THAKEHAM, the Sussex house-builders planning, outrageously, to build over thousands of acres of prime Cambridgeshire farmland, has gone into hiding.
After a fleeting foray into the public gaze in early December to announce its awful intention to plonk 25,000 homes across a vast swathe of countryside amounting to half the size of Cambridge, the speculative development company is unsurprisingly batting away questions over a proposal which would crush the identity and surrounding landscapes of nine villages in the south-west of the county.
In the middle of December, Bronterre News approached Thakeham with a series of questions central to a highly destructive scheme meeting fierce opposition, notably, understandably, from people living in the villages facing ruination – Barrington, Bassingbourn, Foxton, Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth, Orwell, Whaddon and Wimpole.
The company did not reply. Last week, in a call to the company’s Billingshurst headquarters querying its silence, we were told: “We are not talking to journalists at the moment.” No explanation was given.
The communication blackout is starkly and revealingly at odds with the open, all-friends-together, oh-so-deeply-green persona projected on Thakeham’s website over another treat the company has in store for Cambridgeshire – a plan for 400 homes at Comberton.
This waxes on about “20% Biodiversity net gain”, “new landscape planting”, wildlife corridors and bat-boxes.
But ask, as Bronterre has, whether, over the 25,000 homes proposal, Thakeham has carried out a comprehensive environmental impact assessment, to include a full carbon audit, and precisely what constituents of the existing natural environment within their proposed site parcel were included in these investigations, and there’ll be no reply.
We also wanted to know who carried out Thakeham’s research – assuming such has been carried out – how long the exercise took and if the outcome report was available for public-media examination. The company is silent on that, too.
Equally, the public is being kept in the dark over the number of landowners with whom Thakeham have purportedly reached agreement, and the number with whom they are currently in negotiation and expect to be in the future.
Without sufficient land, this ill-judged scheme is still-born. As for landowners, they need to realise they are not entitled to regard themselves as sealed-off entities, answerable to no-one but themselves and their creditors. Take away countryside and everyone is disadvantaged. Build over precious arable land in one of England’s most fruitful farming regions and we all pay the penalty in terms of loss of domestic food-growing capacity. Thakeham may not with impunity make inroads into food-supply sustainability.
This is why a plan to rip up thousands of acres of prime farmland is a million miles from nimbyism. So why is Thakeham refusing to tell us the total acreage it’s aiming for, and the approximate delineation of its proposed site?
How much of the land it seeks is currently part of the company’s land-bank portfolio? How close to existing villages would it be building?
Crucially, Thakeham says that ‘all that we do focuses on community, family and well-being’, offering as a sop that the new town and villages it proposes would be zero-carbon.
Therefore we asked: ‘Since your stated focus is on community, would Thakeham withdraw were it to become apparent that existing communities were by and large opposed to your proposals because they believed the realisation of your plans would be inimical to the well-being of the many existing communities that would be impacted, including to the families within those communities?’
This company stands damned by its own silence.
Landscapes are a lifeline. Erode them, and we lose food, wildlife…and our sanity
SITES FOR thousands of new homes have been put forward by developers and landowners as part of the continuing Local Plan process in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire.
As things stand, the plan will guide development in the Greater Cambridge region until 2040.
As part of the process, Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council – worked together as the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning (GCSP) service – put out a ‘call for sites’ to be considered for inclusion in the plan.
Developers and landowners submitted a total of 675 proposals covering 16,103 hectares – nearly 38,650 acres – and 170,000 to 200,000 homes, far more than could possibly be needed, meaning most of the suggestions will not proceed.
According to the Greater Cambridge Planning Service, the suggested sites have at the moment no planning status, and the councils have not made any judgment about which sites might be right for development.
“Sites will be rigorously tested for their suitability, for example looking at flood risk, landscape impact, transport access, and other factors. We will also consider their sustainability, and how they fit with the strategic direction of the plan. We will consult fully on any sites which may be included in the plan, as part of the plan-making process.”
In reality, however, how many homes will be needed, and how many anyway should we allow – taking into account a shrinking natural environment, and the consequent threats to the human spirit, to wildlife, to biodiversity as a whole, as well as the crying need to hang on to land for food-production and taking into account limits to future water supplies?
THE official consensus is that the Greater Cambridge area, which had 121,000 homes in 2017, is expected to need between 40,900 and 66,700 more homes by 2040.
There are already plans in place for 36,400 homes at Waterbeach, Cambourne West, Bourn Airfield and Northstowe, meaning the new Local Plan is expected to find room for somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 homes.
Developers and landowners have suggested new towns in the South Cambridgeshire countryside at Elsworth and Dry Drayton, along with major developments at Croxton, Madingley, Bourn, Cambourne, Babraham, Cherry Hinton and Teversham. Some 5,000 to 10,000 homes have been proposed for near Six Mile Bottom, and Trinity College wants to expand Cambridge Science Park north of the A14.
We need to say calmly but very emphatically: stop, and take a very deep breath.
This is all excessive, especially because of the things listed above in italics.
Proceeding at such a mad pace would ensure the destruction of environments we rely on for our sanity. It’s as serious as that.
Accurate population predictions are notoriously difficult to arrive at. But, above that, we need to break open one particular taboo and say, with great clarity: by any sensible calculation, population growth must be aligned with what the planet can support. And that may well mean people having fewer children.
Bronterre News 