The Trumpington Meadows site is to the south west of the current village. The overall site is 154 hectares, with the River Cam marking its western border, including Byron's Pool in the north west corner. The Church and Anstey Hall are to the north east and Hauxton Road to the south east. The site encircles the Trumpington Park & Ride site. The site extends south west of the M11, towards Hauxton. The north east part of the site is in the City, while the majority of the area is in South Cambridgeshire District.
The site is perhaps best known as the home of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), which took over Anstey Hall Farm in 1950, and was itself taken over by Monsanto.
The plans for the Trumpington Meadows development have been produced by a partnership between Grosvenor and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), who acquired the site in 2004.
The outline planning application was approved by the Joint Development Control Committee for Cambridge Fringes on 20 February 2008. The Committee considered a detailed report from the Joint Planning Director and a number of updates and revisions (the report is 4.5 MB). Permission to proceed with the outline application was given in October 2009, after the S106 agreement was completed.
The initial planning application was submitted to Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire in July 2006 (City application 06/0706/OUT and District application S/1310/06/O). The latest version was submitted on 21 December 2007 (City application 08/0048/OUT and District application S/0054/08/O). The District Council Planning Web site has the original application from December 2007 (search for S/1310/06/O).
The approved plan includes 1200 dwellings on 30 hectares, a local centre, a primary school and community centre and a 60 hectare park. The housing and school will form a C-shape to the north, west and south of the current Park & Ride site. There will be a level of 40% of affordable dwellings across the site. There will be a spine road with two access points on Hauxton Road, the southern one opposite the new Addenbrooke's Access Road. When taken together with the proposed development on Glebe Farm, immediately to the east of Trumpington Meadows, these changes will create a distinctive southwestern edge to Cambridge.
The area to the west and south west of the housing development will be a country park with public access, including footpaths near the River Cam. This will be adjacent to Byron's Pool along the north western part of the site. The area to the south of the housing development alongside Hauxton Road will be farmland, some of which could be used to produce bio fuels. The parkland and farmland will extend to the south west of the M11, crossed by a footpath and cycle track from Hauxton to Trumpington.
The local Wildlife Trust has agreed to manage the country park.
The Association has welcomed the overall plans. It submitted a number of responses to the application: general comments (July 2007), specific issues with the plans for the open space (August 2007) and comments on the September 2007 (October 2007) and December 2007 revisions (January 2008) (Word files, each 500K).
The Association has continued to make responses to individual aspects of the plans as they have been submitted for planning approval.
The project is complicated by the area being administered by both Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC). The majority of the site is currently in South Cambridgeshire (Haslingfield parish).
The District Council had been considering whether to create a new parish. The Residents' Association and others have argued that it would be better to transfer the area to the north east of the M11 into the City, so that all of the built up area was part of Trumpington. SCDC has defer its parish review pending clarification from the government as to whether there will be a review of the overall district/city boundary.
Infrastructure work on the site is underway. The former buildings on the site were cleared in 2009, including the offices and greenhouses dating from the use of the site by the Plant Breeding Institute. A new access road has been constructed to the rear of the John Lewis building. Work on the link road through the development started in 2011. The primary school has full planning permission, with a target opening date of early 2013.
There have been major archaeological excavations on the site, with finds including Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, Iron Age activity and the earliest evidence of Trumpington village in the area just south of the church (Saxon houses and graves). The Local History Group visited the excavation in May 2011.
There was a public art walk around the development and the country park on 9 October 2011: see the report on the visit, The Do (8MB PDF), with thanks to Sam Wilkinson, InSite Arts, and Caroline Wright.
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Email: admin@trumpingtonresidentsassociation.org