We know that some of you are worried that work on the Residents’ Parking Scheme could start while you are away on summer holiday next month.
We have recently heard from our Local County Councillor, Ian Manning, about the start date for this work.
He has informed us:
“The most recent I’ve had from the project team is August/September and I have asked for sufficient notice that I can get another letter out, and organise more public meetings before anything starts.”
This seems to suggest that nothing is imminent.
If we can manage to get any firmer information, we will let you know.
Report from ARERA’s acting chair, Ros Lund, and secretary, Lucy Edgeley, about 3rd July meeting with Ian Manning about the Residents Parking Scheme The preparations with road markings, signs etc. for the scheme will take place during July. Our Lib Dem councillors, Ian Manning (County Council) and Jamie Dalzell (City Council) will be writing to residents explaining the scheme and how to make your views known during the initial 6-month review period via the website – provide as much information as you can with dates, times and photos. Residents of both sides of Arbury Road are encouraged to use the website for feedback once the scheme is up and running. During the setting up period you may contact Ian Manning with any immediate/urgent problems via his CCC email (Ian.Manning@cambridgeshire.gov.uk) so he can speak to the relevant officer and ensure the appropriate action is taken. The contractors are expected to take a common-sense approach to marking the parking bays, enabling residents who have parking on their own driveways or front gardens to do so. The scheme will run from 9.30 am -3 pm on weekdays to match the scheme at Ascham Road etc which we shall be part of. At other times, parking will be free as at present but only in marked bays. Residents of Arbury Road on the odd-numbered side of the road with no parking on their own driveway or front garden will be able to purchase up to 3 annual permits per household and visitor permits if required. If you have any questions or concerns, please email Ian Manning on Ian.Manning@cambridgeshire.gov.ukand cc. your email to ARERA at info@arera.org.uk
It was sent by Clare Rankin who is the County Council’s Principal Active Travel officer – i.e. it was not provided by the Greater Cambridge Partnership but by a council official.
(The drawings are dated February 2025 so it isn’t clear why the GCP hasn’t released them to us long ago.)
The set of road plans shows what the GCP is going to start implementing some time next month.
Although labelled ‘detailed’ by WSP, the engineering consultancy working for the GCP, the drawings remain very difficult to interpret.
You only need to look at pages 2 and 3 which cover Arbury Road east.
You will need to use this key to decipher what is meant.
Those of you who live on the north side of Arbury Road east (even numbers) will see that the northern boundary does seem to include your side of the road (but not your properties?) – it is difficult to tell from the level of detail provided.
As expected, no parking bays are being installed on the northern side of the road, just double yellow lines.
If you have concerns about this, please contact your local councillors ASAP – addresses shown in cc’d above.
Ian Manning is our local County Council whom you should expect to represent you on highways-related issues which are the responsibility of the County Council.
Those of you who live on the south side of Arbury Road east (odd numbers), please check the drawings to make sure you understand what is happening directly outside where you live.
If you have any concerns, again, please contact Ian Manning.
If you do contact him, please copy ARERA in via info@arera.org.uk to share your concerns.
You can also contact us via ARERA’s website where we are going to post this information so that it can be accessed by those who aren’t ARERA members,
Open for comments from Wednesday 7 May to Wednesday 18 June.
Cambridge City Council wants to work with the local community to shape a Framework for Change for north Cambridge.
This framework builds on previous work, including the recently adopted North Cambridge neighbourhoods Design Code, which established principles for the area based on the community’s priorities.
The framework will guide improvements to homes, streets, green spaces, and local business and community facilities in Arbury, King’s Hedges and Chesterton. Hearing from local people will be vital.
This survey is part of a wider programme of engagement including workshops, pop-ups, school sessions, and interviews. It gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts, ideas, and concerns to help shape the future of these neighbourhoods.
The framework will consider themes including:
older council housing estates
parks and green spaces
Arbury Court and the surrounding community facilities
From Wednesday 7 May to Wednesday 18 June 2025, the council invite all residents to participate in a series of workshops, community conversations and online forums designed to gather ideas and feedback.
These sessions will allow participants to learn more about the project and share their thoughts.
· At the end of last year, the chair of the County Council’s Highways and Transport Committee told ARERA that, if we want to secure funding for improvements on Arbury Road east, then we need to develop a detailed strategy for doing this.
· Camcycle has offered to help ARERA to do this.
· The survey reported here was conducted as an attempt to begin building a shared set of priorities amongst those who live and work in ARERA’s catchment area for making the road safer.
· The survey was conducted in January/February 2025.
· This report documents its results.
· These show that there is a set of priorities for improvements shared by those who took part in the survey that live directly on Arbury Road east, see page 7 of the attached report.
· There is also another set of priorities shared by those who took part and live on the Havenfield cul de sac, see pages 5 and 6.
· These two sets of priorities differ.
· If a common strategy, shared by all who live in ARERA’s catchment area, is going to be constructed, then ARERA’s committee and the members of the residents’ association need to recognise that they are confronted by what is likely to prove a significant challenge.
· The committee has agreed that building this consensus should be pursued through holding an open consultation meeting later this year with those who live and work in catchment area of the residents’ association.
A full report of the survey’s findings can be viewed in the attached file.
We have been asked to share the slides shown at our AGM on 12th of February about the residents’ parking scheme.
If, when you have had a chance to look through them, you have any questions or comments, please could you use the contact page on this website to do so?
It is five years since the current members of ARERA’s committee started campaigning to improve conditions on our road for both residents and road users, including pedestrians.
Since then we have campaigned on a growing number of issues:
speed restrictions, monitoring and policing
improving pedestrian safety (via new zebra crossing)
removal of pavement parking (also to safeguard pedestrians)
deterring through (commuter) vehicles (to prevent tailbacks and pollution)
banning heavy goods vehicles (to prevent house shaking)
completion of cycle paths (as designated County Council ‘priority cycle route’)
inclusion in Milton Road Area Residents’ Parking Scheme, and
exclusion of illegal motor vehicle access to Arbury Court Play Area.
Where are we now?
In the most recent instalment of our campaigning, we had an on-street meeting last week with the Chair of the County’s Highways and Transport Committee (H&TC), Alex Beckett, and the County’s Principal Active Travel Officer, Clare Rankin.
We were also joined by Josh Grantham and Anna Wiliams from Camcycle. They worked with us on this year’s unsuccessful bid for a new zebra crossing between Milton Road lights and the North Cambridge Academy (turned down on the grounds of costs).
We discussed all the issues listed above with the H&TC Chair and Principal Active Travel Officer. They said that they understood the problems experienced on Arbury Road east but that action was difficult because:
this section of the road is very narrow, and
currently there aren’t any dedicated funds for undertaking the range of works that needs to be done.
Alex Beckett recommended that we keep making our voices heard and that we develop a staged action planfor implementing changes as and when/if money becomes available. Josh Grantham said that Camcycle was willing to work with ARERA on this.
What next?
We recommend that the ARERA committee works with residents (and businesses) in our catchment area who are interested in producing a detailed staged action plan that we can submit to the County’s H&T Committee.
We suggest that we set this process in motion at ARERA’s next AGM.
The current Chair and Secretary have already served on the committee in these posts for the 4 consecutive years allowed by ARERA’s constitution, https://arera.org.uk/about-arera/constitution/
Elections will be held at the next AGM to fill these posts.
If you would like to join the ARERA committee and/or help draw up the action plan for improvements on Arbury Road east, please let us know on info@arera.org.uk.
ARERA AGM: 29th January 2025 7pm at the Baptist Church More details to follow in the new year
Much has been happening over the summer that will have significant impacts on Arbury Road East.
Decisions about whether a new zebra crossing will provided, under the Local Highways Improvement Programme (LHIP), and about the implementation of the Milton Road Area Residents Park Scheme, are imminent.
These decisions will be made at two meetings of the County Council’s Highways and Transport Committee (H&TC) to be held during the first week of October.
We have been trying to get access to the agenda papers for these two meetings to find out what is being proposed.
We were treated kindly by the Cambridge Joint Area Committee when we were invited in July to make submissions to it in support of our LHIP submission. But we have been unable to discover what recommendation it made about our proposed zebra cross to the H&TC which is going to make a decision about on October 1st. We have been told that no minutes of the CJAC meeting were made.
At a separate meeting, the CJAC recommended acceptance of the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s (GCP) proposals for our area’s residents parking scheme, despite the 288 objections made about it.
And this recommendation was made by the committee despite the public statement given our former councillor Jocelynne Scutt, who was the chair of the CJAC at the time of the GCP’s ‘consultation’ on the scheme in 2022. She publicly stated, as we consistently maintained, that the GCP had not provided information making clear that the north (even numbers side) of Arbury Road East would be excluded from the parking scheme.
The CJAC is recommending to the H&TC that the six-month trial of parking scheme, as described in the Traffic Regulation Order published in the Spring, should go ahead with the provisos that: 1. a detailed evaluation should be made of the scheme at the end of the trial period And 2. an online channel of communications should be set up so that residents and businesses can log their experiences during the trial,
ARERA has requested that the evaluation and the communications channel should be provided by independent third parties because of the GCP’s dire performance to date in relation to the parking scheme.
This all sounds very bureaucratic – because it is.
But this won’t make the consequences of decisions about to be taken any the less significant for those of us who live and work on Arbury Road East.
We will let you know when the committee papers for the two H&T committee meetings next month become available – in case you want to make your own representations to the committees.
And we will let you know the outcomes of the decisions the two meetings make as soon as they become available.
You may have noticed the traffic counting equipment that has been installed outside the North Cambridge Academy.
We have put in a request to the County Council’s Highways Department asking what the purpose of this data collection is and how any data collected will be used.
On March 18th, the County Council published a Traffic Regulation Order. This reveals how the County’s Residents’ proposed Residents’ Parking Scheme will affect those who live, work and travel to school along Arbury Road east.
The ARERA committee submitted more than 20 questions to the County Council asking for clarification about what it is planning to do.
Implementation of the scheme is being managed by the Greater Cambridge Partnership. The County’s Policy and Regulation team asked the Greater Cambridge Partnership to provide the additional information requested. The GCP’s project manager for the scheme has done so, leaving one question unanswered, see below.
The answers that have been given make clear that what is being done is the result, not of mistakes or oversights, but of deliberate policy decisions. These decisions will advantage some and disadvantage others. Which of these two groups will you find yourself in?
Are you personally going to be disadvantaged? Or can you see that others will be – including children going to school, pedestrians, cyclists and car owners, those shopping or working on Arbury Road east?
If so, you only have a short opportunity to make objections to, or comment on, what is being proposed.
Comments and objections have to be submitted by April 12th.
