Your Planning Watchdog June 2025

Have your say on plans for tall buildings in Cambridge, the Market Square and whether small developments should benefit nature.
Have your say on plans for tall buildings in Cambridge, the Market Square and whether small developments should benefit nature.
Nestled along the banks of the River Cam, Hinxton Watermill stands as a testament to centuries of rural ingenuity and community spirit.
Cambridge has a finite supply of water, which comes from aquifers in its chalk geology. For the past 30 years, national and local government and its agencies have allowed Cambridge to grow rapidly without investing in new sources of water.…
Last year national government began to intervene in planning the future of Cambridge, which is normally the responsibility of local government. There was no political mandate for this intervention which proposed to double the size of Cambridge in 30 years…
At last, the grown-ups are back in charge of the Government’s planning policy – well almost. Having promised ‘a whole new planning system for England’ and ‘no more fiddling around the edges’ in the 2020 Planning White Paper, Boris Johnson’s…
It is rarely good news when the government makes an announcement just before holidays and when everyone’s attention is elsewhere. This was the case, just before Christmas, when the Secretary of State for Housing, Michael Gove MP announced significant changes…
Two years ago, Savills produced a report highlighting that there was almost no available commercial laboratory space in Cambridge. Their report generated something akin to a goldrush and developers have been falling over themselves to build lab space because they…
Help Save Bourn Mill Cambridge Past, Present & Future are excited to announce that we are only one step away from saving the country’s oldest windmill near Bourn in South Cambridgeshire. Over the last two years we have been working…
The councils of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire have published where they think 44,000 houses and 58,000 new jobs should be built and are asking us what we think. This is what planners call a spatial strategy, but for local residents…
In early 2021 the Government proposed further changes to the planning system which are designed to improve the attractiveness of new buildings but at the same time would also reduce local control over development. CambridgePPF supports the former but has…