Planning applications: Arbury Road, King's Hedges Road and Arbury Court

Apologies for missing the last few weeks. Here is a round up of planning applications in the ward.

This week there is a significant application at 110 Arbury Road, for "Outline Planning Permission for the erection of five apartments and widening of existing access onto Arbury Road following the total demolition of the former caretaker's house." 110 is the Manor school caretaker's house. Follow the link for more details. The reference is 12/0147/OUT.

Of a smaller scale there is an application in Arbury Court for "Extraction canopy and ductwork to exiting fish and chip take away", reference 12/0213/FUL.

Also I should point out an application that came up a couple of weeks ago for the "Hive" or "Triangle Development Site", on King's Hedges Road near CRC and roughly opposite Northfield Avenue. The application is partly technical involving change of use but does include change of appearance in terms of height and window arrangements. The reference is 12/0199/FUL. For more details see this page on the online planning gateway.

As always in case of difficulty contact the team.

Minor Highways issues within Kings Hedges

As you might have picked up from the minutes of the Cambridge Area Environment and Traffic Management Committee (no? It's a riveting read) Cambridgeshire Highways used to have a list of all the open highways issues in each division (split into unfunded and those with an identified means of funding) which would come to the AJC meeting, be discussed (usually added to) and then would be back in the hands of officers who would get done what they could, identifying new streams of funding if possible, and then report back to the next meeting of the AJC.

As you can see it's a fairly simple process but doesn't actually add a lot of value as a) most of the work is done by officers and (in my view more significantly) b) it encourages Councillors to get things added to the list that won't ever get done. Basically anything that doesn't have an obvious source of funding, isn't a legal requirement, or isn't part of some bigger project is just not going to happen.

The list, after a few years of b), is now pretty long and some of the the reasons why some of the items are sitting on the list have been lost in the mist of time.

Clearly it's time for a change and so the County Officers are now proposing that they spend some time in each Division with local members and prepare a list of highways issues relevant to that division.

In light of that I've been looking at the highways list we already have for Kings Hedges and the new items that people have already suggested (note that in some cases it is a problem that needs a solution rather than a solution!) and come up with the following list;

• 20mph speed limit on Northfield Avenue (outside KH Primary School), 
• Coach parking on Woodhead Drive, 
• Car parking on Lovell Road, 
• Arbury Road cycle path (specifically doing something around the Milton Road junction), 
• Verge parking on Milton Road, 
• Pavement parking across the division,
• Traffic improvements on Arbury Road outside the Manor,
• Verge parking on Hawkins Road, and 
• Cycle route on KH road (specifically around CRC junction)

That's just off the top of my head. What else do you think should be on this list?

Planning applications: Arbury Road

This week there is one planning application in the ward to report. It is from the City Council and concerns "installation of of 9.88kwp solar photovoltaic panels to approximately 67m2 of the south-west facing roof slope" of the City Homes North office on Arbury Road. The reference number is 11/1227/FUL and you can see the detailed documents online too.

As normal you can get more information from the City Council website, and in case of difficulty contact the team.

In case you wonder why we didn't have a planning post last week: there weren't any applications in King's Hedges.

Orchard Park to Riverside Cycle Scheme

I have been emailed with details of the possible Orchard Park to Riverside Cycle Scheme. This involves changes to the cycle route on Arbury Road from King's Hedges Road.

The changes would be on the stretch outside St Laurence's school, and on the stretch outside the front of The Manor.

The County are consulting on the proposals and would like comments by post, email or phone before Friday 10 December 2010. The results will go to the transport Area Joint Committee on 24 January 2011.

More details and a PDF of the leaflet and explanatory notes are available from the County Council's project website.

Planning applications

There are two planning applications that might be of interest to residents of Arbury and Milton Road.

Just outside the ward in West Chesterton is 08/0865/FUL a first floor extension and loft conversion at 146 Milton Rd.

Similarly in Arbury is 08/0876/FUL a single storey extension to 229 Arbury Road.

For more information visit the City Council planning web site. You can submit comments on the application online, but need to accept some conditions to do so (so we can't give a direct link). More information is available from the website.