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**Great article in the Cambridge Independent 6th May 2025**
The Government has approved a plan which will see £277m of public money go to Anglian Water, a private water company, to move its sewage plant to Green Belt on the outskirts of Cambridge.
This decision was made despite a clear recommendation from the Government’s own independent planning inspectors that the project should not be given consent. They found that there was “not a convincing case” for the move and that the harm to the green belt would be “substantial”.
"THIS IS NO LONGER A LOCAL ISSUE, IT'S A NATIONAL ISSUE. WHEN GOVERNMENT GOES AGAINST THE EXPERTS, WE SHOULD ALL BE WORRIED!"
Why We’re Fighting This
Save Honey Hill is a grass roots environmental campaign group which has spent the last five years fighting the relocation of Cambridge Wastewater Treatment Plant to valuable agricultural land in green belt in north-east Cambridge.
Anglian Water (AW) wants to move its plant about one mile down the road from its existing site. The Planning Inspectors made clear that there are no guarantees about what, if anything, will be built on the site once the sewage plant is moved. They noted that the redevelopment is not part of this application, that no planning permission exists for any future scheme, and that the Development Consent Order (DCO) includes no mechanism to ensure anything goes ahead.
According to the Local Council’s own planning proposals, £277 million of public money would enable as few as 3,250 homes to be built over the next 15 years. They would not start to be available before 2030/31 and, as concluded by the Planning Inspectorate, even that cannot be guaranteed. This is against a backdrop of just under 40,000 new homes already in the Council's plans.
Despite this uncertainty, the impact on the green belt would be permanent.
A Publicly-Funded Project with No Public Benefit
AW has admitted that its existing plant is fully functioning, with capacity for future growth, and does not need to move for any operational reason.
AW, supported by Cambridge City Council, applied to Homes England for a grant to fund the move on the basis that the relocation was of national importance (NSIP – National Strategic Infrastructure Project).
Originally awarded £227 million, the total grant increased by a further £50 million as costs spiralled to over £400 million.
Because the move is not operationally necessary, the water company could not fund the relocation out of its own pocket and had to find an alternative source.
It is, however, now admitting to having to sell off some of its land to build office space (not housing) to fund the shortfall.
Our Campaign So Far
In 2024, the Planning Inspectorate (the independent government body of experts responsible for examining major planning projects) conducted its examination process into the DCO application made by AW.
During this process, Save Honey Hill made multiple representations with the help of a skilled and dedicated team of volunteers underpinned by expert legal counsel.
It was able to demonstrate many significant flaws in the application and was treated by the Planning Inspectors throughout as knowledgeable and extremely credible contributors to the investigation.
What We Demonstrated
- During the examination period and as a result of SHH’s dogged arguments, AW admitted that the relocation project is in fact NOT a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) and so, we argue, it should never have been awarded Homes England funding which ought to be reserved for facilitating housing in areas of the UK where developers need to be encouraged to build – something that is not a problem for Cambridge.
- We have shown that any housing that might be built on the existing sewage plant site could actually be built elsewhere in Cambridge, without moving the sewage plant to green belt at enormous cost to the environment and the taxpayer.
- We have shown that any housing that might be built on the vacated site, would be extremely poor value for money and not 'sustainable' because of the high whole-life carbon footprint and financial cost per home.
Impact on the Environment
AW made no attempt to measure the carbon footprint of dismantling the current site until SHH commissioned a report from the University of Cambridge in 2023 which showed the carbon cost to be huge. When AW then conducted its own investigation, this showed, ironically, the carbon cost to be even greater than our report.
What the Planning Experts Said
The Planning Inspectors spent six months examining the application. In their final report, they concluded that there was not a convincing case for the DCO to be granted and they recommended that it should not be approved.
Despite this, the Secretary of State, DEFRA, Steve Reed has made the decision to ignore the experts’ recommendations and give consent to the project after all.
Not only does this make a mockery of the DCO process but it sets a terrible precedent for all future DCO applications, and so the public should be extremely concerned.
Some key points from the Planning Inspectors’ report:
- “the DCO does not secure development of the existing site, nor does it guarantee any housing delivery”.
- “the applicant’s need case for and principle of the proposed development has not been adequately justified in either infrastructure or wider policy terms,”
- “the harm to the green belt which would arise from the proposed development, and other harms identified would not be clearly outweighed by other considerations”
- “very special circumstances do not exist to justify the approval of inappropriate development in the green belt”
- “the proposed development would fail to accord with relevant policy”
- there was “not a convincing case” for the DCO to be granted and it should not be approved.
- The Master Developer Agreement attached to the £277 million funding from Homes England ‘does not guarantee that the site of the existing WWTP would be developed for the uses cited by the Applicant, or that housing would be delivered within the timescales which are stated by the Applicant or set out in the draft NECAAP’
- Since there are currently no approved plans to redevelop the existing sewage works, the inspectors said they could not ‘pre-judge’ the outcome of any planning application submitted by a third party. Therefore, the sewage works development would not directly deliver the benefits AW has attached significant weight to.
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Help Us Fund the First Legal Step: £3,500 Needed
We’re launching our legal challenge to the Secretary of State’s decision to approve the Cambridge Wastewater Treatment Plant Relocation.
Our initial goal is to raise £3,500 to fund the Pre-Action Protocol Letter — the formal legal step that must be taken before we can bring a Judicial Review.
This is the first milestone in a longer legal journey. We will keep you updated at every stage.
We have come this far. Please help us.
Visit our website (https://www.savehoneyhill.org/) for more information.
