Labour launches campaign to Save Open Spaces

Cambridge Labour Party will launch a campaign to Save Our Open Spaces on Saturday, 24th March, outside Tesco supermarket in Newmarket Rd., at 10am

The SOS campaign will be seeking signatures on a petition which will highlight the threat to areas in the east of Cambridge which already experience road gridlock, and ask the city and county councils to call a halt on proposals to build 11,500 homes on Marshall's airport until existing traffic problems have been sorted out.

Labour believes the proposals will make the current situation much worse and that the planning authorities are turning a blind eye to the problems their plans will create.

Labour deputy Leader Ben Bradnack said: 'The plans we have seen depend on a 60% switch from private car to public transport use. So far as I know such a switch has never been achieved anywhere before'.

Councillor John Durrant, the Labour Environment spokesperson, who represents Abbey ward which will be most strongly affected by the Marshall's development, said: 'We believe that unless these plans are re-thought, Cambridge will end up either with precious open spaces like Coldham's Common and Stourbridge Common concreted over by new roads and guided bus routes, or with its current prosperity destroyed by transport gridlock, as more and more people try to use our already gridlocked roads.