Hartree Engagement in March!
By Ashni Jain
March has been an exciting month of engagement for ECF in Cambridge for the Hartree project!
Over the last month, ECF along with the Hartree project team have met and engaged with a great many people and received a lot of feedback on the proposal. Hartree is at the centre of the North East Cambridge Area Action Plan (NECAAP), a planned new low carbon district between Cambridge North station and Cambridge Science Park.
At the heart of the proposed new district of North east Cambridge, subject to relevant planning permissions, the development at Hartree will include approximately 5,600 homes, shops, workplaces, education, community and leisure facilities, and open spaces across 48 hectares of brownfield land. The site is currently home to the Cambridge Waste Water Treatment Plant, in addition to a golf driving range and commercial buildings. The project will be enabled by the proposed relocation of the Waste Water Treatment Plant (subject to consent being granted). This will make the site available for new homes and other uses.
The team undertook pop-up exhibitions in seven locations across Central and North Cambridge over two days. 36,000 residents, businesses and the wider community in Cambridge received details of the emerging proposals along with an invitation to visit the first round of exhibitions for 2024.
The key priority of this round of engagement was to share the updated masterplan and to gather feedback from the community. During this phase, the team sought feedback on the emerging plan, the Play Line, streets, green routes, the three neighbourhoods and the various strategies.
To give an opportunity to those who could not visit the exhibitions in person, the team hosted an online webinar. The webinar provided an online opportunity for the wider public to hear the project team talk through the emerging proposals, ask questions, and give feedback.
Each of the nine events, available online and face-to-face, offered the people of Cambridge a chance to talk to the project team to discuss the developing proposals, pose questions, and provide their input.
Furthermore, two targeted expert workshops were organised in Cambridge. The first workshop focused on collecting feedback for the transport strategy and the second for the sustainability strategy. Attendees for the workshops included Camcycle, Cambridge Bus Users Group, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership etc. The Ideas Exchange group, a demographically representative group of locals, was also engaged with regarding Hartree’s design code which is currently being drafted.
The entire project team’s efforts to engage with the community has been recognised by the nomination of Hartree for the Pineapple Awards in the community engagement category.
ECF is currently planning more such innovative engagement for the summer, in preparation for the submission of Hartree’s outline planning application later this year.
If you would like to learn more about how ECF are engaging on Hartree, please contact the team at: info@engagecf.co.uk.
