There is no quick or easy answer to this as it has unavoidable complexity.

I met with Tom McKeown from Histon & Impington Pump Track Charity and the County Council’s Head of Assets, the officer responsible for managing County Council land and property.

Cambridgeshire County Council, owns a lot of land due to a large estate of tenant farms across Cambridgeshire.  You can look at the scale of the land ownership on the county council website.

I regularly hear misconceptions and opinions about the County Council land I’d like to address before going into the detail of this meeting

The Council cannot give away land to Parish Councils or community groups.  How councils manage their land is strictly controlled to avoid corruption. Councils have a legal duty when selling land to achieve ‘best possible consideration’ ie land must be sold at market rate.   The value of Greenbelt land in Histon and Impington is not of farmland but of land with development potential in an area where development land is very expensive.  Buying land for a pump track would be very expensive but remains a possibility.  

It’s worth considering how the County Council uses it’s landholdings. The County Council is significantly underfunded. We see that in the state of our roads and in the stresses and strains of adult social care, children’s social care and more.   County Council land operates in two main ways;

• The farms estate supports tenant farmers and provides an annual rental income the Council uses to help fund services.   
• County land also operates effectively as a savings account for the County Council to gradually dip into by slowly selling off portions of land over time through development projects.

As a County Councillor I cannot demand land for a good community project.  There are processes and controls precisely to stop this practise because if you allow Councillors to do that for every good idea very soon there would be no land left.  I can ask the County Council if they would consider providing land for a pump track and this was the purpose of this meeting but since COVID legislation has got a lot tighter in many areas.

Meeting with Pump Track charity and County council.

Bearing all this in mind I met with the County Council’s Head of Assets and Tom McKeown from the Pump Track Charity.

We asked about how we should proceed when discussing County land currently being farmed with current farm tenants.   The Head of Assets told us not to worry about this. Land is lost and gained from tenant farms relatively fluidly. I know the farm estate works closely with tenant farmers and it is in both parties’ interests to have farms which are economically viable. 

The Pump Track Charity asked if there was any land that could be used for a pump track in Histon and Impington.   The Head of Assets immediately suggested that the land at Manor Field by the community orchard next to the busway would make a good location. The Pump Track Charity responded that community feeling and a Charity assessment had already ruled that location out.

The conversation then moved onto whether the charity could rent land for a pump track specifically at Buxhall farm on the field by the Park School.   The council officer said this would be difficult (meaning no).  There is a live council farm tenancy which runs for a few years but the bigger issue was that allowing land to be used for this could harm future development potential of the land so like any other corporate land owner they could not support the proposal.

Reading between the lines the council view on this was that the council has already allowed the parish to rent out a large recreational space which is potential development land at Manor Field, the council also allows the parish to use the old infants school field.  Many communities don’t benefit from being able to use any County Council land as an open community green space so we are lucky.

That said the officer made it clear that there was a possible negotiation to be had in regards to developing land for housing in exchange for space for community facilities. If for example a new neighbourhood plan proposed developing the land by Park School with a pump track and potentially other recreational facilities the County Council would be open to future discussion.

I regularly hear comment that the County Council wants to develop all the land here.  I think the reality is more complex.  The County Council is always interested in developing high value land to fund public services, but it will progress the sites which are easiest and Histon is not viewed as an easy site. Other sites are easier and more advanced.  If the community were to decide through a new neighbourhood plan that they want housing  to allow delivery of a pump track and recreation ground in the north of the village the County Council would be prepared to open discussions about that.

Fundamentally the County Council have laid out the terms of a land negotiation by a corporate landowner with the community.   The community need to decide what their priorities are.

The officer was of the view however that if the council could develop some of the land on the Buxhall farm field around the Park School then there could be a conversation about having a pump track as part of developer contributions.   It was also suggested that the best way to move that forward would be to include a proposal to develop that land in the next neighbourhood plan as it’s not in the current draft local plan and is currently green belt land.

The county council would be prepared to find land for a pump track as part of negotiation around also developing some land for additional housing and the best way to have that conversation would be as part of a new neighbourhood plan.