Campaigners furious over homes plan

PLANNING chiefs are set to be subjected to a blitz of protests after publishing proposals for thousands of new homes in Cambridgeshire.

Furious countryside campaigners claim the county's "cherished landscape" faces ruin unless people act - and they are urging them to deluge the planners with angry letters.

The row has blown up over a document called the East of England Plan, which maps out where new housing might be sited in years to come.

The plan is being supervised by the East of England Assembly, and is due to be looked at by a special public inquiry, called an Examination in Public, later this year.

A version of the plan has appeared on the assembly's website and contains proposals which the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) claims were not expected to be on the agenda. Proposals include:

- A new settlement of 14,000-21,000 houses, provisionally called Cambridge Heath, at Six Mile Bottom

- A new settlement of 10,000 at Waterbeach by 2021

- A possible new town of 10,000 houses at RAF Wyton

- 8,000 homes at Hanley Grange near Sawston, 5000 of them by 2021

- 2,500 more houses at Cambourne, plus proposals for a fourth neighbourhood near Bourn airfield

- A possible development of almost 1,000 homes north of Ely

- 2,000 new homes in addition to the 8,000 already allocated at Northstowe.

Sean Traverse-Healy, of CPRE Cambridgeshire, said: "A number of these proposals have been published previously but many are not in the draft plan. Now it seems they are back in the frame.

"We urge people with concerns to write to their district council and the Examination in Public panel to voice their objections. Because many of these proposals were not contained in the draft plan, people have not been able to express their views.

"They all have serious and damaging implications for the environment and quality of life, such as increased traffic and loss of cherished landscape and character."

In a statement on its website, EERA said not all the sites on the list - called the Developer Proposal List - would be built on. It said: "The developer proposal list is a list of all of the sites put forward by developers in their representations made on the East of England Plan.

"The inclusion of a site within this list does not represent any view either favourable or unfavourable by EERA. The locations are indicative only and based on the written representations made by the developers."

- The Examination in Public is scheduled for November, and the public can comment on the proposals by writing to RSS Panel Office Block 1 Suite 8, Westbrook Centre, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1YG.

As reported in the Cambridge Evening News