is a balance I think we need to recognise that you know it does deliver affordable housing that's good to see and it is part of our local plan and our land supply so we're so we're balancing that against the drainage issues and the environmental issues and for myself and particularly the height issues that that it brings so I don't think it's it's particularly clear cut but I am myself going towards the side of refusal mainly based on the drainage issues and the heights of the buildings so for I would ask that if committee is minded to approve that they do as was suggested I can't say alter the parameter plan but sort of condition about the heights if we could have that in place in case it goes ahead actually I'm not going to challenge anybody's understanding of drainage because probably most people have it better than I but we've had significant concerns from the internal drainage board at Swavesy and we've also heard of the impact our decision today could make on residents there and when I look through on the consultation you know and it's not just internal drainage board that has objected we have local district councillors that are asking for conditions or are unhappy with things we have I think every single parish council objecting and which isn't always the case we've seen throughout the different phase of North Stow actually quite often we've had a lot of support through this we even have objections from CAMCYCLE and the British Horses Society to do with facilities there so it's not a case of everybody's so on balance chair I think I'll be voting for refusal but would like the conditions and around the transport um to mirror that what we did before about construction and traffic and I would say actually about whatever route it is if there is some monitor and manage about the state because quite often what we have is we ask construction traffic to go a certain route those roads get broken up and then sorry another microphone issue I'm afraid are you back on my back I think I'm back so the residents have then left with a deteriorated road due to construction traffic so thinking if I'm walking here what I've said in the room at least if we could make sure that there is some protections in place so any damage caused from the construction on the existing road infrastructure is is repaired because I think that particularly aggravates residents when that doesn't happen thank you chair thank you and obviously before we take a decision on anything we'll sort of run through the potential reasons for refusal and potential conditions should it be approved councillor Martin Carr I've been going back and forth on this issue of drainage it's a it's just complicated but the position the council has taken a decision that this area earlier on needs to be developed so this is an outline decision so it's not many things can be covered in later reserved matters so the real issue to me is this drainage issue can it be resolved these and what in planning terms have we got are reasonable conditions matters which we can consider for refusal the issue of sewage seems to be a bigger problem or moment that really doesn't run off drainage the additional sewage but that's something which the the relevant authority says it can cope with we are in a difficult position if using if they say they can cope with it and we're just practically if the body responsible for taking the sewage says it can be managed we have it had to be really really sure of our matters and more details of actually how it was going to cope with to be able to turn it down in terms of the runoff from the site as I expressed I'm concerned in the future that we will may have positions where we really would prefer to have no no water going off but as the developer commented the design is is such that it would not be more than the existing water running off the site that's not for late and I don't think we can actually require more than that in any condition it does seem to me that they've got quite large areas of storage and I think we could make a perhaps make a note that we would want to make sure that there is scope for increasing should have a future data be required and certainly that should be possible within the reserve matters I would have thought to provide for that but I find it difficult to feel that if I went to appeal that that would be a matter which would be would stand up against on the site which we have allocated for development and which they have provided a site a solution which is accepted by the statutory authorities that they do not exceed the runoff on the existing site so what I am very concerned I find it difficult to find that we've got strong enough reasons to to turn it down on that and or that the matters I think can be dealt with by conditions so I've come around in the end and I was not sure at the beginning of the discussion I've come around at the end and I feel that we probably that we should accept this in terms of other matters I'm not particularly worried I'm not so worried about the sea storage runnings but obviously that matters to some people and I'm not unhappy about it if people want to put a condition I think much more important is the quality of the design that comes in the reserve matters along the I'm not along the along the boundary rather than the actual height in the building if it's a good design then it will and there's an adequate distance which where the 70 meters plus 30 meters in the back the strip in the private land on the other side I think that will be adequate so that to me is more a matter but if people want to that's something that's important to people that's something important to people it's not something to worry me particularly I had concerns about the transport access to this other and about all sorts it might be a potential but it's clear it's not something it's easy going to be able to to impose since there's no control of land so otherwise I think those other matters I'm happy with okay thank you councillor that's a lot rippler please a lot of what I was going to say has been covered so I'll be really brief and and it's all about planning balance so it's a lot of people have already said and this is part of our allocated local plan it isn't a kind of speculative development that's cropped up somewhere and you also have to look at what will be delivered in this development and how that makes the whole of north stone as well is a part of a jigsaw and based probably on the type of conditions and as long as we look carefully at the conditions I think I will be voting favour thank you councillor Richard Williams please thank you chair just a point of information and clarity for the committee which might help give them some earlier comments I've been told by the chair of the internal grade drainage board that the letter of objection was actually written by the internal drainage board's chief engineer so I think we can be satisfied on that score thank you very much that's useful thank you and councillor Roberts just a very quick one chairman I should have thought of this at the my first round so thank you very much for just letting me join in again the thing about responsibility is ownership and I'm sorry I don't think the angliaw water is anywhere near as important as the internal drainage board because at the end of the day the responsibility will be dumped upon literally dumped upon the internal drainage board angliaw water have said really very little it's okay by them well it will be won't it because they won't have to deal with it really it will be others and the people who are most concerned and I believe rightly most concerned are the internal drainage board the parish council and the villages of swath and okay it may be in our local plan it may be an allocated site but it doesn't mean that you just willy nilly ignore a major problem that has been put in front of you I don't think any of us have said today nothing ever never ever but what I am saying and what colleagues on either side of me are saying is that this is premature and there are always solutions to problems that's what problems are about they're about finding solutions but we haven't got a solution in front of us we've got experts pointing us out what they see they they see it day in and day out because they're running that internal drainage board every single day of the week every single day of the month every single day of the year they know that area inside out so this is not ready it's just not ready and we have a responsibility why on earth do any of us put up for election give ourselves the power to do things or to make sure things are done properly and then negate that responsibility because any of you who vote for this today are actually once again saying well you know there's nothing much we we had this a month ago well there's nothing much we can do about it it's not our problem well it is your problem every single one of us as a collected councillors it is our problem please you know don't negate what you are here for you're not here to willy nilly give developers lots of money in their back pockets you're here to protect the land and the people you represent okay thank you for that councillor carn you want to do come back with an old point I just wanted to come back on this and the big problem seems to be the sewage rather more than the actual well not that the problem and I agree I'm worried about it but basically we're being brought in the discussion the discussions between the sewage authority and the internal drainage board because they have a responsibility to take it and how the sewage authority deal with it is up to them and we can't impose it upon them the question is should we be able to refuse the application because they don't think we don't think the sewage authority going to be able to do it in a successful manner when they tell us they can we're putting in an impossible position here because we're being asked to do argue the internal drainage board concerns on their behalf towards the sewage authority in a planning application and I'm not sure this is the place that we should be doing it I think there is an argument to make a discussion to be had about how they handle it and we should be making representations but I don't think we can refuse the planning application on these grounds when the statutory body which says it could should handle this says it could deal with it and that's the problem and so that's the reason I don't think we can I can refuse it it's not because I don't think there's a problem it's because I don't think this is the place to argue that debate out okay thank you councillor councillor Hawkins please councillor Hawkins please thank you chair I think there's a lot of what I was thinking has been said by council account we have a situation where the statutory organisations have not provided an objection however we have also heard the concerns of Swinsey IDP and I am absolutely disappointed with Homes England and their consultants for the way they have built to engage with Swinsey IDP and actually before I make a decision I think for me I would like if the officers can actually give us some advice on whether or not we can have additional conditions regarding the request that has been made by Swinsey IDP I know this is an outline planning permission and there is a matter still has to come but I would like to see something done to ensure that Swinsey is not put at the potential risk that it seems to be there we are here as a planning committee to look at applications according to planning law there are things which I don't like but I don't have a choice because the planning law is what it is the balance has to be stroke definitely but I just want to make sure that we are doing the right thing at the same time as observing the planning rules to make sure that existing communities are not put at risk that for me is the main issue right now so if we can have some advice either from legal or from officers as to what it is we can do to ensure that Swinsey is not put at risk then yes at least that's a minimum a condition that we can go ahead with thank you Let's see what officers have to say about that Mr Kelly thank you yes the the situation that's been highlighted is and you heard from the applicants earlier on the current site obviously an undeveloped site water lands on it and runs off and it runs off if it's not raining very heavily at different rates to if it's raining very very heavily the proposal that you've seen before you is to build attenuation ponds into this development and then to potentially we manage the discharge rates from the site to a kind of an even plane so three I think three litres per metre a second per hectare so you've going going from an unmanaged surface water response to a managed surface water response the IDB I think indicated that their concern in this case is that if for example the conditions in the use prevent the discharge of water then there may well be a risk of water building up in the swavesy drain and flooding local properties but that risk exists at this moment in time with unregulated water environment that this land amounts to what is being proposed is either through agreement and through the process with the IDB and others a mechanism to accelerate the release of that captured surface water to take advantage of the capacity in the swavesy drain before the before the outlet is closed or alternatively an ability to hold an estimated quantity of water based on a 1 in 200 years plus 40% which is above the national standard of 1 in 100 years plus 40% of climate change rainfall event you've heard that there isn't agreement and concern particularly from the IDB about the lack of connectivity and the monitoring of that situation so the IDB talked about telemetry or kind of monitoring systems that two sites in swavesy currently utilise I think it was implied in the planning conditions that the issue about how that water is released from the site is managed and in fact condition 34 on surface water in your packs attempts to try and manage that particular point given that the circumstances in some cases may well justify holding the water on site for example if the outlet is closed or indeed may justify rapidly releasing that water to help manage the other impacts on the swavesy drain from delayed discharges on other sites so in terms of is it reasonable to refuse planning commission for this development? I think the applicants made the point and I think it's a matter of fact that the proposals will make matters no worse than a greenfield runoff rate which is the existing circumstances and in policy terms your policies the SPD for Cambridgeshire and indeed the NPPF requires applications to make matters no worse that's the limiting fact of what you should be doing however the policy also encourages improvements or making things better and the ability to manage by holding water on the site the release of surface water that would otherwise fall into the swavesy drain through the natural process of groundwater drainage the applicants argue is a betterment council Williams highlighted and I think council can also highlighted that however in addition to that surface water flow is foul water and the way in which foul water is is managed that is the responsibility of Anglain water the licensing of the discharge of that foul water into the swavesy drain is the responsibility of the environment agency and the IDB's responsibilities set out in legislation and working in concert with the EA and Anglain water is to manage that it is not a primary responsibility of the planning authority the water resources legislation covers those respective obligations what you are required to do is to have regard to the effect of granting planning permission on those circumstances and Anglain water and the environment agency have advised you that from both a treatment and a consenting process in terms of the discharge of that foul water into the swavesy drain they are at this moment in time not objecting to the proposals they are not objecting what that means is is that if you are minded to refuse the application on the basis that the scheme cannot proceed then the appeal would need to be defended solely on the basis of the IDB's position and that position is that it's not that it's not possible to address this matter which is the view of Anglain water and will be part of the 2025 onwards asset investment plan from Anglain water is that they don't know that that is the case now the IDB and the calculations have been provided which is disappointing in terms of the dialogue as you've said but if the consenting authority that permits the discharge of that treated foul water into the watercourse and has responsibility for flooding as well as the IDB in the words of the environment agency if they are not objecting to the proposals and the water treatment authority is saying we are not we are capable of addressing that and it's not solely about Utter's Drove it's about the other water treatment assets that they have at their disposal then it is hard to see that you have a sustainable reason for refusal that officers and the local planning authority can point to to justify refusal of the application instead what you've got is a series of conditions which is obviously the process that you have to go through if before we refuse an application are conditions capable of mitigating that impact and I think there are a couple of points in which the conditions that we have discussed and indeed the IDB representative also highlighted could be made more explicit around the way that surface water is actively monitored not just managed in order so condition 34 particularly in order to be able to address the points that they were making around the need for telemetry and for early warning and effective collective management of that impact so chair I think I've heard proposals or suggestions to amend conditions 32 to introduce that more explicit and overt requirement for monitoring of and control of water at source and condition 34 to include an element of active monitoring as opposed to kind of waiting and seeing which relates to the telemetry point of the temporary storage of water so that either it's released early in the process earlier than it would otherwise be released to assist in the effective management by the IDB and others of the swaves you drain or it's held on site so that it makes matters no worse than the existing circumstances and I think technical bodies with the exception of the IDB including the LLFA who also have responsibility for managing flood risk and surface water are satisfied with those arrangements Okay Councillor Hawkins want you to come back yesterday's so um the request by swaves IDB to be able to hold the water on the site when the whatever that's is is is closed is that something that could be added to condition 32 was it 34 Stephen it's covered by condition 34 as far as I can see but what I would suggest is that in the third line of that condition where it says until a scheme for temporary storage so after which we add active monitoring which goes to the point around telemetry and management of surface water on that parcel has been submitted to improve in writing and I think adding that provision also that relates to development parcels but I think if we can also add monitoring into condition 32 in the ahead of the schedule of requirements where it says each of the landscape element shall include in the second paragraph maximise so the one two fifth line down maximise use of measures to monitor and control water at source as far as practical I think that it was it's written into the flood risk assessment which is an incorporated document into the planning permission in the event that permission is granted and which will frame the more detailed suds appraisals on each scheme but it but I think those two changes serve to at least draw it more overtly into the arena of consideration in each case recognising council of health point we might not all be here but okay but that that still doesn't when when the village consultant said they they didn't have the additional they didn't have this pace for the additional oh what was the phrase gosh please bear with me I think the statement was there was no additional what they have on the site now doesn't include any additional space for water when the sluice is closed so I think I don't know if officers want to come back on that but I think they've given a view on what they think the condition should how we can can do work which is why I asked the question and then Harry said yes we need to consider having additional space although it might affect the master plan to remember I mean before we as I said before we decide anything before we go to decision or anything we will be displaying all the amended and additional conditions on screen so everyone who is minded to approve can be content with the conditioning because as Steven said earlier this does need to be agreed now before we do make a decision on it okay with that members I've just been reminded actually we do bit of admin we do need to agree to continue past the four hour mark given we've been here for more than four hours so members good thank you very much okay members I will ask if anyone else has any more points they want to make in the debate and then I think we've had points of view from both sides I think after that we will then go to reasons for refusal and conditions should we approve councillor Bradman please thank you chair I'm just referring to the point before in the letter from the middle level commissioner engineer it says if these discharges are allowed to occur there will be a 25% increase in the design capacity of the design flows for swavy sea drain and the web's hole pump the massive increase in cross-catchement flows has not been modelled and the board are both surprised and angry if this has been approved but I think maybe relating to the point that we were concerned about however I just wanted my actual question was related to maintenance money for maintenance and who will be responsible now I notice in 32 surface water reserve matters detail on page 140 of the paper version the strategy for each development parcel or strategic engineering and landscape elements shall include things including F and a management and maintenance plan and I just wanted to be sure that we have absolutely got it that there will be a plan required in the reserve matters that will identify who is responsible for maintenance of the drainage infrastructure once it's been designed and built Yes, Mr Kelly the responsibilities for maintenance and management of drainage infrastructure is set out in the water resources legislation not in running legislation we can't usurp that the responsibility is the IDB angle in water and for that apparatus is covered Appreciate that's for the sort of national infrastructure but I was actually concerned about on the development the where there is permeable paving and where there are suds I want to have the management of those tied down closely So there are certain adoption arrangements now I think angle in water have taken on responsibility for things like adopting certain elements the drainage system including surface water sud schemes because of the national problem Homes England are in the process of exploring the long term management of all of the north stone sites including consideration things like trusts and so on but there will be address For example it would be extremely unfair if this responsibility landed on any town council it would just be too big I'm sure they're very capable of taking it on their shoulders but they won't have the money to pay for it so I think we need to I think the point is when the reserve matters comes forward is it needs to be made clear who's responsible for what and I think that point has been noted by officers Okay that speakers This is probably more to do with a question on condition I'll do it really quickly Back this morning the internal drainage board mentioned about a larger pump to assist with light water outflows I just wondered if that was anything that's been taken on board as regards the conditions Yeah, not sure if any officers want to come back on that the question was around the IDB making a recommendation that we condition a larger pump to cope with the increased development not sure if we can condition that but that's a question to officers I don't think we have sufficient clarity on the size and format of that pump and as I said there are responsibilities on the IDB as the drainage body responsible for the swaves to drain to implement measures necessary but they are also a statutory body with that responsibility in the same way that we don't know the requirements on anglin water for the water treatment works investment the difficulty in terms of for example if you were to impose a 106 obligation would be the extent to which the provision of that pump was associated solely with this development as opposed to every other source of water in the swaves drain that effectively utilises the pump itself for benefit and so I think there would be a difficulty in terms of the community infrastructure levy regulations to attribute solely the cost of a pump to this development compared with every single other form of development or activity that generates a discharge into the swaves drain so the test of a section 106 is it reasonably related in scale and kind of development as one of the statutory tests on a section 106 obligation and I'll defer to Stephen Reed but I think it will be difficult to ascribe singularly this development as a responsibility for that piece of additional infrastructure such that we could quantify a cost or indeed it would the cost would actually be sufficient to cover the replacement of the physical infrastructure Can I come back after Stephen Reed? I don't know if Mr I'm not sure if Mr Reed wants to comment at all In relation to the silregs I think Mr Kelly's point is absolutely right the difficulties account you know you didn't seek to recover a contribution from phase 3a so I think there are difficulties under the silregs about seeking to require an additional contribution from this phase So you're saying the cost of that would fall on the IDB if they decided at a later date that that was needed However we are talking about telemetry and active monitoring so if that active monitoring to me means that you don't assume something to necessarily be the case until you've measured it so if it was deemed like later that would be a wise thing to do Have we missed the boat completely? Like can that not be sort of implemented in any way later? There is already a contribution that came out of Milstow at the beginning to Webthole Sluice but I think the point here is that at this moment in time because Anglin Water and the Environment Agency haven't finalised the discharge arrangements so in terms of the process that Anglin Water, the Environment Agency and one would hope the IDB will be engaged with over the next 24 months or so it is to assess the infrastructure requirements at Utton's Drove to then work out whether or not the Environment Agency are prepared to consent to a certain level of discharge from that site into the Swavesy Drain and then obviously the implications on the Swavesy Drain and Webthole Sluice will then arise from that process at this moment in time there is nothing that we've got that allows us to quantify a process which the EA and Anglin Water haven't concluded and in fact I've only just very recently begun in order to be able to quantify that effect as I said there was a contribution built into the original 106 Agreement for North Stoke to facilitate an upgrade it was £128,000 or so but in this case we haven't got a consented regime of discharge to be able to quantify the additional Okay, thank you Worth noting for the minutes councillor Richard Williams had to leave at 20-3 so he's no longer in the meeting councillor Heather Williams please Thank you just some clarification from officers please so I think and this was mentioned when sorry I forgot the gentleman's name spoke on behalf of the internal drainage board was about there were conditions that were allocated on Phase 1, 2 and 3A and some sites within Swayvesey that is not being conditioned on this site so is that an oversight in relation I think to the new pump or obviously in relation to drainage or is there a specific reason why it hasn't been done on this one site Okay, I think Mr Kelly is going to come back on that because of the scale of this scheme perhaps explains why the conditions that are on those two small sites in Swayvesey which were very explicit about telemetry perhaps it hasn't come out but we are intending for a similar arrangement to exist in terms of provision of telemetry and my reference into the changes to conditions 32 and 34 to make more clearer the requirement for monitoring in terms of the water levels of this development were intended to capture that Can I make a suggestion that because it's very difficult for us as well about having the word in that condition that if committee has decided to approve this and it is subject to you know, delegated and looking into other issues if there is this condition that has been on all these other applications it does seem logical that we would apply it to this one as well so you know and I accept sometimes you know things get missed and everything else so I appreciate that and it's a substantial document and everything else but I think it does sound illogical to have applied it to bigger sites and smaller sites and not this one so can we have that looked into if this is passed and conditioned again like I was saying before about the transport I think the more consistent we are in the conditioning the more effective they are so we've got it on all the other phases can we have it on this one as well please Sure, okay I think we're as I said I don't think there's going to be an issue with that and obviously again we will go through all of the conditions in detail before we make a decision one way or the other on this just to make sure everyone's on the same page Just to point out in the letter it does explain it here it says the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Partnership has this is the letter from the Swaybusy Internal Drainage Board from the middle level commissioner engineer and he says the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Authority has previously imposed similar planning conditions on two sites in Swaybusy Village these are the ones that Mr Wildersfield was talking about including the Bloor Homes site on Land South West of Fenderaton Road Swaybusy i.e. conditions four surface water management and five sluice of planning permission oh sorry sluice of planning permission S231518 RM I think it's those conditions there hoping would be applied in this case sure okay I think officers have noted that I've got two more speakers and then I'm going to try and round this up Councillor Khan then Harvey It's good I just wanted more information we're concerned about the serious provisions that they're planned that it's not clear it's not the concern that it might not work that's not something that we are actually able to do anything about but what I do wonder is in during the phasing development when we had reserved matters we have more information on the plans are we able to decide the speed of which development in the light of the actual development progress that is made on sewage provision in the future until we make conditions or perhaps an information point in the everyday permission okay for officers want to comment from the conversations we've had with Anglian Water as I said earlier on there they're undertaking their 2025 asset management planning for 2025 to 2030 they've indicated that they have capacity at this moment in time for treatment up until the middle of that time period and that over the next 24 months they'll be putting in place together with the environment agency the next phase of plans including and people of touchfulness the way in which foul treatment is assigned to the suite of different sites in this locality upon which they will then plan their investment they haven't objected or said we need to put in place any limitations on headroom at this moment in time in terms of treatment capacity and the letter that was referred to I think earlier in the meeting by the environment agency which did initially reflect a concern around that because of the assignment of untreated foul water from Campbell West from the conversations the environment agency have had with Anglian Water they have also indicated that there is no need for a condition of that nature because they presumably have confidence in the treatment capabilities and the investment plans of Anglian Water so there isn't an argument from the planning authority to introduce an obligation which is not required by the agency's response board but even though we don't know what the position will be up to 2030 it's because there's a process that they have to go through with over the next 24 months that will settle that unfortunately that's the nature of the way the water industry works okay thank you for that and councillor Harvey okay thank you chair I think with this application my main concern has been with the flood risk and mitigating that and I suppose I was slightly concerned when the developers made their presentation that in designing against the one and the 200 year event and then a margin on top of that they have perhaps taken into account the externalities or because they're outside of their control and particularly things such as a potential change in the water level in the greatest affecting the downstream rates and also climate change affecting the water table levels over an extended period and those things feeding into how much capacity would be in those ponds when the 200 year event hits in other words that's no good if the pond is already half full perhaps but I think I'm sort of comforted by what Steven Kelly has told us about the meaning of the telemetry and active management I think the active management is quite a key thing in that relation because it would enable management to anticipate the 200 year event and therefore I think perhaps if we could highlight the active management element in the conditioning that would be very helpful Aside from that I apologise for my lateness committee I think it would actually be wrong for me to vote on this because I did miss part of the presentation so I'll be abstaining Okay members I think we've had everyone contribute to the debate now so what I'm proposing on doing is going through firstly any conditions that we're looking to amend or add to the application should permission be granted and then after that reasons for refusal should the committee look to refuse this so I'm going to ask Mr Kelly if he would mind putting up on the screen the amended conditions as we've been discussing Thanks Chair I'll try and share my screen to allow me to do that So these are amendments to the conditions and there's one additional condition that was suggested by that references Councillor Williams's point and I've put in capitals in red the suggested amendment so this is condition 32 This is page 140 of the agenda Thank you where I think the objective was around maximising the use of measures to monitor and control water at source Now Councillor Williams made a point around what could you not just replay a replica I think Councillor Bradman may be not replicate the conditions on the Bloor scheme in Swayze which I'm familiar with but this is more about a much larger development it's about 10 times the size and hence the reason for the incorporation of that into this strategy rather than a separate condition we could expand upon that but there would be a degree of duplication if we were to use the Bloor homes condition and this one so Chair it's up to the committee whether or not they delegate to me to encapsulate that Bloor homes condition explicitly referring to telemetry which I don't have in front of me or whether or not they're satisfied that the monitoring and control water source is a component of it if I just move on to the end of that because there's another point where this point around active monitoring is captured and I'll come back to these at the point around paving but on condition 34 there were two points raised but the active monitoring and management of surface water on that parcel references back to condition 32 and then the point around telemetry there's a separate point here which is that Councillor Hawkins was asking whether we could address the opportunity within the that the applicants identified to optimise the capacity of that storage facility and I think that's a potential way of capturing that ambition then return to the point that was made around drainage early in our discussions this morning I'm suggesting that you could expand although it's covered in the flood risk assessment which I said is a document that's captured in the planning application the particular concerns that were raised around permeable paving and associated sustainable urban drainage design considerations could be captured I suggest by a changing to part B of that condition so Chair I don't know whether you want me to move on to the construction management plan but is there any I think as drainage is pretty the main concern I've heard raised do any members want to make any comments on those proposed changes to conditions councillors Bradnham then Hales then Hawkins Thank you Chair just to remind us what we're asking for that monitoring for the point was that in the IDB letter it said the suggested higher discharge rates came with the caveat that an exemplar swavesy drain management maintenance regime was in place in perpetuity with a storage system on the development so you've covered that but it was linked by telemetry to the web's whole sluice to prevent discharge when the sluice is closed and I just wondered whether it would be useful to have just that wording about the telemetry to prevent discharge when the sluice is closed because that's the whole point of it maybe the people feel I'm sure the officers will confirm but I don't think that will be an issue including that in the condition officers if you'd like to confirm that and that's fine with your agreement we can certainly encapsulate that within the more explicitly within the condition itself sorry I haven't done that today okay on councillor Hales please Just to share through you to Mr Kelly on your I think it's further up on the screen um you talked about a plan being put forward together but no no development should take place I think actually it was wasn't it it was a wording for that to do with the the earlier part 32 was it either way basically a plan should be put in place yeah before any development commences are we permitted to put in there and the strategy for delivery because if you remember one of the speakers earlier said that there's lots of stuff in the plans but none of it's been delivered on on bits and pieces so I'd kind of quite like if we could nail down developers especially round this particular subject that they will deliver it perhaps either before the houses are occupied or whatever you know a bit like infrastructure thanks I think Mr Kelly's going to respond yeah it might not be clear but um the way that because this is a large outline with lots of reserve matters and lots of phases the requirement the way the conditions are crafted is to make sure that the requirement is for that phase that it implements the measures as they're approved but by necessity there may well be several applications for effectively the same condition respective of each phase and so the way that the way that certainly around drainage it's being dealt with it's you can see on the screen the development of each development and lands shall be carried out in accordance with the approved details so no so no building pursuant to that development parcel for which proof of resource shall be occupied and so such a time as the approved detailed surface water measures have been fully completed so the objective there is to make sure that we cover that implementation point off and there was a wider point that that gentleman highlighted around other amenities and other facilities and that is covered by condition 12 and a what's called secondary mixed use zone development framework that's a snazzy title that we came up with I think but effectively requires that the reserve matters for that phase sets out how it's going to be implemented and so on to try and make sure that there's a phasing agreed around that phasing was through you chair to be fair it was the amenity probably takes a place in my head with regards to the infrastructure and the civil engineering required to make sure people don't get wet feet councillor Hawkins do you want to make a point yes I did I think for me the word monitor doesn't it's not specific enough in that I don't see where it says it's telemetry they can monitor it in some other way that they might think of is there any way to make it more specific and also we talk about the surface water thing being agreed well agreed by whom with whom is there any way of ensuring that with the IDP actually is part of this agreement Steven I I think we can we can firm up and expand upon this monitoring point as you see on the on the screen to reference remote sensing for example as an example but if you can delegate the word recognising the IDP's reference to the Bloor Homes condition I'm happy to have a look at the two of them in terms of I think including the IDP there are limitations the requirement is that the planning authority approves conditions there's no other requirement obviously as part of this particular these conditions we would be consulting the IDP on those measures because as the flood risk assessment highlights that three-way dialogue between the EA and the planning authority and the IDP is an important part of how we would determine whether those measures were acceptable so I should include the LLFA as well as four ways so I don't think there's a need to require it in consultation with the IDP for it to be a reasonable condition it has to be discharged by the planning authority and then when the Stephen Reed wishes to comment but authorities that have sought to incorporate third party approvals into conditions have sometimes come unstuck with that process okay Councillor Harvey this is on the wording of the conditions I just wondered if it's is it possible to incorporate into conditions that just following my previous comments that there is efficient capacity to absorb the 200 year event is that a condition it's possible to put on you know in terms of there's an ongoing responsibility to maintain a volume a collection volume available to absorb that 200 year event it is the design parameters that the flood risk assessment are built upon and therefore is captured in the in the application and thereby would be captured in the planning permission where one grant is thank you okay okay Stephen I don't know if you wanted to go on to the next set of conditions because once someone transports yes so the apologies we had a wide-ranging discussion around the construction environment management plan which is condition 39 and I think concerns around two elements in that condition the first was around Councillor Wilson's comments around control systems to manage not just access and egress but actually the routing of those vehicles you can see it does already include temporary haul routes but the suggestion is that by supplementing carC with highway signage strategy they're inserting control systems I'll put them in capitals but just so it stands out and approach to monitoring and enforcement and I noted the comments around the discussion around should we be explicit in preventing heavy construction vehicles associated with development from using unsuitable roads through local villages whether that needed to be said but I've suggested it could be captured through the condition if that was the committee's wishes I think that's all that's the only change that I'm proposing to condition 39 okay Councillor Wilson please I'm just wondering about the use of unsuitable cos that's open to interpretation it's very subjective yeah understood just going to see what officers thoughts are on potentially using a different adjective my colleague's suggesting we say residential but we've heard that the main high road through Swayze is an all-use road I think it's difficult for us to be explicit in a condition in terms of a definition I'm open to suggestions obviously the construction management plan itself is looking as as Tam Perry's highlighted to manage vehicle routines and I think the purpose of including this form of wording was clearly there's a matter of judgment on what's a suitable or unsuitable road but there may well be circumstances where there may well be an only road that can be used even if it is perhaps of a substandard width or other parameters that we might try to to use I think the objective is to be clear about driving all construction traffic onto the high order roads so the A roads and the and the trunk road network okay councillor Hawkins please thank you chair I think the problem we have here is we know there are definitely some villages that have had severe problems with construction vehicles delivery vehicles travelling through them sometimes the middle of the night you know causing potential problems to some of those houses along the road we've had William over and I mean I do remember having to call a meeting of all the developers on phase one and having an an agreed way to do the monitoring which N and Q were supposed to have put in place which they still haven't put in place so we need to do something make sure that we put something in now that will prevent this happening specific roads need to be knit or villages need to be identified I'm sorry we do then if officers have any further comments on that do they I think the slight I mean as as Tam Perry's highlighted through the transport assessment work we've highlighted a range of potential impacts that an an area of influence in terms of surrounding roads and the the transport assessment does discuss the potential implications for a number of those villages I think in in potentially eight to 10 years time this development isn't due to complete until 2035 or something like that the circumstances and the dynamics might be slightly different and so the very last phase is we might have a different view about the assignment of traffic and so on I think in in some respects we'll have to adapt and evolve that there are through the design measures for traffic calming that we discussed earlier on and council Bradnell highlighted there is an expectation of active monitoring that will allow for investment in all vehicle traffic calming measures over the over the life of the development but we could there's no problem to list every village that we think at the moment will be impacted but the danger is is you then exclude villages that might be impacted in ways that are more remote but which we don't know about at the moment councillor Bradnell thank you could I just suggest a form of words around priority so could we not say something on the lines of wherever possible the route should be along the A14, B10, 50 as a priority unless no other alternative is possible so we do it as a priority order so A roads unless no B road is available something like that okay I see we actually have some from the highways authority Jess Tuttle who's indicated he wishes to speak to us on this matter Mr Tuttle I was just going to say my suggestion for this would be that if you put control system and approach to monitoring enforcement to prevent heavy vehicles associated with the development from using roads otherwise indicated in the construction management plan so what you'd then do is you would draw the roads out that we want them to use ie the B10, 50 and the A14 then we would say you will only use those roads those roads then if the construction management plan needs updating at some point you know because there's a change in circumstances we can then tie that back to the routing in the plan I think that will probably be a sort of acceptable way for members from what I've heard so far councillor Wilson let's come back on then so then in order to bring cotton in that catchment I would like to see the A10 in there as well because it's very easy for HDVs to go along the A14 and then mat run down the B10, 49 through cotton them to cut off the corner going to water beach okay I think that is acceptable to include as well so on okay so we don't have the exact wording on the screen but as the gentleman from the county council has just indicated plus plus the inclusion of the A10 in that as well I think that's the proposal that we delegate officers to go away and alter the condition should we vote to approve this today to read as that councillor Rippeth and then Williams I think my point has just been articulated by councillor Wilson and the gentleman before councillor Williams thank you I think the the wording actually that the officer from the county council just suggested because I think it is a valid point we need to make sure this is future proofed it's so so long we could have an express way we could have anything going along in the in the near future in that area all sorts of things could change we could even I don't know have rail that means it arrives by train that would be nice wouldn't it so what I'm saying is we don't know really when this is going to finish so we need to make sure we I don't think we can be so prescriptive and I was just going to suggest through local villages especially in residential or special care in residential areas or something like that just to then that gets across our point that it is those residential settlements that we're most concerned about and my my point about road repairs for any roads that are used is that encompassed in there I'm just going to ask it rather than try and find it Stephen I don't believe say that it isn't incorporated isn't it but there are provisions in the highways act for the highway authority to be able to investigate and resolve those matters many people say that haven't always done so but it's not necessarily something we can easily capture in the planning condition for the depth width that the extent of this particular scheme impact I think actually we have the highways officer wants to come back in again Jess Apologies I was just going to say that for the very localised roads what we've done before is we've put a condition on saying a pre pre commencement survey is undertaken to look at the the condition of the road and then one is taken and this I know this is a long time but or taken at intervals where the road is conditioned survey to see whether there's actually been any degradation as a result of construction traffic that might be something that could be considered in this case Councillor Williams Can I can I suggest that because on other issues I have to say I've always found it important to have that baseline and that reference point back so we know what's happened we've had that in other issues where we've wanted to take action but we don't have a comparable we don't have a comparisons so I think that's really important to include Okay Mr Kelly I think sorry I think the pre commencement survey absolutely I can add in to this it will be quite challenging in terms of ascribing degradation of the network on a scheme as big as this over this period of time to solely the development but if it assists the highway authority in their enforcement process then certainly putting in a perhaps an addition to the construction management plan to require pre commencement survey of the local highway network is something that we can add with your agreement to this condition Sure Okay Councillor Brandon And could that include the five culverts on Ramford Road? Not sure any comments on including the culverts? I think we can review the highway obviously the highway authority responsible for the culverts and so the pre commencement survey can I'm sure capture those obvious elements that form part of the public highway Is they form part of the sustainable drainage network? Do you remember they were the they were the outflow from Utlands Drove and the two outflows from the surface water drainage schemes that went through those culverts so ensuring that that water gets away was crucial to the success of the upstream at 3D Yeah the responsibility for maintaining those culverts is the responsibility of the county council though not the developer and so we can do a precondition survey absolutely understand the significance the drainage network but in some respects we need to draw some lines about where the developer survey stops because the foul sewers and all manner of other bits of infrastructure may well be impacted but if we can capture in the highways pre commencement survey the condition of the main drains on either side on the culverts then we will introduce it Thank you, thank you Were there any other conditions on your form Stephen? The only other condition that I had was councillor Heather Williams suggested an alternate an additional condition or in respect to the point that councillor Williams was making around the restriction of building heights along the B1050 this was a potential condition that would I think address that concern sorry I haven't got the drawing reference I'm going in front of me but and you'll forgive me for the spelling so sorry whilst I was talking I wasn't spell checking but it certainly reserves the provisions of the parameter plan and the drawing I was referring to in that xxx is the building heights parameter plan in order to capture the buildings facing on to that Okay so essentially it's a condition limiting the height of buildings on the edge of the B1050 the two stories Members is everyone happy to include that this is a new condition we're not editing an old one this is a new condition Do any members not want this to be included? No Okay so I think we'd like to include that please Stephen Members I think that's all the condition officers are picked up Are there any that have been discussed during debate and I haven't made any notes of these but are there any further conditions that members wish to add or equally edit? No I don't think so Okay With that then we will now also have to look at because some members said they are looking they would be voting against this we need to go through reasons for refusal I think the main reason I had down was environmental reasons predominantly around drainage and sewerage but I think we need to vocalise those so I'm pretty looking at officers here to help me with that if that's possible I think the objections that I heard from I think Councillor Roberts particularly and Councillor Williams around the implications of surface water drainage related to policy CC9 of the local plan which is about managing flood risk and it was the risk of flooding that was driving Councillor Roberts' concern I think in terms of why the application was unacceptable so it would I haven't got a form of precise words to share with you on the screen unfortunately but I think the reason would be on the basis of the failure of the scheme to ensure that risks of flooding in nearby in Swayvesey had not been adequately mitigated through the design of the surface water infrastructure and in the absence of clarity around the treatment of foul water and its discharge into Swayvesey drain does that capture them I think that's a concern A window chairman as well could we say as well the fact is that one of my concerns is and other people I think have the same view of our concerns that such a little consultation had taken part with the land drainage people you know nothing since 2019 so I don't know whether you could add that that there's been far too little actual consultation amongst and discussion amongst the important parties I don't think that's a reason that's part of the reason for a fusel obviously it would go to any planning appeal or public inquiry as a perhaps basis for the IDB's concerns Okay members so with that one reason for a fusel should we vote to refuse are there any further reasons that members who are thinking of refusing would like it refused on okay well with that members I think we're at the time when we need to make a vote take a vote on this so I'm going to ask Aaron if he could set up the vote please so members we're voting on whether to approve or refuse this application and for these are the reasons just outlined and if you're voting to approve with the conditions as amended and added so members if you press the blue button to register you're here the green button to vote in favour of approval red to vote against and yellow to abstain 10 so we're missing one more the vote hasn't come up on my microphone all right we'll we'll hold on till it's rectified yep okay we're going to rerun the vote then because of a technical issue so members same again blue button to register okay members we should we should be there now so blue button to register you're here green button to vote in favour of the of the developments red against and yellow to abstain now mine isn't working Jeff have you abstained or not voted so you voted abstain okay we're going to go old school we're going hands in the air okay members those for the third time those in favour of the development please show your hands three four five six seven in favour those against sorry eight in favour those against two and one abstention okay members we're voting we're going to vote on this again for the final time hands nice and high in the air please okay members if you'd like to vote in favour of the application please show your hands and Erin you can count seven four those against two against and abstentions one abstention good okay so that application is after a bit of faffing about approved okay everyone thank you very much for your patience today thanks to all those that took part in line online and in person members think the only thing left to note is our next meeting is next week Wednesday the ninth so yeah thank you very much everyone see you all then