Illustrative visual
Cambridge’s historic centre belongs to everyone, not only a college that happens to own a corner of it. Its heritage: the historic buildings and iconic skyline, the narrow streets and protected conservation areas, is held in trust for the whole city. Planning law and the bodies that guard heritage exist to check any college tempted to build on a scale that harms the very heritage it shares with the rest of the city. Gown cannot be allowed to forget that it answers to town.
Christ’s Lane is one of Cambridge’s oldest pedestrian routes; a narrow passage, barely six metres wide, that has carried the city’s foot traffic for centuries, today linking the historic core to the bus station and the Grafton. On one side stands the Grade I listed Bodley Library, Victorian, human-scaled, its perfectly proportioned gable, oriel window and crenelated staircase turret currently visible against clear sky from along the lane.
Christ’s College wants to build a library so large that the experts who reviewed it found it caused heritage harm: a four-storey building fourteen metres high along that same six metres of width, its façade largely blank, looming over the Bodley and turning its back on the town. Planning officers once warned that buildings of such dimensions would turn Christ’s Lane into a “canyon-like, oppressive passageway.”
Every building that has stood here has deferred to the Bodley beside it. This one would not.
Two minutes is all it takes. A formal objection goes on the planning record. The Council accepts comments until the application is decided.
Or email Dominic.Bush@greatercambridgeplanning.org quoting ref. 26/02109/FUL.
Not sure what to say? A few lines are enough, use your own words. For example:
“I object to application 26/02109/FUL. The College and the Council conceded in Court that the first permission was unlawful; the errors they admitted include that heritage harm was not treated correctly. A number of heritage bodies have found the building too big and bulky, causing harm to the Bodley Library and other Grade I listed surroundings. Nothing substantive about the second application has changed. The High Court hears the judicial review on 20 October 2026, and the application should not be determined before the Court has ruled on how to correct the errors conceded.”
What we are asking for. We support a new Christ’s College Library; we oppose this design. The benefits to the public are small; the harm to the city’s heritage is not. Cambridge deserves better from Christ’s College: a building that serves the city and respects its historic setting.
Cambridge City Council and Christ’s College have conceded: the library permission was granted unlawfully, and both have signed in Court to have it quashed.
A judicial review (case no. AC-2025-LON-004656) brought by the Christ’s Lane Action Group has forced both the Council and the College onto the back foot. Mr Justice Kimblin granted permission on all four grounds, calling the issues “strongly arguable.” Rather than fight, the Council and the College have consented to the permission being quashed on every ground. The only question left for the High Court on 20 October is how the unlawful decision gets unwound, not whether it was unlawful.
Christ’s Lane Action Group is represented by Emma Dring of Cornerstone Barristers.
Weeks after signing the consent order, the College resubmitted the same building, with the same four errors, as application 26/02109/FUL. What it now claims about that building, and how it slipped it back to councillors, is set out in The Second Application below.
The court documents recording the challenge, the grant of permission, the signed concession and the listed hearing are below.
Order of Mr Justice Kimblin granting permission on all four grounds at the paper stage.
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The claim bundle filed in the High Court, Planning Court by Christ’s Lane Action Group, represented by Emma Dring of Cornerstone Barristers.
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Signed by the Defendant (Cambridge City Council) and Interested Party (Christ’s College) on 28 April 2026, agreeing the 7 November 2025 planning permission should be quashed on all four grounds, with the Council’s covering letter inviting the court to make a final order in those terms.
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The Administrative Court List Office confirms the substantive hearing is listed for 20 October 2026, with a one-day time estimate, in person at the Royal Courts of Justice.
Read the full textCambridge’s planning safeguards are meant to catch errors before a decision is made. On the Christ’s College library they have failed repeatedly, and each time it was residents, not the Council, who found the failure and forced its correction. In July 2026 CLAG put that pattern to the Council twice. On 16 July, at Public Questions to Full Council, CLAG asked the one question the Council has not answered: with the High Court due to give its reasoned judgment on 20 October, will the Council agree an extension so the second application is not decided first? And on 29 July, at the Development Control Forum that 75 petitioners secured, CLAG put the College’s own masterplan to councillors as the live, less harmful alternative.
Read it in the experts’ own words. Historic England, the Victorian Society, Cambridge Past, Present & Future and conservation specialist Alec Forshaw each weighed the scheme against its Grade I listed setting, and each reached the same verdict: a building too large for its surroundings, causing real harm to Cambridge’s most sensitive heritage assets.
Historic England’s substantive advice: the proposed building is too large for its Grade I listed setting and would cause harm through excessive bulk.
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Historic England looked again and held the line: the excessive bulk remained, and so did the harm.
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The Victorian Society’s remedy is blunt: halve the height. Align each floor with Bodley’s oriel window, drop the brutalist styling, and the new library could finally answer the building beside it.
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An independent expert’s verdict in full: too big, over-dominant, and set to swallow the clear-sky views of Bodley’s gable and turret that make the lane what it is.
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Responding to the resubmitted scheme, the Society maintained its objection: the design still offers a low-to-moderate level of less-than-substantial harm, and the same submitted scheme cannot improve its level of harm.
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Fifteen days late, the Society’s last word finally surfaced on the planning file: “Our principal point still stands. Harm is attributed to this scheme, and this has not been mitigated in the resubmitted design.”
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Cambridge Past, Present & Future objected to the resubmitted scheme, finding multi-layered harm to highly sensitive designated heritage assets and urging a lower, less bulky design.
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The College’s own conservation specialist refutes the resubmission’s claim of no heritage harm, and his full October 2025 appraisal, reproduced in full, finds less-than-substantial harm not outweighed by public benefits.
Read the full textThe applicant’s own daylight and sunlight report contradicts the claim that Christ’s Lane would not be overshadowed. Although the applicant’s shading study shows only limited times and angles "favourable to the applicant," eb7’s independent review for CLAG finds it already shows "darker shadows cast across the lane at 6pm on the summer solstice." On the applicant’s own figures, 35 windows serving retail and coffee shops along the lane suffer losses beyond BRE targets, 25 losing more than half their daylight, and four more than 90 per cent.
The case for objecting rests on primary sources, not assertion. The College’s JR Claims Fact Check sets four of the College’s public statements beside the court orders, consultation responses and its own papers they refer to. Every quotation is verbatim, with the original document linked. And after CLAG fact-checked The Observer’s 5 July 2026 column, The Observer corrected its article online; the corrected paragraph and the correction note are reprinted on the page.
The College’s bulky scheme was never the only option. The law requires that heritage harm be avoided where a gentler design can do the job. The College’s own 2016 scheme by Rick Mather won planning consent and was far more proportionate, and a Create Streets illustration shows a lower-impact route is possible. And the College’s own 2023 masterplan, drawn by MICA Architects and still published on MICA’s website, combines a lower library with distributed study space through rooms the College already holds. The College’s needs met, the heritage harm reduced, the lane left intact.
The College’s own 25-year masterplan, published on its architects’ website: twenty interventions including “a new library and study constellation”, with changes “discrete and complementary to the character of Christ’s”. Screened by CLAG at the Development Control Forum of 29 July 2026.
Open document
The College’s own earlier study for a new library, showing a more proportionate approach that kept the bulk in check.
Open document
An alternative facade and design illustration showing a less harmful approach.
Open documentThe campaign in its own voice. The posters and flyers below are how residents first told Cambridge what was at stake on Christ’s Lane, plain, public and impossible to miss.
Illustrative visualisation. Not drawn to scale.
The latest campaign poster: the first permission was conceded unlawful, yet the same scheme is back. A call to object.
Open document
Illustrative visualisation. Not drawn to scale.
“Stand up for our city, demand better!” A campaign call to object.
Open document
Further reading
The road to the Cambridge University Corporation Act of 1894, and the long history of the Town & Gown divide over who controls the city’s space. Dr N. Henry, Museum of Cambridge (Feb 2026).
Read at the Museum of Cambridge
Planning portal
View the second application and submit your comment directly on the Greater Cambridge Planning portal.
Read the Full ApplicationThe short answers are below. For the full story, Historic England, the Victorian Society, the chimneys, the alternative designs and the economic toll on the Lane, read the complete FAQ.
Residents challenged the Council’s grant of planning permission by judicial review. The High Court granted permission on all four grounds. Rather than defend the decision, both Christ’s College and Cambridge City Council conceded the original permission was unlawful and consented to it being quashed on all four grounds. The case number is AC-2025-LON-004656.
Yes. Weeks after agreeing the permission should be quashed, the College resubmitted the same scheme as application 26/02109/FUL. The Bursar told all 42 councillors the application is unchanged, but omitted to mention that the College had just conceded the first permission was unlawful.
Historic England found the new building “too big for its location” and “too large for what is a very domestic setting,” causing harm through its “excessive bulk.” Under planning law such heritage harm must be justified by public benefits, yet the College recasts that same bulk as the benefit, so the public is left owed nothing in return.
Object to application 26/02109/FUL on the Greater Cambridge Planning portal, or email the planners quoting reference 26/02109/FUL. Every individual objection is logged and counts.
Same Scheme, Same Harm Called A Benefit: the scheme is back. The Council accepts comments until the application is decided. Make your objection count, quote reference 26/02109/FUL.
Email objections to Dominic.Bush@greatercambridgeplanning.org quoting ref. 26/02109/FUL.
