"Your name on the Christ’s College petition: reply by Wed 1 July only if you want out": our newsletter of 28 June 2026

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Dear all,

You signed our petition against Christ's College's new library last year, and it made a huge difference! Your names helped secure a public Development Control Forum, and we went on to challenge the College's permission in the High Court.

They did not even try to defend it. Faced with our challenge, both Christ's College and Cambridge City Council backed down, conceded all four legal grounds, and signed a consent order agreeing the original permission should be quashed. The substantive hearing, to potentially national case law on heritage and planning, is on 20 October.

Now the College is trying again. It has submitted a fresh application for substantially the same scheme before the court has ruled. To secure another Development Control Forum, we must give the Council at least 25 local names and addresses by Wednesday 1 July.

You already signed once, so we will add your name and postal address again unless you tell us not to. You do not need to do anything. Please reply only if:

- you do not want your name included this time;

- your postal address has changed; or

- we do not already have it.

This building would permanently change the heart of Cambridge. Let's make sure local residents' voices are heard before any further decision is taken.

Petition: STOP THE RE-RUN of the Oversized Christ's College Development Full details are on our website, www.christslaneactiongroup.org. Please share it as widely as you can, so more people learn about this pressing issue of heritage harm and the democratic accountability owed to the citizens of Cambridge.

Together we are making history in resisting depredation of the developers with no respect for the unique architectural and historic heritage of City Centre Cambridge, which is a Conservation Area. Thank you,

Christ's Lane Action Group

28 June 2026

P.S. If you have five minutes, please also submit your own objection to the new application. It does not need to be long, and a sentence or two in your own words carries far more weight than a copied template. You might write about the harm to the area's heritage and character, the scale and loss of daylight, the lack of real consultation, or the wrongness of deciding this before the court has ruled on the original permission. You may also simply write "I object" and it will be counted.

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Object here: https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/ (search for 26/02109/FUL).

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