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Residents have been blocked and backdated by Cambridge Council: our newsletter of 5 October 2026
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Our newsletter of 5 October 2026.
The document in full
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C H R I S T ' S L A N E A C T I O N G R O U P · C H R I S T ' S C O L L E G E L I B R A RY 2 6 / 0 2 1 0 9 / F U L
Residents have been blocked and backdated by Cambridge Council: please write today to reject or defer the Christ's College Library application Dear friends, Roger Hepher, former national Head of Planning at Savills and Executive Director of hgh Consulting, has written to the Council: it is "most surprising that a local planning authority of the standing of Cambridge City Council should be prepared to entertain such an abuse of proper planning process", and approving it would mean "walking inevitably into another - and entirely foreseeable and avoidable – legal challenge". The Council has already admitted to the High Court that its Planning Committee was "materially misled" over this library. On Wednesday it asks the same committee to approve the same building, with more misleading statements.
Backdated We have been backdated. The officers' report tells councillors that "all representations are uploaded against dates that reflect when they were uploaded". That is not true: 113 of our 158 documents on the public register carry earlier dates, against 1 of the College's 108. Just one example: our letter to the conservation officer setting out errors was kept off the register until 1 October, after the officers' report had come out, then shown backdated to 25 September, the day we sent it.
Blocked We have been blocked. Every email we send councillors is blocked and detained in a Council mailbox set up for us alone. Councillors are never told, and never hear from us directly: they are blocked from hearing from their own constituents. Our letter to the committee reached them 55 hours late, by the time it was the weekend. The Council's email to the judge trying to vacate our hearing reached us only after the judge had ruled. The residents who beat this Council in the High Court are being backdated and blocked, days before the vote. Please write today to democratic.services@cambridge.gov.uk:
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"I object to application 26/02109/FUL and ask the Planning Committee to refuse it or, at the least, defer item 6 until after the High Court hearing on 20 October." Then fill the Guildhall on Wednesday 7 October (10am start, item 6), and forward this to everyone you know in Cambridge. Read "Backdated. Blocked.", our one-page fact sheet, and Roger Hepher's objection in full, as submitted to the Council on 4 October. Open our one-page fact sheet: Backdated. Blocked.
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With thanks, CHRIST’S LANE ACTION GROUP CAMBRIDGE
christslaneactiongroup.org | residents@christs-lane.com
The first permission is quashed. The second is frozen.
On Tuesday 20 October 2026 the High Court quashed the first approval, 25/02161/FUL, on all four grounds of our claim. The Secretary of State has frozen the permission. On 13 October she directed the Council not to grant it without her authorisation while she considers whether to call the application in, six days after the identical application 26/02109/FUL was controversially approved. If you would like to support a call in, write to us and we will tell you how.
Email residents@christs-lane.com.