Mick Woolhouse of Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust attended the September meeting of Milton Parish Council
and gave an update on progress for the Cambridge Sports Lakes project which proposes to create a long competitive rowing lake on land between Milton and the railway line, starting from Milton Country Park and, eventually, extended up as far as Car Dyke Road at Waterbeach.

(If you’ve not seen it before a plan for the project is online
here (Adobe/PDF, 3000KB) and it’s worth looking at – this is a big project.)

The Section 106 document has now been agreed by all parties. The purchase of one parcel of county council land is still to be finalised, but agreements are in place to secure this. A planning application will be issued in approximately 8 weeks. The project is not fully funded yet (estimated total cost approximately £30m) but the construction work will be done in phases so it can commence before all funding is in place. The outline schedule is to begin construction 12 months from now with a 2 year build time.

The access to the rowing lake via water with a link from the river Cam has not yet been agreed due to major issues around its construction, disruption to the railway in particular. Concern was expressed by councillors that this will mean all access to the lake will be via road, on an already overloaded A10.