The enormous amount of land that could be needed for East West Rail has been revealed by maps obtained by campaigners after a three-year battle.
With debate over the route expected to be a key General Election issue, the campaigners have estimated that around 6,000 acres of land could be needed for the section from Hauxton to Clapham, north of Bedford.
The maps, which were produced by Arup in January 2022 but which have only now been made available, show the route in a level of detail not previously seen.
“It’s absolutely colossal,” said William Harrold, co-founder of Cambridge Approaches, who obtained the data under a Freedom of Information request.
“There are just so many communities here getting trashed.”
East West Railway Company, which is responsible for the £7bn new line from Oxford to Cambridge, says its plans have evolved since the maps were produced.
A spokesperson told the Cambridge Independent said it had not issued the maps before because it was “committed to avoiding confusion by refraining from providing incomplete or outdated materials”, adding that it is still finalising its updated plans.
The maps have emerged as a petition against the route was jointly launched by the campaign groups Cambridge Approaches and BFARe.
The petition calls for plans for the railway to be paused pending a full, independent review – and was signed by more than 2,000 in the first 48 hours. It now has more than 4,470 signatures.
However, due to the General Election, the petition closed on Thursday (30 May) and will not reopen. It will be up to the next government to decide whether or not to respond to the petition if it reaches the 10,000-signature threshold.
The Conservative Parliamentary candidate for South Cambridgeshire, Chris Carter-Chapman, has warned the route will “decimate our villages”.
Liberal Democrat Pippa Heylings is hoping to take the seat after incumbent Tory MP Anthony Browne switched to the new St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire constituency.
She has said she supports “in principle” the need for connectivity and for the cleaner, greener travel that can be provided by a railway.
The election has also halted East West Rail Company’s plans for a statutory consultation on the route, which the Cambridge Independent understands was to be held over two months from 24 June.
It means more uncertainty for the thousands of people who recently received Land Interest Questionnaires (LIQs) from East West Railway Company because they own land or property along the proposed route.
Mr Harrold, a retired engineer who lives in Haslingfield, through which the line would run, said: “As I understand it, you’ve got to wait for the next government to come in and they’ve got to look at it. And then if they look at it, maybe it will restart, so the limbo of these 5,000 people who have received LIQs is going to be quite long.”
An East West Railway Company spokesperson said the company would inform people of its next steps “as soon as we can”.
The maps show the large areas of land that would be needed for construction of the railway, and also reveal the land that would be snapped up for biodiversity net gain.
The East West Rail Company has pledged a target of 10 per cent biodiversity net gain across the whole project, with construction land not eligible as it must be available at the start of the project.
The maps, which cover the section from Cambourne to Great Shelford, show that a 500-metre wide strip of land could be required.
Mr Harrold said: “The maps bring out important issues like the land take for construction. East West Rail drop-ins say the land will be given back and the farmers will be farming again, but you talk to the farmers and they say based on what’s happened in other schemes, is the land going to be given back? And if it is given back at what state is the topsoil we’ve been working on for 200 years? And they’re thinking it’s going to be trashed.”
Another resident responded: “The devastation of our localities is breath-taking in multiple dimensions.
“The loss of food-producing farmland, environmental impact, people’s welfare, blight on home values to name a few.”
Cambridge Approaches received the maps as part of a request under the Freedom of Information Act – and says a further three maps relating to the city have not been released.
An East West Railway Company spokesperson told the Cambridge Independent: “In response to a 2021 Freedom of Information request, we were legally obliged to provide information, which included old engineering drawings for the area where East West Rail runs between Cambourne and Great Shelford. Our plans have evolved since then, meaning those drawings are now outdated, which is why they haven’t been shared as part of our community engagement.
“While we understand the desire for more information, we are committed to avoiding confusion by refraining from providing incomplete or outdated materials.
“We are finalising our updated plans, which we were due to present during the launch of our statutory consultation in June. However, following the announcement of a General Election in July and in order to comply with pre-election guidelines, we will now not be able to proceed as originally planned and will provide an update on this as soon as we are able to do so.”
The number of Land Information Questionnaires that the railway company sent out to home and landowners has also been revealed. More than 900 went to people across Cambridge in CB1, CB2, CB4 and CB5 with hundreds more sent to people in South Cambridgeshire in CB22, CB23 and CB24. The LIQs are designed to give up-to-date information about land ownership, occupation and usage.
East West Rail, which will connect Oxford to Cambridge via new stations at Cambourne and Tempsford, near St Neots, is intended to form a crucial part of boosting the Oxford Cambridge Arc. It will be delivered in three stages – Oxford-Milton Keynes, Oxford-Bedford and Oxford-Cambridge – and would serve commuters travelling to the fast-growing Cambridge Biomedical Campus by linking to the under-construction Cambridge South station.
Cambridge Approaches is a grassroots campaign against the proposals to build East West Rail to Cambridge. Campaigners are calling for the link between Bedford and Cambridge to be scrapped. If this was not successful then the group would campaign to stop the proposed southern approach into the city.
Mr Harrold said East West Railway Company’s economic and technical report assumed that houses would be built for 213,300 people at stations west of Cambridge.
However, he said, based on the railway company’s analysis of travel patterns in the 2011 Census that less than one per cent of these new people would regularly commute to Cambridge on the route.
“I think this would all go a lot more quickly, and would be a lot less painful, if we actually understood the benefit of it,” he said.
Referring to the petition, the EWR Co spokesperson added: “We know from our own research that there is considerable support for our proposals in local communities across the region, as well as from key stakeholders and people within the local business community.”
