Mr and Mrs A W Dyer

22 Crow Hill Lane

Great Cambourne

CAMBRIDGE

CB3 6AW

The Director Of Planning
South Cambridgeshire District Council
South Cambridgeshire Hall
Hills Road
Cambridge
CB2 1PB

30^th July 2003

Dear Sir,

I refer to the above application for Cambourne and suggest that it be denied with a recommendation that no further attempts to change the original masterplan for Cambourne be made.

My reasons for this stance are as follows:

1. Cambourne was sold to me as a series of villages connected by a country park and golf course. I feel that a 62% increase in the number of homes, from 3,000 to 4,859 would destroy any chance of achieving a village feel. It is also worth noting the slow progress on the golf course and completion of parkland.
2. A settlement of 4,859 homes would surely require a secondary school, but this doesn’t seem to be included in the application. At nearly 5,000 homes there would be hundreds of children being ferried to and from school outside Cambourne. This presents a serious safety issue.
3. Cambourne would be a building site for another 15 to 16 years at the current rate of progress. I always knew that there would be ongoing building works at Cambourne, but was told that the planned completion date for Cambourne was around 2010. I plan to settle in Cambourne, but the thought of enduring dirty roads, building noise/traffic and dust for another decade and a half does not appeal to me. Nor does the thought of bringing up a family in this environment. If the current plans had been shown to me, I would never have moved to Cambourne.
4. The "Cambourne Enhanced" plan risks destroying relations between the community and the developers. These are already fragile due to the perceived unreasonable stance on many facilities, particularly those which are deemed to be market dependant, such as shops, cafes and public houses. There are scant provisions of such life enhancing facilities in Cambourne, and this should be taken into account when considering an enlarged application.
5. Larger new settlements are being planned for Cambridgeshire that will meet the housing needs of the area. An additional 1,859 homes in Cambourne would be a drop in the ocean compared to the wider housing needs of Cambridgeshire, but would have a large detrimental impact on the residents of Cambourne. It would be better to pour more resources into the development of settlements that are designed to be large, and which have the infrastructure to support such communities.
6. The transport infrastructure of Cambourne is not even suitable for a small community as we are currently. I can see no evidence that this will change in the short term. The provision of public transport for Cambourne is infrequent, unreliable and unpleasant to use (old buses are routinely used on the number 14 route, which are often noisy and uncomfortable). The road network around Cambourne consists mainly of single carriageways. I am usually greeted by a traffic jam on the slip road onto the A428 in the morning, which I can only see getting worse. This needs to be addressed before any enlargement of Cambourne should be considered.