Lovers of Cambridge Market, we need your help RIGHT NOW! 

People are needed to come to the Market Square tomorrow morning - Monday 23rd.  Meet in front of the Guildhall - at 10.45am.  We are so sorry for the very short notice, we only learned of this site meeting by chance. 

Councillors on the planning committee are having a site meeting to take a look at the Civic Quarter applications.  We need to be there to show them that a market that actually serves people of Cambridge - is central to our Cambridge.  

This site meeting is a preliminary to the Planning Committee meeting at 10.00 am on Wednesday 25th March.  Traders (whose livelihoods are at stake), as well as people who use the market will be there to speak, as we continue to try to SAVE OUR MARKET.

We will be so grateful to see people come along to support.  

Whether or not you are able to come in person, if you are in Cambridge please contact your ward Councillors TODAY. 

City Councillors on the Planning Committee are being recommended to approve the Council’s Market Square proposals.  The officer report dismisses 50 public objections, and key unresolved issues raised by statutory consultees (including the Highway Authority and Historic England), as well as the Council’s own Design Review Panel. 

The 2 most essential practical issues which must be resolved for the project to go ahead

i.                            the Council being able to produce viable demountable stalls

ii.                        where to relocate the traders during works

are left totally unresolved.  The council have tried three times to produce a demountable stall that works, and all have failed as being not fit for purpose.  Now the demountable stalls have been left out of the applications. 

There is also no detail at all on the ‘public events’.  These are the ‘public events’ which have been the claimed justification for stripping the market apart and installing demountable stalls.  

Impacts on the traders are dismissed as “operational and space management issues and not material planning considerations”. The officers claim these impacts are “for the Market Management Team to consider and not for the Local Planning Authority to arbitrate”.  

But these are key planning issues. The character of our historic Market is at stake due to Market Management’s failures to pro-actively manage, maintain, and promote it.  Why can’t the planners understand this?

Shockingly, trader relocation is “not considered to be a matter for this application” - even though this was the problem on which the last Market Square proposals foundered.  

The Council hasn’t listened to, or acted on, serious concerns raised by the Market community (traders and public) repeatedly over almost 9 years about the evolving proposals.  They are yet again dismissed in the officer report to Planning Committee. 

There are many other unresolved issues with the applications.  Yet somehow the officers have reached a “finely balanced” recommendation to approve the Market Square applications.  

Can you imagine this happening in any other situation where the Council itself was not the applicant?  

We are urging people to come out to help persuade the Councillors to reject this recommendation.   

Cambridge readers, if you haven’t already signed this petition, please do so NOW and contact your ward Councillor today!  And if you can, please come to the Market at 10.45 tomorrow, and to the Council Chamber at 10am on Monday for the Planning Committee meeting.

Very many thanks.