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"Cambridge council caught misleading its own planning committee. Now it is gagging the residents who caught it.": our press release of 5 October 2026
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Our press release of 5 October 2026.
The document in full
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P R E S S R E L E A S E · C H R I S T ' S L A N E A C T I O N G R O U P · M O N D AY 5 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 · F O R I M M E D I AT E U S E
Dear friend,
You cover Cambridge City Council for Cambridge News, so you will want this before Wednesday's planning committee.
A council that has admitted in writing to misleading its own planning committee is about to ask the same committee to approve the same building, and it has cut off the residents who exposed it.
R O G E R H E P H E R , F O R M E R H E A D O F P L A N N I N G AT S AV I L L S , T O T H E C O U N C I L
“walking inevitably into another - and entirely foreseeable and avoidable - legal challenge”
Objection to application 26/02109/FUL, 4 October 2026
Last October Cambridge City Council approved a new library for Christ's College. A group of residents took the decision to the High Court. The Council caved on every ground and admitted its committee had been "materially misled". On 20 October the High Court will set out, in a reasoned judgment, the errors the Council made.
On Wednesday, just thirteen days before the court rules on the errors the Council made the first time, the Council wants the same committee to approve the identical scheme. And in the run-up, this is what it has done to the residents:
It has gagged the residents. Every email the group sends to any councillor now vanishes into a Council mailbox. The councillors were never told. Last night one committee member discovered it and demanded in writing that the Chair "explain what is happening here".
It has changed the dates on their evidence. The residents' evidence appears on the public register with dates up to a month earlier than it was actually put there. Seventeen documents they filed before the officers' report surfaced only after the report was out, dated as if they had been there all along. The report tells councillors the dates are accurate.
It went to the judge behind their backs. The Council wrote to the High Court supporting the College's bid to cancel the residents' hearing, and did not copy them. The judge refused, and ordered that the hearing on 20 October stays listed.
The meeting is at the Guildhall on Wednesday 7 October from 10am. The library is item 6, expected from about 11.30am. Every document, with dates and sources, is available tonight, and
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the residents will talk.
Roger Hepher's objection in full:
https://www.christslaneactiongroup.org/assets/docs/Roger_Hepher_hgh_objection_4Oct2026.pdf 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.