Friends of the Cam in solidarity with Save Honey Hill as they decide not to pursue legal challenge

The Government has now approved a plan which will see £277m of public money go to Anglian Water to move its sewage plant to Green Belt on the outskirts of Cambridge, overriding the clear recommendation from the Government’s own independent planning inspectors that the project should not be given consent. The planning inspector found that there was “not a convincing case” for the move and that the harm to the green belt would be “substantial”. Save Honey Hill took legal advice on mounting a legal challenge, and their KC has recommends that they are unlikely to be successful, for reasons set out in Save Honey Hill's statement below. Friends of the Cam send heartfelt commiserations. We are full of admiration for SHH's impeccable campaign, and are horrified that the Government is determined to dismiss all expert opinion in their dash for growth. Not only is this inappropriate for our region (see, for example, Rob Larter's talk to Friends of the Cam), but it is inappropriate in a time of climate and biodiversity emergency. It is also wrecking the fragile and rare chalk stream system of which the Cam is a part.

STATEMENT FROM HONEY HILL

"At the start of this week, we received the Secretary of State’s response to our Pre-Action Letter and on the advice of our legal team we have today concluded that there is little point in pursuing a JR any further, incurring costs which might lead to a negligible outcome.

In advising the team on the merits of continuing our fight, our KC noted that the strength of the Secretary of State’s response demonstrated that his legal team had likely anticipated the grounds on which we might launch a JR early on and that his DCO decision letter was crafted so as to minimise the risk of a successful challenge – this also might explain the two delays to the decision that played out earlier this year. The detailed and timely response from the Secretary of State’s legal team to our Pre-Action Letter has backed this theory up.

We will now spend the next few weeks winding things down from a financial point of view. We will await the invoices from our solicitors and barristers and settle our accounts forthwith.

We would like to assure you that the Save Honey Hill team will continue its duty as per our constitution to engage with Anglian Water, our Parish Councils and all other stakeholders and do our best to ensure that mitigating the detrimental effects of this project on our communities is at the forefront of their minds at all times.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support over the last five years, without it we may not have won the argument and had the agreement and support of the Planning Inspectorate in its recommendation to refuse the application. It is clear that government, of whatever persuasion, regards the growth of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire as the answer to our country’s huge economic problems at all cost and we sincerely hope that if it succeeds it will have been worth irreversible effects we are experiencing."