The County Council and CPET (the Cambridge Primary Education Trust which runs, inter alia, Histon Junior School and Histon Infants School) shared their ideas about the new school which is going to be built on Buxhall Farm.

The new school is being built because we’re short of primary school places in Histon & Impington and at present we are making do with temporary classrooms. These were only intended to be a short term solution and the new school will provide the necessary capacity for the foreseeable future.

The new school is being built at Buxhall Farm because it’s the only practical place to put it. It’s not ideal but there’s nowhere better. Options to expand the provision on the current junior school and infants school sites have been explored but unfortunately rejected.

The plans presented are not final and are intended to provoke debate. Specifically CCC and CPET  said:

‘Having a school on Buxhall Farm comes with issues and challenges and we accept that we may not have identified the right answers at this stage. The proposals presented are those which are considered to be the most appropriate, but we recognise that there may be options which we have not identified or potentially ruled out prematurely.

It is important to highlight that not all issues can be addressed through design and some of the issues may need to be resolved by through management by the school.

We would appreciate your feedback and thoughts on our proposals for the site. In particular to the key issues of:

• Pedestrian access and crossing
• Car parking
• Parent drop off and pick up

If you have any alternative proposals which it may be helpful to explore please include these as part of your written comments so that they can be recorded and explored by the design team as part of the next stage of their development process.’

As a first design I thought it was a good one. I was especially pleased to see a local architect, coincidentally the one which is working on the Histon Station development, come up with a specific local plan and not the sort of boring standard which you generally get from school architects.

However I think they need to move the B1049 access point north so that it forms a cross roads at the Glebe Road/Cottenham Road junction. That would enable this to be narrowed and ‘slowed down’. You also need a controlled crossing of the B1049 south of the school. A back entrance for pedestrians and cyclists linking to Mill Lane should also be considered.

I’m told that about 135 people attended the consultation event which is a good turnout. Click here to view the materials which were on show. If you want to respond to the County Council’s formal consultation click here. The consultation ends 7 Jul 18.