News and Events

Challenging the Cambridge Growth Company

  • Posted on: 27 March 2025
  • By: Susan
Cambridge Station Square featured in The Guardian illustrating poor design

The Federation of Cambridge Residents' Associations (FeCRA) hosted Peter Freeman, Chair of the Government’s new ‘Cambridge Growth Company’, to explain what his vision for the growth of Cambridge means for its infrastructure, water and housing, and this was an opportunity for us to question him directly.  Friends of the Cam challenged the appropriateness of growth in our dry, increasingly hot, and water stressed region, which is also threatened by flooding from sea level rise.

Challenging the Fixed Bus Way through Coton Orchard

  • Posted on: 14 January 2025
  • By: Susan

Friends of the Cam are objecting to the plan to build a costly, unnecessary, fixed dedicated bus route from Cambridge (Grange Road) to Cambourne, via Coton, destroying a traditional orchard of national importance in the process. Friends of the Cam presented evidence to the Inquiry on September 30th. The case for the busway is being made by local County and District Councils, and the Greater Cambridge Partnership.

March for Clean Water, Sunday 3rd November

  • Posted on: 11 September 2024
  • By: Susan
Join the march for clean water on October 26

Friends of the Cam is a member of the coalition organising The March for Clean Water. We joined other groups from Cambridge and across the country on Sunday November 3rd to demand clean, plentiful and healthy water in our rivers and seas for all species, including humans, and to end the profit driven pollution which drives water companies. 

Latest action demanding that Anglian Water stops polluting our rivers

  • Posted on: 11 September 2024
  • By: Susan

⁨⁩On Friday 13 September, Friends of the Cam and XR staged an action against Anglian Water dumping sewage in local rivers, prompting the water company to state they had heard the message “loud and clear”. This was followed on the 14th by an afternoon of outreach and family fun on Jesus Green, demanding that Anglian Water #ActNow to stop polluting our rivers.

A Meeting of Rivers

  • Posted on: 6 August 2024
  • By: Susan

Friends of the Cam is one of four groups working on the “Meeting of Rivers” programme. Its inaugural workshop was co-hosted by the Friends of the Cam on the 19th and 20th of September at St Lukes Church, Cambridge. A report was published in the Cambridge Independent here.

Friends of the Cam stand in solidarity with Friends of Paradise

  • Posted on: 30 January 2024
  • By: Susan
Summer Mist in Paradise Nature Reserve

A planning Inquiry Inspector overrode the unanimous decision of Cambridge City Council and the objections of thousands of residents to allow Queens’ College to develop in the garden of Owlstone Croft, up to the boundary of Paradise Nature Reserve. Friends of Paradise has applied to challenge this decision through a judicial review. Unfortunately, the Judge has refused Friends of Paradise a hearing for a Judicial Review.

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

  • Posted on: 30 January 2024
  • By: Susan
Campaign poster for Save Honey Hill's legal challenge

Although the Government approved a plan to move Anglian Water's 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, it has since withdrawn the promise of £277 million pounds to effect the move, citing spiralling costs. Anglian Water is now refusing permission for developments in Cambridge, even though the relocated site was not designed to provide extra capacity.

Pure Clean Water

  • Posted on: 23 November 2023
  • By: Susan

Friends of the Cam was delighted to host Tony Eva's award winning new film, 'Pure Clean Water', in December. The film demonstrates how the Cam and its tributaries - a rare chalk stream system - have been exploited to the brink of extinction. The film played to a full house of people who are increasingly concerned about the impact of growth on the river system, as well as on green belt land, farming and people's wellbeing in general.

Rights of Nature for Antarctica - unique challenges and promise

  • Posted on: 19 October 2023
  • By: Susan

Professor Alejandra Mancilla talked to a group hosted by Friends of the Cam on the need for rights for Antarctica to be declared. The talk was reported in the Cambridge Independent, and the slides are available at the end of this summary. She is a member of a campaigning collective who are arguing for Antarctic Rights, launched on World Antarctic Day, December 1st, 2023.

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