Weekend A14 road closures for repairs to bridges and carriageway
The A14 between Spittals Interchange (Junction 23) and Godmanchester (Junction 24) will be closed in the westbound direction on all weekends from Friday January 13th to Sunday February 5th (10 pm on Friday night to 5 am on Monday morning)
From Friday February 9th to Sunday March 11th the closures will be in the eastbound direction. This will inevitably direct more traffic through Brampton along Thrapston and Huntingdon Road.
RAF Brampton Redevelopment Progresses
The RAF plan to vacate their site at RAF Brampton towards the end of 2013. The MOD intend to sell the site for development as a mixed-use site.
The site itself presents some unusual features which impact on the proposals. Heavily wooded, it used to be known as Brampton Park and has a history going back to the 12th century. There is an impressive house, currently the Officers' Mess and various other Grade II listed buildings. It is some 66 hectares (or 160 acres in old money) in total. Of this 17 acres, the Married Quarters' Estate, is leased to Annington Homes on a very long lease. This part contains 215 houses which will remain untouched. The rest of the site comprises JARIC, junior quarters and offices, workshop buildings and barracks and is expected to be largely redeveloped.
Planners at HDC have been working with other parties to explore what should happen there. Current proposals include 400 new houses, 7 hectares (17 acres) of employment land, a couple of shops a community building to complement the provision in the main village and substantial open space for sport with changing rooms and play areas.
The District Council Cabinet has just cleared the way for the site to be redeveloped. A detailed document, the Urban Design Framework (UDF), was approved as the way ahead. MoD will be given two marginally different layouts for the site, one, including a small briefing room, recently used as a theatre, and one without it. The situation regarding the theatre is uncertain.A vigorous action group has been formed to preserve the theatre. It is not clear if the MoD or the ultimate developers will agree to make the theatre and th associated car park over to the theatre group, whether they can raise the where-with-all to purchase and refub it and whether they can make a go at running it. No decision needs to be made just yet so there is time to try and raise the necessary funds.
HDC Planners want one more meeting with the Parish Council early in the New Year. Once finalised HDC release the UDF to MoD (say mid Jan).
MoD submit an application for outline planning approval to HDC (March '12?). As these outline plans are likely to be broadly in line with the UDF there should be little trouble in getting approval though many details will be left for later (known as reserved matters).
MoD v HDC negotiations will also take place re monies for local councils to compensate for the extra burdens that the new development is imposing, schools, roads, social housing, etc. (Known as Section 106 funds). The PC has a huge interest in these discuss as they will materially affect the Council's capacity to provide or maintain infrastructure and amenities (community buildings, play areas, sports facilities, shuttle buses, maintenance of trees (arm and a leg expensive), etc..
With all this in place Mod sell the site to developers.
The RAF leave towards the end of 2013, and the builders move in and start building.
That is the great plan at this stage. We shall have to see how it pans out.
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