Chesterton Fen, an area consisting largely of settled traveller sites north of the level crossing on Fen Road, Cambridge forms part of the civil parish of Milton and so falls into Milton Ward at South Cambridgeshire District Council. Because the development in that area was done little by little by the Travellers themselves on their own land, no-one has had the overarching plan
and put in infrastructure like sewers as it went along. The result is that there are over 250 caravans and mobile homes in the area, and no proper sewage connection, even though the site is within a few hundred metres of the Cambridge Sewage Treatment Works. Travellers have their own small treatment plants and septic tanks, which are inadequate and ill advised in this low-lying area, where the water table is very close to the surface.
One of our two district councillors, Hazel Smith, has been working for a long time to get this sorted out. There’s a long history to this stretching back over many years. The first application for a first-time sewerage connection under Section 101A of the Water Industry Act 1991 was made by Cllr Smith on behalf of the residents in September 2007.
The application was turned down by Anglian Water in December 2009. Cllr Smith then launched an appeal submitted in March 2010 but in July 2011 that too effectively failed.
A change to the legislation was needed so last week Baroness Humphreys, who has been working with Cllr Smith, tabled an amendment to the Water Bill which was in the committee stage in the House of Lords and you can see that she refers explicitly to Chesterton Fen.
[media]milton/waterbill.mp4[/media]
It’s very rarely that an amendment is accepted at Committee stage – this stage is usually for probing the issues and getting responses from the minister – and, as you’ll see, the minister offered a discussion with the baroness. Hopefully that will lead to changes to help finally resolve this issue as it is everyone’s interest, not just the residents, that there isn’t raw sewage doing things like leaching into the Cam.
