Make a Difference
Taking a few moments to tell people how you feel about the green belt is the best way of protecting it. The key actions you can take are listed below and they are all easy to do.
Sign the Petition
The online version is here . We will be collecting signatures at various events over the next few weeks. The petition will be presented to the South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City council on 25th September.
Tell your friends
Let your friends, family and colleagues know what is happening to the green belt. Let them know about the online petition so that they can sign it.
Make a submission to the council
The city and district councils are running an online consultation process to collect the views of local residents. In the previous round of consultation that ended in February 2013 out of 700 submissions less than 9% supported building on the greenbelt. Making a submission is easy and important to ensure your views are recorded. These submissions will be reviewed by the government inspector and important points carry weight and may need to be addressed by the councils. Technical points carry more weight than emotive ones.
Follow the link below to the council websites and follow the instructions. The closing date for submissions is 5pm 30th September 2013.
Cambridge City Submissions click here
Village Submissions (South Cambridgeshire DC) click here
Write to your local councillor
Let them have your views on development in the green belt. You can either e-mail them or post them a letter. It is worth including specific points that you feel are important. In Cambridge there seems to be an informal consensus between the parties to support development on the greenbelt. The council has not been particularly responsive to peoples concerns.
Cambridge City Councillors click here
South Cambridgeshire District Council click here
Write to your MP
It only takes a few moments to write a letter or send an e-mail. Loss of green belt is a national issue. Writing will help protect it in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere.
Cambridge City MP -Julian Huppert julianhuppertmp@gmail.com
South Cambridgeshire MP – Andrew Lansley – lansleya@parliament.uk
Post: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
Volunteer
If you can help with practical things like leaflet distribution or collecting signatures please e-mail us on contact@greenbeltsos.org.uk
Join Us
Join our mailing list by e-mailing us mailinglist@greenbeltsos.org.uk
Save The Cambridge Greenbelt 
all the villages are full. Where are the houses that are so desperately needed supposed to go if it’s not on the fields?
Of the proposed plan for 14000 houses only 430 are on Green Belt land – less than 3% of the total. Not building on Green Belt land won’t make a practical difference to the number of homes available.
The Green Belt isn’t just fields – it’s a defined protective buffer around the City to prevent the kind of relentless urban sprawl that has affected so many other cities, subsuming all the separate villages around them; turning them into soulless suburbs. The Green Belt is not that wide a band around the City and was put in place specifically to prevent Councils destroying the special character of the area, to protect it for many generations to come. The Government even affords Green Belts special protection and says that they should be considered ‘permanent’, but our local Councils are claiming that they need more sites than those that have been speculatively volunteered by landowners, and that this constitutes the ‘exceptional circumstances’ they need to get around the protection. What’s worse is that the housing target they’re looking to reach is based on outdated numbers, prior to the 2011 census that showed thousands fewer residents in Cambridge than previously thought. Newer numbers existed from Council sources that showed building on Green Belt wasn’t even necessary, but for some reason they were not used. I firmly believe that allowing this use of protected land sets a precedent that could ultimately get the whole Green Belt declassified and allow unrestricted urban sprawl.
The trouble is the greenbelt around Cambridge is now totally out of date and designed for a much smaller population. Where are all the support workers going to live in the future? It isn’t fair that they live in shoe boxes or twenty miles away whilst a few lucky rich people retain their lovely views.
Proposed developments GB1 and GB2
As a resident of Wort’s Causeway, I wish to state the following
The only way that the Park and Ride and ten other bus services can operate on time is because they bypass the traffic jam on Babraham road by useing Wort’s Causeway. The developement work would include digging up the road to install Sewerage, Gas ,Electricity,Water and Telephone and construction vehicles. This would block the road
and prevent the bus services from operating. If developements completed, hundreds of cars would need to leave the sites, how? Babraham road and Lime Kiln Hill already severely congested and at a standstill each morning.
Road blocked, no bus services possible.
R Huntsman
A recent survey of the Park and Ride and other services that come down Wort’s Causeway each morning to bypass the congestion on Babraham road.
TIME SERVICE
07-40 Park and Ride
07-47 13A Haverhill
07-50 Park and Ride
07-58 X13 Haverhill
07-59 Park and Ride
08-03 Mini Bus for disabled
08-04 L38 Cambridge
08-10 Ambulance
08-12 Park and Rid
` 08-14 Granta Park Cambridge
08-20 Park and Ride
08-22 Cambridge 13
08-25 X13 Haverhill
08-26 X13 Haverhill
08-33 114 City Certre
08-35 School Service
08-36 Go Whippet
08-41 13A Cambridge
08-50 Park and Ride