Category: news

Background: Encounters with a Boondoggle

During the 2021 consultation, Cambridge Approaches requested some more information from EWR Co. to inform our response. Despite considerable efforts from EWR Co. and ourselves, previous experience with trying to get useful answers from EWR Co. led us to try instead getting legal help from lawyers Leigh Day in drafting the key information requests. Around the time that the consultation closed, all our requests were refused. EWR Co. said that the requests were “vexatious” and “manifestly unreasonable” and that the public interest lay in refusal. They reached this conclusion not just by reviewing the actual requests, but looking at the correspondence that they had received from Cambridge Approaches and anybody they judged might have been in contact with us over the previous year or so. They also looked at minutes of parish council meetings discussing the EWR. It seemed anything but focussing on the information we had actually asked for. We appealed the decision after the consultation had closed because we felt that this information was still important and to give EWR Co. a chance to review their decision when they were not in the middle of the consultation. Unfortunately, their internal review response was very similar to the first one. We have referred the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office who have undertaken to review it. There is six month long queue at the ICO. Sadly it seems our experience with this process is not unusual.

I have copied the information that we requested in the letter drafted by Leigh Day below. What do you think? Are they manifestly unreasonable? Are they vexatious? Or were we just trying to understand the underlying information behind the options they had considered for the railway’s approach to Cambridge? I was there and can tell you that our intention was the latter. On our side we hope to resume a more constructive dialog with EWR Co.

Our Outstanding Requests for Information from May 2021

Request 1: EWR is asked to provide the information constituting the “high-level environmental appraisal” of the nine Route Alignment Options and the proposed northern approach

Request 2: Insofar as it is not covered by request 1, EWR is asked to provide the information upon which it relies in concluding that it is “confident” that the detailed design can mitigate any impacts on the Wimpole and Eversden Woods SAC. Such information is to include the impacts identified and the mitigations considered.

Request 3: EWR is asked to provide the information constituting the “operational analysis” on which it relies in concluding that the northern approach proposed in appendix F of the Second Consultation Document would require the provision of a four-track railway in section NA2.

Request 4: EWR is asked to provide the information upon which it relies in concluding that the Shepreth Branch Royston Line could remain as a twin track railway from the new Hauxton Junction to the Shepreth Branch Junction.

Request 5: EWR is asked to provide the information on which it relies in concluding that no “significant alterations” will be needed to the bridge where the Shepreth Branch Royston Line crosses under the A1301. Such information is to extend (insofar as it has been considered) to both a two and four-track approach to the Shepreth Branch Line and to the grade-separated junction that EWR considers may be needed at Shepreth Branch Junction

Request 6: EWR is asked to provide the information it holds in respect of any assessment of the number of properties that would need to be demolished if the portion of the Shepreth Branch Royston Line from the Hauxton Junction to the Shepreth Branch Junction were to require works to increase the number of tracks 

Request 7: EWR is asked to provide any non-public information provided to it by Network Rail or other organisations, or any assessment it has itself undertaken, which leads to the conclusion that there may be demand by 2043/2044 for around 24 freight trains per day on the line between Bedford and Cambridge. Such information is to include any quantification of the current freight use of the Shepreth Branch Royston Line and the West Anglia Main Line.

Request 8: EWR is asked to explain the need in principle for the viaducts, cuttings, and embankments between Cambourne and Hauxton Junction on the southern approach

Request 9: EWR is asked to provide any engineering long section drawings which it has produced to assess the northern approach.  If no such drawings exist, EWR is asked to provide (a) the length of viaduct; (b) length in cutting; and, (c) length on embankment of its proposed northern approach.

Request 10: Insofar as EWR has already undertaken this assessment, EWR is asked to provide a list of the roads which will be permanently severed or otherwise obstructed by each of the Route Alignment Options comprised in the southern approach (Cambourne through to Cambridge station)

Request 11: EWR is asked to provide the information constituting the updated “cost estimates” provided by Network Rail and Atkins referred to in the Second Consultation Technical Report at 5.4.12, and any such cost estimates produced subsequent to those referred to in that paragraph. Such estimates are not to be limited to the figures, and should (insofar as they exist) include the explanation of the estimates provided by Network Rail and Atkins

We have put together some short videos which summarise our campaign messages. Don’t forget to respond to the EWR Co. consultation which closes on June 9th 2021. Just say no to question 1!

1 – The South.
2 – Environment
3 – Freight
4 – Business Case
5 – The North

Programme

Our evolving programme of webinars can be found on the Support Us page this website – scroll down to the bottom. Check back there since we will update the programme in due course. For people that missed webinars, many of them are recorded and made available on this website on the Support Us page and elsewhere on this site.

Fair Consultation on a Northern Approach Webinar

William Harrold and Sebastian Kindersley will hold a webinar for the Caldecote area (but all welcome)

at 7pm (BST) on the 4th of May 2021.

*** To register for this meeting click *** here.
*** NOW WITH CORRECTED LINK ***

It will be based on the presentation we gave to the rail minister on the 23rd February, but we have added new material relating to the current EWR Co. consultation

The last presentation on this subject was given to the Harston area on the 19th of April 2021

A recording of that webinar can be found here.

Cambridge to Newmarket Webinar

On the 16th March 2021 Steve Edmondson, William Armes and William Harrold from CA presented to people affected by the East West Railway on the Cambridge to Newmarket corridor. Our message was to alert people to the effect of the East West Railway both in Cambridge and to the east, especially the impact of freight traffic. We also pointed out that, with the route proposed by CBRR, then these problems can be significantly alleviated either at the time the railway is built or as a subsequent upgrade. This could be achieved for example with a rail chord to the south of Ely.

A recording of that webinar can be found here.

(A 1000 YEARS OF HISTORY AND SO MUCH MORE)

Did you know…

There are many tales passed down through the generations as to the chapel’s origins and proof of its existence is recorded in documents from Bishop Alcock in 1488

He writes of chapel repairs to the ‘Chapel of BVM Whightehill’

Although it is presumed at this time that whighte was referring to the white chalk clunch pits and quarry, the derivation of whighte could be weyte which meant wait. This sounds likely as the hill was an important lookout point over the Saxon settlement.

Rev.E.Conybeare in his ‘History of Cambridgeshire’ written in 1897 describes it as once being a famous place of pilgrimage. The Mare Way or Mary Way ended at the point where 84 churches could be visible from Ely in a sweeping view from Ely across as far as the Dunstable Downs.

It is recorded that the chapel was seen to contain a huge pair of shackles believed to be those with which Lord Scales was kept imprisoned in France in the Battle of Crecy, at the time of King Edward III. They were placed in the chapel in thanks for his escape.

A small roadside cottage known as Chapel Bush stood on the site of the chapel until early in the 20^th Century. It can be seen on the Ordnance survey maps from 1887. A bulla of Pope Martin V (1417-1431), a 1 1/2 inch lead disc, was found on the site in 1897. 

It is a tradition of All Saints Church to walk up Chapel Hill on Easter morning to witness the dawn. The vicar leads a prayer and a hymn is sung around a lighted brazier. A flame from the brazier is taken down to the church in a lantern from which the Paschal candle is lit at the Easter morning service.

The experience is deeply moving and a truly ancient link to the past. Chapel Hill, to me personally, is as significant as Avebury or Stonehenge. It is such a spiritual and significant point as the flat area of Cambridge and fenland stretch out before us. For 700 years the church has nestled at the base of the hill where thousands trod on their way to the awe inspiring Ely Cathedral.

The image of a railway cutting slicing through the hill and stretching out over the fields and over the river to Harston is truly appalling. A desecration of this region’s history and the first chalk hill rising out of the flat landscape of Cambridgeshire.

Jennifer Gore, Churchwarden, All Saints Haslingfield

Dear fellow resident of the Sawston and Shelfords division for the upcoming Cambridgeshire County Council elections,

The Shelfords EWR Action Group is delighted to invite you to a hustings for the above election to hear the candidates answer questions on the recent consultation launched by East West Railway Company.

The event will be held via Zoom at 7pm on Sunday 18^th April and will require prior registration.  Please follow this link to register and you will receive an email to join the meeting.

The candidates are as follows:

Conservative                Manas Deb 

Conservative                Dale Hargrove 

Green                          Sophie Berridge 

Green                          Ellie Crane 

Labour                         Tracey Draper 

Labour                         Anand Pillai 

Liberal Democrat         Maria King 

Liberal Democrat         Brian Milnes        

During the hustings, the candidates will be asked in turn six questions (of which they will have prior notification) with 2.5 minutes for each Party to answer.  In the remaining time, the Moderator will pick a small number of relevant questions posed by the attendees in the chat facility to put to the candidates, again with 2.5 minutes to answer per party.

Our division includes Haslingfield, Harston, Newton, Hauxton, Little Shelford and Great Shelford, through which EWR’s preferred route option runs.  The division also includes Stapleford and Sawston, which will also feel the effect of EWR’s plans.  We are certain you will want to hear the candidates thoughts on the plans and what they intend to do, if elected.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Shelfords EWR Action Group

From the highly skewed A428 dual carriageway bridge near Highfields Caldecote in the west to the huge, grade-separated Hauxton junction in the east, EWR are proposing to build a Great Wall across rural south Cambridgeshire. 

Because the taxpayer is not given a choice on the matter, this 16-kilometre long feature is barely mentioned in the 2021 consultation document, but it does emerge from a study of their long section drawings here and here. Aside from the massive visual impact and the noise, this feature could split communities that have stood for a thousand years. It could disrupt local travel patterns for school children and adults, destroy precious farmland and cause the protected Wimpole Barbastelles to move away.

The loss in local property values is already enormous and EWRCo.’s proposed blight policy will not even scratch the surface in terms of compensation. 

We understand from EWR Co. engineers, that their key design driver is to maintain the speed of the railway. It follows that it needs to be straight and level where possible. This is to serve 100mph trains all the way from Oxford to Cambridge. But the forecasted number of people per train making this trip is only o.7 perhaps rising to 1.9 on average. [18,000 trips/year, 18 x 4 trains / day see 2019 EWR Co. Technical Report §4.11]. Can someone please explain the logic of this? EWR Co. tell us 75% of the traffic will be local and that they are surprised by this. If that’s correct why on earth has it not affected the design criteria? It looks like a symptom of a boondoggle. Please build something to serve the local demand – not a bullet train on a great wall.

Cross-Section of The Great Wall

The Great Wall is of course a railway embankment and we understand that their typical cross-section is as shown in fig.1 below.

Looking at the long section diagrams linked to above we can see that the embankment height mostly in the range 5-12 metres. So we can expect the width at the base to be around 30 to 50 metres.

Our previous post on farmland impact assumed an 8m width. EWR Co are also reserving land either side of the Great Wall for construction access. We assume that the flatter land to the north of Cambridge would not need such high embankments. EWR Co. might also consider some innovation there by sinking the railway into a trench as proposed by cambedrailroad.org and shown in Fig.2

Photographer’s Impressions of The Great Wall

We asked a local photographer to create some impressions of what The Great Wall might look like in the section between Little Eversden and Haslingfield. These have been created from very recent photographs combined with railway embankments from elsewhere.

These mockups (figures 3, 5 & 7) are approximate but they do give an impression of what The Great Wall would be like. Also shown are the views from the same locations today (figures 4, 6 & 8).

The West Anglia Mainline (WAML) at Clayhithe

To get a feeling for the likely height of embankments required north of Cambridge here is a view (fig.9) of the existing WAML about 300m from the river Cam. It’s not easy to see but there is actually an embankment there. Notice also that the overhead lines are below tree height thus shielding the view from the houses behind them.

That’s not the end of the impact of this proposal by a long way, but it is enough for this post.

Consultation

The second non-statutory consultation from EWRCo. came out on the 31st of March 2021 just before the Easter break. As you may imagine the Cambridge Approaches team has been very busy since then and we are conscious that we have not updated this blog about it. We did make some initial comments in the Cambridge Independent here and on the ITV news. There is plenty of coverage in today’s Cambridge Independent (7th April 2021) and no doubt this will appear on line in due course. Suffice it to say it is far from the fair consultation on a northern route into Cambridge that we are campaigning for.

Harston Area Webinar

We are continuing our series of spring webinars with one for the Harston area. People from other villages are very welcome too. This will be at 7pm on Monday 19th April 2021 when Dr. William Harrold and Cllr. Sebastian Kindersley will present on “the need for a fair consultation on a northern route to Cambridge”.

To register for this webinar please use this link.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Note that our webinar programme is now maintained here.

Meetings Organised by Our MP

Anthony Browne has invited Cambridge Approaches and CBRR to participate in the following public meetings on the subject of East West Rail:

Great Shelford: Tuesday 20th April at 6pm – 7pm

Eversdens, Haslingfield, Harlton, Harston, Hauxton, Little Shelford & Newton: Wednesday 21st April at 6pm – 7.30pm

Bourn, Caxton, Cambourne, Comberton, Toft, Highfields Caldecote, Hardwick, Kingston and Toft: Thursday 29th April at 6pm – 7pm

These meetings will be via ABs Facebook and Youtube pages and details will be provided at www.anthonybrowne.org/east-west-rail

Fundraising

For the last six months Cambridge Approaches, supported by the working group have been looking to challenge EWR’s decision not to consult in parity on a northern approach by way of a judicial review. 

We have instructed expert lawyers, taken advice and have been actively fundraising from parish councils and private donors to kick start that process. 

Legally we may only have a small window in which to challenge EWR and we have to be prompt when doing so. We believe that this could be our window and we have to be able to demonstrate to a judge that we have funds in place to be able to proceed. 

Time is now of the essence 

We currently need substantial donations from residents to reach our target. We aimed to raise £50k from supportive parish councils and a further £30K from concerned residents, we currently need substantial donations from residents to hit this target.

Donations of over £250 can be donated directly to Cambridge Approaches ltd (email info@cambridgeapproaches.org) we have created a not for profit company limited by guarantee to handle donations. Should there be any unused funds donated in this way they can be refunded pro rata, further details can be given with regards to this process. 

Alternatively we also have created a go fund me page where donations of any size are welcomed and will be used towards both our campaign costs (hiring experts to carry out detailed assessments, Royal Mail outs etc)  as well as going towards the judicial review costs. 

Go fund me – https://uk.gofundme.com/f/fund-a-a-judicial-review-for-a-northern-approach?qid=ac602eb72182058bfa5e66eb2a14ef03

Please use your personal networks to raise awareness and to get us to this target. 

We can not let EWRCo ruin our villages, and sever our communities without a fight.

The Cambridge Approaches legal team is very privileged to be joined by David Feldman.

David has taught, researched, written about and adjudicated in relation to law, especially constitutional and administrative law and human rights, including historical, comparative and philosophical aspects, for over 45 years. 

He has held many prestigious posts including Legal Adviser, Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, 2000-2004, Judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2002-2010 (a Vice-President 2006-2009) and Rouse Ball Professor of English Law, University of Cambridge, 2004-2018 (now Emeritus). He is an Academic Associate at 39 Essex Chambers, London and was elected Hon. Bencher at Lincoln’s Inn in 2003, elected FBA in 2006, appointed Hon. Q.C. in 2008 and awarded Hon. LL.D. from the University of Bristol in 2013. 

He is the author of a large number of books, articles, chapters and shorter works on many aspects of public, private and criminal law and procedure, including Civil Liberties and Human Rights in England and Wales 2nd edn (OUP, 2002), (as Ed.) English Public Law 2nd edn (OUP, 2009), and (as Ed.) Law in Politics, Politics in Law (Hart, 2013). 

David Revell from Cambridge Approaches and Sebastian Kindersley from CBRR will be presenting on this topic at

7pm on Tuesday 23rd March 2021 GMT.

The presentation will be based on the one given to the rail minister on the 23rd February 2021.

This presentation is primarily for residents of Comberton, Barton and Toft, but all are welcome and most of the material is generic.

To register for this zoom meeting please use the link below.

Register in advance for this meeting.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

I wrote recently about the situation regarding the Oxford to Ipswich East West Rail link.We are hosting a webinar on this subject especially for those to the east of Cambridge. This webinar will be specifically about the effect that the new rail route will have on the Cambridge to Newmarket corridor area.Whilst we understand that it might seem a fairly benign development, and indeed more frequent train services are to be welcomed, the railway line will dramatically affect the corridor. The webinar will focus on the effects that the new rail route will have, how you can find out more and on the alternatives available.For those for who have not been following events, we will also give some history of the project, and try to demystify the way that it has evolved since inception back in 1997. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions as well.The webinar will be on Tuesday 16th March at 7pm. 
You can use the link below, or visit the Cambridge Approaches website and register from there.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. When: Mar 16, 2021 07:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqce2trT8vGNxi8LEACm5GwH7fFkc16–K

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Kind regards

Steve Edmondson
for Cambridge Approaches