The Employment Land Review undertaken by South Cambs and Cambridge City councils in 2012 in preparation for their joint Local Plan to 2031 forecasts there would be no further need for employment land in the south of the city. A further independent assessment of jobs and housing undertaken in 2015 for the Public Examination Inspector confirmed there was no justification for a jobs uplift for the new housing assessment.

Yet South Cambs has decided against its own forecast employment demand to 2031 that’s supporting its Local Plan to remove from the Green Belt farmland to the south of the Addenbrooke’s Biomedical Campus for further employment.

Is it a co-incidence that the site is owned by the cash strapped Cambridgeshire County Council and its re-designation for employment next to the Biomedical Campus will greatly increase its value?

The site although farmland is very sensitive in terms of ecology being adjacent to the Nine Wells nature reserve.

This change to the original joint Local Plan came about because the Inspector found flaws in the two councils’ 2012 Inner Green Belt Study.  As a result the councils commissioned in 2015 a further assessment of 19 sectors of Green Belt adjacent to the city to understand their importance to the purpose of the Green Belt.  This site was found important to Green Belt purposes, but nonetheless was identified – apart from those already released in the Local Plan – as the only new one as having potential for release from the Green Belt “without significant harm”!

Was South Cambs nobbled by the powerful multi-billion dollar, multi-international interests of those developing the Biomedical Campus?

And while the site’s ecological issues have been assessed – although there is doubt as to the interpretation of the ecological evidence by the consultant for South Cambs (that well known ecological concern Carter Jonas) there has been no study into the impact its potential employment delivery will have on the strategic transport assessment which underpins the two councils’ Local Plans.

Lib Dem councillors smell a rat here.