Reporter 22/1/03: Report of Discussion

Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 14 January 2003. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following topic of concern to the University:

The failure to give the Regent House as promised two years ago an opportunity to know of the progress of plans for development of north-west Cambridge (see the Registrary's Notice, p. 306).

Professor G. R. EVANS:
Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor,

Do we want to get bigger and bigger?

In the Council's Annual Report (22), p. 421, there is reference to the projected expansion into north-west Cambridge. In its paragraph on 'looking to the future, and the need to ensure that our successors have enough options'. 'The University's land in north-west Cambridge, in the area bounded by Madingley Road, Huntingdon Road, and the M11, … was the subject of a preliminary Report in May 2000 (Reporter, 1999-2000, p. 724) and an Exhibition in the Senate- House in March 2001.' Our subject is the failure to give the Regent House as promised two years ago (Reporter, 14 February, 2001, pp. 466-7), an opportunity to know of the progress of plans for development of north-west Cambridge.

This paragraph in the Council's Annual Report this year mentions as part of the grand expansion plan for the University that land 'has now been identified in the deposit draft Structure Plan for University-related development, subject to confirmation after the Examination in Public in the Michaelmas Term 2002.' It adds that 'The Council expect to report to the Regent House about development in this area later in the academical year 2002-03.' That will not do. We should have been consulted before things got this far.

'Major efforts,' says the Council's Report 'went into a draft Structure Plan, in particular the case for allocating sufficient land so that the University has the option of continued expansion in the medium term'. Whether we wish to expand energetically at all is a major policy-decision and ought to have been put to the University.

At present we are expanding piecemeal as each interest-group gets the money or the go-ahead for a new building. It is becoming something of a race to have the latest new building. The Sunday Telegraph of 13 October 2002, reported a 'senior University official' in October 2002, as saying: 'Each project is approved on a first come first served basis. A lot of this is to do with who shouts loudest as opposed to having an overall strategic plan as to where the University is going'. The option of staying much the size we are at present, and continuing to get about on bicycles, does not appear to have been given much priority behind the scenes, but we out here have not been asked. We have a right to be asked about these big preliminary policy questions before action is taken to use our land to change our University out of all recognition.

A few quotations from my cuttings collection:

'An overambitious and piecemeal building programme at Cambridge University has plunged it into record debt with students likely to be charged an extra £4,000 each a year to meet the costs' (Sunday Telegraph, 13 October 2002) 'A spokesman for the University insisted that the building programme was under control.' (Sunday Telegraph, 13 October 2002). 'The Estate Management and Building Service recently won two research contracts from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Fund for the Development of Good Management Practice. One is about risk-sharing between the University and its consultants.' (EMBS website 2002).

All right, then. What about some risk-sharing discussions involving the actual University as distinct from the EMBS Director and his team and its committees?

Can we afford it?

The Development Office's own list of the purposes for which it wants to attract money, displayed on its website in late 2002, is somewhat coy about the 'empire-building'. It speaks modestly of 'support for students, such as scholarships and hardship funds'; of 'renovation or replacement of outdated department buildings and equipment'; of 'new teaching and research posts'; of 'new amenities, such as sports facilities'. It sets a benevolent and charitable tone. 'Meeting student and staff needs are the University's priority', is its claim. But in other sentences the buildings revealingly come first. 'The Development Office works to secure philanthropic funding to support the University's funding needs for buildings, academic and research posts, and student services.'

'The freeze on the filling of vacant offices and the very heavy reductions in the funds available for equipment and the refurbishment and upgrading of accommodation, are not sustainable even in the short term' (Annual Report of the General Board, Reporter, p. 425). If that is so, why are we rushing on regardless with 'expansion' plans and that 'buildings' programme that is one of the largest in Europe' (Alec Broers, Guardian, 12 February 2002).

Do we want to develop north-west Cambridge anyway?

The drive into Cambridge from the West, coming in from the direction of Bedford and along the Madingley Road, was pleasantly green when I took up my first University teaching office in 1980. The tower of the University Library could be seen in the distance across the flat landscape. The first signs of the presence of the University were its Veterinary and Astronomical outposts. Then came Churchill College, a few large houses behind big trees, and one was turning along the Backs and gazing across at the spectacular rear view of King's College.

In 1989 there was a Report on University Development and another on Site Strategy (Reporter, 29 June, 1988-89, pp. 783-90 and pp. 791-808). The claim of the 1960s that it was essential to replace 'the present ageing huts' (Reporter, 1964-65, p. 548) had gone. There was still real concern for the protection of the site. 'The area is of considerable environmental sensitivity, and requires planning with the greatest possible care'. That was still the theme of the Report of 1991 on the Development of the West Cambridge Area, which spoke of 'the attractive views of the countryside beyond the City fringe, as seen from West Cambridge' as something 'which should be safeguarded'.¹That Report put the stress on how 'green' and environmentally friendly it was all going to be. It made much of the need to preserve and enhance the environment of the area.

In recent years, the excitements of being able to make yet another announcement of a big building funded by a big name have transformed the view and emptied the University's coffers. There has been a tendency to chase the cash first and do the sums later, so that inadequate allowance has been made for the huge costs of maintenance of the new buildings. Sometimes the contract with the funder was not tied up properly before trees were felled, enormous holes were dug, and cranes criss-crossed on the skyline. And sometimes the whole deal has come unstuck at an embarrassing and expensive stage. 'Marconi pledged £40m to fund a new Communications Research Centre and Research Programme,' the Board of Scrutiny mentioned in its 2002 Report; 'though we assume that Marconi is no longer interested,' it added drily. (There is a rumour that we should have got some of the money if the Old Schools had been more efficient and on the ball for once.)

I for one have grown wary of bland promises emerging from the Old Schools that it is all in hand, all under control, and we shall be told about it all in good time. It is not only the 'spin' that would have us believe their motives are of the highest. There is also the losing sight of firm promises, even legally binding ones. Seventy years ago, Professor H. F. Newall, the first Director of the Solar Physics Observatory, sold his field to the University. It was a good big field, 32 acres fronting onto the Madingley Road, along which Cambridge was entered from the west. He let the University have it for a sum below its market price, but there was a condition.² The Reporter of 3 February 1931, records the stipulation that the Observatories should be protected from 'undesirable conditions on the land'³, and the conveyance was duly drawn up to incorporate it. The Directors of the Observatories were always to be consulted and were to be allowed to object to any proposals detrimental to such important matters as a clear view of the night sky for the University's astronomers. But they and their successors (in 1946 the University Observatory and the Solar Physics Observatory were amalgamated and placed under the direction of the Professor of Astrophysics) have not been consulted, and the stipulation has faded away into folk memory. When the plans for the new Microsoft ('Bill Gates') Computer Laboratory emerged in 1999 the old covenant was still in force but no longer kept in mind. Until Professor Roger Griffin alerted the Director of the Institute of Astronomy and the Professor of Astrophysics to their considerable rights, indeed their rights of veto, there was no consultation. So I think it is wise not to trust the assurances we are being given without any published detail about this new huge development to the north-west.

The Vice-Chancellor included in his annual speech of 1998 a triumphant celebration of the way 'the West Cambridge Site is finally becoming a reality with the East Forum and three major new buildings either under construction or at an advanced stage of planning'. He did recognize that 'pursuing all of these ventures simultaneously is stretching the University's organizational abilities to the limit, but … the University's staff are keeping up,' he said stoutly. 'This is a time of excitement and change.'⁴ In CAM in late 1999, the Vice-Chancellor claimed that the West Cambridge Site was already (to use the MIT's language) 'go-go-go' and 'run-run-run'. 'Its innovative mix of University Departments and charitable and commercial research centres could easily materialize even faster than we now imagine.'

The drive into Cambridge from the west in 2003 takes the visitor through a tacky building site, with somewhat the air of the 'Business Parks' which are beginning to crop up across England on the edges of small towns. It is not an 'innovative mix'. It is a mess. And it is ugly.

Do we want north-west Cambridge to share the same fate as a consequence of our allowing the wool to be pulled over our eyes once more? 'Key workers' were going to get the benefit, it was promised when this was first mentioned to us two years ago. The argument was that there was a need for 'affordable housing', by then the national buzz-word, as it became apparent that the South East is going to be short of 'support' workers and public sector workers because the booming house-prices are beyond their reach, Cambridge house prices now being in line with those in London. How long will 'affordable housing' stay 'affordable' once it is on the open market?

The other line of argument which had become a major element on the West Cambridge site was prominent here too. It took forward the presumption that although this was to be a University development it would be making physical space for 'research collaboration' in a new way. 'There will be continued association with research organizations outside the University and provision for development space for such association will be needed as part of the University's future development plans'. (Reporter, 14 February 2001, p. 467). So we were invited to make space for industry on our previous historic estate, in what was, despite 'Silicon Fen', still in spirit a small East Anglian market town. In the parcel of University housing and future academic needs, support facilities, and University-related knowledge-based research',⁵ 'University-related' is code for 'industrial'.

'Planning 25 years ahead for expansion is a major concern, entailing regular liaison with the city council' (EMBS website). I will refrain from comment on the way the University conducts its planning applications or on the running sore of our procurement practice.

I really just want to suggest that past experience is not reassuring about the way this scheme is likely to go forward.

For a régime to be able to point to a big new area of buildings as its achievement in office is quite a temptation. The Regent House must assist the administration to think about it properly. The Board of Scrutiny asked in its Sixth Report that 'the Council should organize open debate within the University about what its policy should be about the rate of future growth' (Reporter, 20 June 2001, §5). No such debate has taken place, it reported in its Seventh Report (20). The Board of Scrutiny is quite right. It will bear saying again that there has been no debate about the rate at which we should be expanding, whether we can afford it, and how an eye is to be kept on the mounting bills.

That has not stopped the University advertising two middle-management posts: In August 2002 the blue Internal Vacancies sheet carried advertisements for a Project Manager to deal with 'the management of building projects at pre-feasibility and feasibility stages' ('a graduate in a discipline relevant to the construction industry, and preferably … professionally qualified'); and a Capital Accountant for 'reconciling and monitoring the costs of capital projects' in the £500m of schemes in feasibility, design, or construction' stages in the University's 'large and expanding estate'.

¹Reporter, 1990-1991, pp. 637-42, p. 641.

²The details of this story are taken from a letter written by Professor Roger Griffin to the then Chairman of the Board of Scrutiny on 20 October 1999, and its accompanying documentation.

³Reporter, 3 February 1931, p. 637

⁴Reporter, 7 October 1998.

⁵As it was put in the Notice in the Reporter, 14 February 2001.

Dr R. GROVE:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Article 21 of the Rio Declaration, to which the UK government has signed up, is designed to promote proper local consultation in environmental decision-making. This is only one reason why the University has a responsibility to properly consult and allow participation by the public, its own members and the members of the Regent House in particular in plans it may have that might radically change the Cambridge environment. This it has signally failed to do. No public meetings have been arranged. The opinions of the members have not been sought out. This Discussion has not been publicized and it has had to be arranged by us as the only forum available University-wide for the purpose. Moreover, this form of discussion is one which the Vice-Chancellor and the Old Schools have sought effectively to close down or make much more difficult. I want to address the failure of the University authorities to inform its members of plans to effectively destroy the west Cambridge green belt and thereby to damage one of the major mechanisms for environmental protection nationally

A University has a particular social responsibility to show leadership in environmental matters, for we are undeniably in the midst of a complex and very serious environmental crisis, both globally and here in Cambridge. It is simply not sufficient for the University to have regard to its own development needs or the needs of the computer industry. It has to set an example of environmental citizenship and social responsibility of the highest order, to its undergraduates and the national community, for if it does not, then who will? In the past this University was a world leader in environmental matters. Professor Alfred Newton of Magdalene College pioneered the first bird protection acts in 1868 and alerted the world to rates of extinction even at that period. Constantine Benson, Professor Tansley, and Sir Harry Godwin all played very prominent parts in the conservation of Wicken Fen and in the protection of the Norfolk coast and the beginning of nature conservation in Britain. Richard St Barbe Baker pioneered forest protection worldwide. During the 1940s Professor Alfred Steers, Professor of Geography here, was a driving force behind the setting up of the Nature Conservancy and, more significantly, behind the landmark legislation of the late 1940s which set up the National Parks and the Town and Country Planning Acts, under which the green belts were enacted.

It is ironic that University agencies as distinct from the academics now find themselves in the forefront nationally of powerful institutions determined to undermine the green belts and to undermine the kind of environmental consensus that has prevented this small country of ours from disappearing under the kind of sea of unplanned concrete and road building which has ruined for example so much of the eastern United States and which had already ruined, by the 1940s, so much of the South Coast between Brighton and Peacehaven, all in the name of the great God 'development needs'.

Visionaries like Alfred Steers realized that such terminology could always be used by powerful vested interests to justify the despoliation of our open countryside, most of which is made up of nice but not spectacular scenery. And it is that which needs protection. And we should be under no illusion that the University is a powerful vested institution in planning terms. We should also be under no illusion that those unelected individuals who advocate and lobby for major developments in the green belt do not by any means represent the University or its long-term interests. In the current situation, in which the University is seeking to develop wholesale the University Farm site, all of it until 1996 in the green belt, the arguments put forward by the University have now been used to undermine the whole concept of any green belt at all for west Cambridge or even for Cambridge at all. The activities of Corpus Christi College are particularly outrageous in this respect, since it is now negotiating with a major developer to build on the best bits of the green belt between Barton and Madingley Roads. Indeed I understand that their Building Committee is sitting this very afternoon. But the irresponsible speculations and development plans of Corpus Christi College (which echo those of the 1960s which ruined Petty Cury, Bradwells Court, and much of central Cambridge) have been driven by the University's failures in environmental stewardship.

It is, sadly, a characteristic of many developers in dealing with small and relatively biddable local authorities, that having promised the earth in environmental good intentions and in their planning applications, they then renege on almost all of them once having obtained planning permission. Sadly too, the University itself and many of the Colleges have repeatedly shown that none of their planning promises can be trusted. Let me give examples. St John's College obtained permission for a large development in Madingley Road supposedly for low cost/low salary housing (of the kind which the University is itself proposing for the University Farm). But it was actually developed as very high cost housing. The planners could do nothing about this post hoc. In Clarkson Road what was originally presented by the University as small buildings in a park-like setting has become a huge development which has completely changed the character of what was once a residential conservation area. The proposals for north-west Cambridge completely dwarf those of Clarkson Road and have a correspondingly larger potential for damage, putting aside for the moment that they also include a highly controversial Centre for Primate Research unwanted by the entire local community as well as Girton College. Another example: the University went to a great deal of trouble in 1996 to persuade the local planning enquiry to take the 19-acre field of the University Farm out of the green belt to build low-density collegiate buildings; an excellent idea you might think. No more green belt would be required after that. No access would be required to the already gridlocked Huntingdon Road. I warned in a discussion in 1996 that the City had made a Faustian bargain with the University and so it has proved. Having got its foot in the door, the University now wishes to take a nationally unprecedented chunk out of the green belt. But this time the 19-acre field has been revamped as the location not for a College but for extremely high density housing (without any transport provision for what amounts to a town of over 10,000 people in what is already a gridlocked area).

Meanwhile the originally promised Colleges or residences have been pushed out to the edge of the M11, a remarkably odd and ill-thought idea, or is it in fact that the University has no intention of building new Colleges, but has simply cynically used the proposal as a way to acquire more green belt for commercial purposes, knowing that a planning authority is ultimately unlikely to grant permission for student residences right next to a motorway. Past planning bad faith certainly suggests that this is the real intention. Vast overspends on a faulty accounting system and overspending on the West Cambridge Site buildings almost certainly accounts for the housing elements of this plan. So that in order to get itself out of a very large financial hole the University is putting forward development plans that have very little to do with academic purposes or low-cost housing but certainly drive a coach and horses through national concepts of environmental protection and which probably amount largely to a plan to recoup funds by high density house sales. Perhaps there would be nothing wrong with this.

However, democratically there is something deeply wrong with it. There is no support at all for the University's proposals among residents of west Cambridge. The elected city council and its planners have already considered city housing needs and have, very sensibly, decided that there is ample space on the Cambridge Airport for most housing needs and no one is concerned about preserving the scenery and open space of an airport built dangerously near the heart of the city. Moreover it has well-developed road and rail links which gridlocked west Cambridge does not. Indeed, it is now government policy to move the airport away from the city. In housing terms, therefore, the University's plans make no sense.

The University is also flying in the face of sensible plans to develop industrial and residential development along good existing transport links on the routes to Ely and St Ives. It has undoubtedly been encouraged to do so by the unelected Science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who has proposed in his own words to 'roll back the Cambridge green belt' and by John Prescott who said in an unguarded moment that he wishes to 'develop land all along the M11 corridor'. The too proximate and ill-conceived M11 and A14 bypass have already seriously degraded the environment of Cambridge through noise and traffic. It is extraordinary that the University should seek to add to that degradation and, by exploiting a weak rural district authority and undemocratic public enquiry system, subvert the plans of the elected councillors of Cambridge city and the wishes of its citizens, and seek to hide its own financial intentions behind the weasel words and vocabulary of development imperatives. Let's be clear about one thing. The future of the University, the high-tech economy and the national economy emphatically do NOT depend on the destruction of the entire Cambridge green belt by the continued growth of a slipshod and already unsightly development which will make Cambridge an even more difficult place to live in than it is already. By all means build a beautiful College or two and ecological and amenity area on the University Farm, but not a poorly thought-out housing development to pay off its bad debts which is all the University currently really has in mind.

We are fortunate indeed to welcome next September a new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard, a well-known environmentalist from Yale University's world famous School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I am very hopeful indeed that, as soon as she arrives in Cambridge, she will inspect the quite sinister plans the University is laying to destroy the green belt and blow them right out of the murky and undemocratic water they are currently floating in. As Professor Broers has said 'we will have much to gain from her leadership'. I am sending her a copy of this speech directly. Let's hope she will redeem the upcoming 800th year of the University by helping to save what is left of the Cambridge environment.

Dr V. WHITTAKER:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the University's plans for the 110 hectares of land between the Huntingdon and Madingley Roads constitute a huge invasion of the Cambridge green belt.

It is therefore worth pointing out that Cambridge is one of only a few provincial cities, all of outstanding historical and architectural quality to have been provided with such a green belt.

These green belts were assigned on an 'enduring and permanent basis' (Policy Planning Guidance Note 2, para 1.4) to protect such cities from exactly the type of development now proposed by the University's administration. The Cambridge green belt policy has protected Cambridge's unique character for over 50 years and has been highly successful as a growth management device. The present proposals represent an historic break with this policy and will have dire and irreversible consequences for the future.

It has often been difficult to ascertain in detail just what the University Administration's plans for the north-west Site are, as site plans are uniformly small-scale and are often merely inaccurate sketch-maps and difficult to interpret; and there are small but significant differences in the sources available in the public domain. Thus, in the brochure entitled 'North-West Cambridge Proposals: Supporting Information' and dated December 2001, the Kite area of Cambridge, an area of three- and four-storey Victorian terrace houses flanking narrow streets choked by parked cars, is held up as a suitable model for the high-density housing proposed for part of the north-west Site. This proposal is not repeated in other documents. While this area of central Cambridge may have acquired a certain period charm, one cannot think of a less suitable model for a suburban development in an area dominated by single family houses in fairly large gardens or more in breach of good planning principles.

However, what is apparent from these presentations is that what is proposed is a vast development, the cost of which will run into many millions if not billions of pounds, to be financed by selling off housing to the general public and by developing a science park. This is a developer's dream: to be handed green belt land to exploit for profit. However, it seems shameful of the University to take advantage of weak planning authorities to destroy a huge sector of the green belt and hasten the slide of Cambridge into becoming yet another East Midlands manufacturing town and London dormitory town with a small historic centre unable to support its vast new suburbs.

There are many issues, both environmental and practical, that are not adequately addressed in the University's planning documents.

The site includes a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with 4-metre banks on three sides. In one plan this is encompassed by what looks like a roundabout, in another by a 'green corridor'. Nearby is the United Nation's Environmental Biodiversity Program's World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Will this be encroached upon as many of its staff fear?

The scheme makes much of the need for 'affordable housing' for workers on the West Cambridge Site. If the aim is to help less well-paid members of staff to get onto the housing ladder, what will prevent them selling on to the non-University public when they move on? Will the University then want to build yet more housing to replace the 'lost' houses on yet more pristine countryside? Where does this process stop? Why not now? If the houses are to be let as 'tied cottages' at 'affordable rents', how will the University maintain them along with other University buildings without adding to an already difficult financial situation?

Access to and from the high-density housing area will be, we are told, via the Huntingdon Road, the second most heavily trafficked of all the radial roads leading out of the city, and likely to become more so when developments proposed for Oakington-Longstanton take place. The University administration tells us that parking will be heavily restricted, car-use discouraged, and that people will get to work by foot or by cycle. Perhaps so, but what about those visits to the railway station, to Addenbrooke's Hospital, or the non-University spouse with a job in the city? How will the shops and school proposed for the area be serviced? How will construction equipment get to the site? Isn't it obvious that hundreds of vehicle movements a day in and out of the Huntingdon Road will result and that from the point of view of traffic this scheme is unsustainable?

Many gardens abutting onto the University Farm are regularly plagued by flooding from the run-off from this, the highest point in the city, whenever there is heavy rain. The soil is heavy clay and rain-water soaks in slowly. This situation can only become worse if the area is concreted over.

I make these points and ask these questions to emphasize the need for the University's administration to 'come clean' about its plans, both to the Regent House and to the general public, so that this project, so fraught with problems, can be properly debated.

Dr N. W. MOORE:

Madam Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am Norman Moore of Trinity College, a Conservation Biologist who worked for the Nature Conservancy and the Nature Conservancy Council for 30 years. I would like to comment on the environmental aspects of the north-west Cambridge development proposals.

The present environmental situation on agricultural land in north-west Europe is deeply disturbing. It is due to the growth of urban development and to modern farming methods. The population of wild plants and animals are declining at an unprecedented rate. The most accurate figures are for birds. These show that once numerous species have declined by rates as much as 80%. As a result all owners of land, which includes the owners of the land we are discussing, have an obligation to conserve wildlife habitats on their land and to enhance them. This is very relevant to whether the proposal should go ahead, and if it does, to the details of the development.

We can predict with considerable accuracy what would happen if development went about without serious attention being given to environmental matters. This is because we know what happened at Bar Hill a few miles away. I studied the effects of changing the agricultural farm there into a small town between 1966 and 1988. Bar Hill is on similar soils and has similar land form to the area proposed for development.

When arable land was turned into high density housing and industrial buildings at Bar Hill, half of the 38 species of birds present in 1966 became extinct. The other 19 species, except starlings and house sparrows all became rarer or remained at very low levels. Farmland which was turned into playing fields lost all its birds. These were all ground nesting species.

What prevented Bar Hill from becoming a disaster area was its green belt. The small amount of woodland retained in it kept all its bird species. The making of a pond on the golf course attracted species like Moorhens and Mallard which were new to the site. Losses of butterfly species on land converted to high density housing were more than made good by converting arable land to rough grass land in the green belt. The number of butterfly species actually increased from 14 to 16. The dragonfly fauna increased from 0 breeding species to 11 species when the pond was made.

The conclusions are these:

1. High density housing with small gardens caused the extinction of most birds and butterflies, and, of course, of numerous other species which were not studied quantitatively.

2. If habitats already existing in the development area (woods, hedges, etc.) are maintained and new woods, scrub, and rough grassland are created on a large enough scale, the destruction of habitats in housing areas can be compensated to a considerable extent.

The green corridors shown on the Annex B map of the development proposals should go some way towards compensating for the loss on built areas, but their narrowness and the nearness of one of them to the M11 would greatly reduce their value.

The details of the effects of urbanization are very complex. I shall leave copies of my reports on Bar Hill at the Reception of the Old Schools for consultation.

Table of Contents