Stapleford Parish Council position paper on the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s CSET (busway) scheme
March 2025
Summary
Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) is a project managed by the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP). Its objectives are to reduce congestion, notably on the A1307 Babraham Road, and to provide more sustainable travel options along the southeastern approaches to Cambridge.
The proposed off-road route from a new Park & Ride travel hub to the north of the A11 and west of the A1307 to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) is defined in the Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) that was submitted to the Government in January 2025.
SPC has produced this paper to explain its support for the Better Ways for Busways (BW4B) campaign for an alternative, less environmentally damaging and better value route that preserves the rural setting of Stapleford and neighbouring villages.
BW4B is a non-political campaign group of like-minded individuals and organisations and includes: the parish councils of Stapleford, Great Shelford and Babraham; Cambridge Past, Present and Future (CPPF); the Magog Trust; and Hobsons Conduit Trust. By combining resources, we’ve managed to raise enough money to start a proper campaign to stop the GCP concreting over the countryside to the east of our villages.
Please note: the days of lobbying to change opinions are over. This is now a legal fight via a well-established process in the form of a public inquiry. We tried persuasion but the GCP and our elected representatives at the County Council chose to ignore us.
Background
The CSET project has two distinct phases. CSET Phase One covers various traffic management schemes along the A1307 and work on this has already been completed. CSET Phase Two includes a Park and Ride 1km south of Babraham village and a new off-road route for buses only through the greenbelt (the ‘busway’).
From the Park and Ride running roughly northwards, the busway crosses the River Granta on extended concrete viaducts before skirting the northern edge of Sawston. It then crosses the farm track south of the Granary near the ‘Black Barn’ and crosses back east of the River Granta over another large bridge before traversing the lower slopes of Magog Down. From there it crosses Haverhill Road, taking a sharp turn around Strawberry Fields retirement village and cutting through the chalk hillside. It then crosses Hinton Way roughly at the point where the housing ends and continues across Granhams Road, before running alongside the railway and finally along Francis Crick Avenue, terminating at the soon-to be-opened Cambridge South station.
The busway includes a maintenance track which would also operate as an active travel path for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. A frequency of eight buses per hour is anticipated for 6,000 passengers a day. Along its length, several bus stops are proposed: within our immediate area, one is up the hill on Haverhill Road and another outside Great Shelford village on Hinton Way. Both will have an urbanising effect, with shelter facilities, lighting, and disabled and cycle parking, but no parking for private cars. Road crossings on Haverhill Road and Hinton Way will be controlled by traffic lights – there are seven road crossings along the full length of the proposed route.
Buses would be guided either by physical guidance with a guide rail as per the existing busways, or by optical guidance yet to be decided (in both cases the speed is controlled by a driver).
Single-decker buses would be able to continue onwards to Cambridge Station on the existing busway and then into the City centre on road, whilst double-decker buses, being too high to pass under the bridge on Long Road, would need to make any onward journey via Hills Road (A1307).
Background and how things stand now (March 2025)
At its meeting on 28 September 2023, the GCP Executive Board took the decision to pause activity on CSET Phase Two and to seek additional sources of funding for the project as insufficient funds were available to complete it. The GCP has to date expended in excess of £10million on the scheme, with a current budget which is likely to be in excess of £162million. The project was restarted in March 2024 when the government made available £7.2million pounds for development work to continue – work which culminated in the TWAO submission.
It is expected that, in response to objections to the TWAO, the Secretary of State for Transport will call a public inquiry and that this will be held later in 2025.
SPC and BW4B have over several years made regular representations advocating an alternative approach at GCP Joint Assembly and board meetings and at the Cambridgeshire County Council meeting on 22 October 2024, at which councillors voted 33-19 along party lines in favour of proceeding with the TWAO (33 Labour and LibDem vs 19 Conservative and Green/Independent).
SPC recognises the immediate need for improved infrastructure to reduce congestion, notably on the A1307 Babraham Road, and to provide sustainable travel options on the southeastern approaches to Cambridge. However, SPC believes that an in-road bus lane solution along the A1307 (see image) with a new stretch of busway from the Hinton Way roundabout to CBC (which is already included in CBC’s phase 4 plan) is a better solution than the GCP’s CSET proposal. This alternative, which was one of the the GCP’s own options in 2018, is significantly less environmentally damaging, does less visual harm to the landscape and affords greater accessibility into CBC for emergency vehicles. The A1307 route serves the Babraham Research Campus, Copley Hill Business Park and CBC better than the proposed off-road route. On top of these benefits, it is further estimated that the cost to taxpayers of the on-road route is at least £100million less than the GCP’s scheme.
It highly relevant that CSET2 was a scheme proposed by the County Council in 2018 to conform with the (then) Mayor of the Combined Authority’s plan for the Cambridge Autonomous Metro (CAM). It was subsequently dropped in 2021 by the incoming mayor.
Outline of SPC’s grounds for objecting to the TWAO
We are extremely concerned by the irreversible environmental damage that CSET will impose on Magog Down, the Granta river valley and the Hobson’s Brook valley (bounded by Nine Wells, White Hill and a scheduled monument).
CSET is elevated and fully visible from the village. There is high landscape impact with the route crossing two Landscape Character Areas and the high sensitivity Nine Wells. This contrasts with the low impact alternative route along the existing A1307.
The route runs almost exclusively through greenbelt and we do not believe that the project meets the statutory standards required to allow this to happen. The route will open up land for development within the greenbelt by adding a fourth ‘hard side’ to the large and roughly rectangular expanse of greenbelt bounded by Haverhill Road, Hinton Way and Mingle Lane (making it easier to remove from the greenbelt), and arguably also creates a zone of ‘grey belt’ because it will make less contribution to the purposes of the greenbelt (as per the government’s definition of the term).
We are concerned that, as greenbelt is developed, Stapleford will eventually be subsumed into Cambridge City and we will lose our individual, independent rural character. SPC recognises the pressure that the greenbelt is currently under, due in large part to the government’s Cambridge growth plan, and believes that this is a decisive and last chance to preserve the countryside around our village.
SPC sees little benefit from the proposed bus stops on Hinton Way and Haverhill Road, which are located outside of the villages. The existing Shelford rail station presents a more accessible and quicker route to CBC, Cambridge South station and Cambridge city centre.
Urban-style bus stops with shelter facilities and disabled car parking will be obtrusive and generate light pollution to the detriment of wildlife and open countryside. These bus stops are between 1.3km and 1.7km from the centres of our villages so provide little value to most residents, especially as the main line train from Shelford to Cambridge South, which is within walking distance for many, will have a journey time of only 6 minutes.
The Rangeford retirement care village (now known as Strawberry Fields) planning appeal decision was heavily influenced by the very significant biodiversity gain from converting arable fields into original downland in the form of a new countryside park. The busway removes a significant chunk of land from the park (reducing its total size by roughly one-third), thereby overriding the Planning Inspector’s justification for allowing the retirement village to be built in the greenbelt. Furthermore, the busway splits the retirement village from the countryside park, in conflict with the appeal decision in which the Planning Inspector defined the retirement village and countryside park as a single development.
It is expected that in response to objections to the TWAO the Secretary of State will call a public inquiry and that this is likely to be held later 2025, probably after the summer holidays. The TWAO statutory process substantially limits the GCP’s requirement to mitigate harm. Included in our representations at the public inquiry will therefore be an assessment of any mitigation for impacts on landscape, biodiversity, heritage, etc, as set out in the TWAO.
Objection process
SPC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with four other sponsors: the Magog Trust, CPPF, Hobson’s Conduit Trust, and Stephen Partridge-Hicks (who, together with his wife, owns a small farm on the North East edge of Sawston; the GCP intends to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire a 35m wide, 700m long strip of this land).
The sponsors are committed to a unified position of objection focusing on key elements in order to avoid any unnecessary or wasteful investigations. There is also support for the process from Great Shelford Parish Council (but not as a sponsor), whose parish area will be less affected by CSET than Stapleford, as well as Babraham Parish Council and other organisations such as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and Railfuture
The sponsors have agreed to make financial contributions to fund the BW4B joint campaign. Funds will be pro-rated according to each sponsors’ total financial contributions, as and when expenses are incurred.
SPC has committed financial support to the process up to £50,000, supported by a transfer of reserves of £30,000 to the end of March 2025 and a further transfer of reserves of £20,000 up to March 2026. The total amount of funding that BW4B has raised so far is £172k against a target of £250k.
SPC is taking responsibility as the instructing party to retain the services of the legal team and other experts who will give evidence at the public inquiry. Expert witnesses who would give their expert opinion will include a landscape expert, a transport consultant, an ecology expert and such other engineering advice as required. SPC is the instructing party because BW4B has no legal status so cannot do so. As a parish council, SPC is also able to reclaim VAT, saving 20% of the cost of the campaign and ensuring a high level of oversight in the use of our funds.
The initial stage consists of submitting substantiated objections to the Secretary of State by 7 March 2025. This initial stage has been entirely funded by monies made available through CPPF’s public fundraiser appeal.
Conclusion
SPC believes that the case being prepared against the TWAO is well substantiated, particularly in terms of landscape and visual impact and the questionable cost-benefit of CSET 2 versus our alternative along the A1307.
SPC is confident of its case given the high quality support and advice from the legal team of Richard Buxton Solicitors and its experts. Combining resources with the other sponsors to support a strong objection is, SPC believes, the most cost-effective approach to preserving our countryside, whilst simultaneously promoting an alterative scheme that better achieves the original CSET objectives.
Links to further information
The following links for further information are not exhaustive but may be useful for those wanting to know more:
You can view the application documents on www.greatercambridge.org.uk/cset-twao
