The most significant planning development in Histon and Impington for decades could see the village become the site for a major extension of Cambridge Science Park.
The site is next to the Impington Village College, bounded by the Busway, and includes one of the plots currently under consideration for the new sewage works serving Cambridge.
Trinity College, which owns the Science Park, has taken an option on 400 acres of greenbelt farmland owned by the Chivers Farms Ltd and already purchased a plot of land that would provide vehicle access onto Butt Lane.
Green ambitions
Money for the development of the Science Park has been put up by Chinese investor Tsinghua University Holdings, who in 2018 pumped £200m into Trinity’s plans to extend its site by creating a groundbreaking biohub. The usage of the site north of the A14 is expected to be for light engineering and manufacturing rather than research.
The vision is for a space-age site that invests in the latest technology to keep its environmental impact to a minimum. Trinity has pledged publicly that it will have a very low carbon footprint and provide alternative transport options that would minimise car use.
Opportunities and threats
All the proposed land has been earmarked on the new Local Plan as having the potential to be considered for non-residential use, but Trinity’s proposal is for only a part of the site to be used for business premises. Over half would be become a new public green space. The buildings would be at the centre of the site, surrounded by a country park which would be available for use by local people, and the Parish Council is talking to the developers about what that would mean for the village.
The proposals are nonetheless likely to be controversial, with clear advantages and disadvantages to the land being developed in this way. There would be huge potential for local employment and an opportunity for the village to extend much-needed green space that could be used for sport and leisure. There may also be associated opportunities for better facilities at the Recreation Ground and at IVC. But the plans would take a huge slice of greenbelt land and there are likely to be fears for the impact on wildlife, traffic and local residents.
Decisions on whether the proposals should be accepted by planners are likely to take some while. A joint Local Plan for Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire has yet to be agreed, and that has to happen before decisions are made on individual sites.
Although it is too early for any local consultation to begin, when the decisions are made planners will be assessing the merits of the proposals against criteria set out in the Local Plan. These will include an assessment of impact on wildlife, and there is time for local people to provide evidence of rare species that live on the land to ensure that this is taken fully into account when the time comes.
Those with knowledge of the land should record their evidence formally, to ensure it is taken into account. Details of how to do this are provided by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Environmental Records Centre.
Parish involvement
Parish Councillors have had earlier confidential briefings on the plans and can see the potential positives and negatives. They said: “Even though these plans are at the very earliest of stages, the Parish Council has set up a group to lead the Parish Council review and response to this development and seek to get the best possible outcome for the community if the development does get the go ahead. The group has already started to look at the traffic issues.”
