Key points from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire interview

“This is not entirely the outcome we had hoped for,” said Emma Smith, spokesperson for Better Beehive Cambridge. “The inspector has accepted that many local homes and long-established communities will experience harm and added conditions around this. It’s clear that voicing concerns through the planning process is important in our growing city.”

Beehive update from Better Beehive Group Cambridge following the appeal for the Beehive site as a result of the decision by Railpen to lobby the government, July 2025. The Better Beehive Cambridge Group attended the public inquiry and formally shared our concerns, including, but not limited to, loss of residential amenity.

How to follow the public enquiry

Dates for your diary for planning visits

We were delighted to be included in The Cambridge Room event on 26 March, their first talk on ‘Let’s talk about the Beehive’ and grateful to know that our work has been recognised with comments on how helpful our website is and our considered contributions to the planning process.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request allows the public to access information held by UK public authorities, requiring these authorities to respond with the requested information within 20 working days, unless an exemption applies

An update on the status and an invitation to comment with points of concern that you may wish to cover.

What happened at the planning committee meeting on 12 February when the Beehive plans were discussed? Here’s our summary of what we expect to happen next.

Railpen have lobbied the Secretary of State to get their plans called-in, thus bypassing local democracy. Here’s how to help if you want a better plan for the Beehive site.

The proceedings of the planning committee meeting, their decisions and all the comments and reports will be sent to the Planning Inspectorate for review. Because the committee can’t actually refuse due to the ‘calling in’, as recommended by the case officers, they were ‘minded to refuse’, so had this been a standard planning meeting, we’d have been very pleased with the results, which was a unanimous refusal on the grounds of residential amenities.

If you have commented, you should be receiving notification that the planning committee will be considering the application for the outline planning permission for the Beehive site on Coldhams Lane on 12th February 2025 at 10am.

We have significant news from the planning officer that you need to read

You can be forgiven for not spending your December reading through 540 planning documents in search of the Daylight and Sunlight addendum and revised Design Code for the Beehive site ahead of the developer’s submission for outline planning permission on the Planning Committee on 12th Feb 2025.

We did!

Here is our report which was sent to the planning officer on 13th January.

If you have commented on the planning application for the Beehive site off Coldhams Lane in Cambridge, you should have received a letter from the planning department advising you that there are revisions.

The Better Beehive Cambridge Group’s response to the revised planning application for the Beehive site covering 10 areas of consideration.

The revised application is in, can you help us?

An blog post with a list of planning applications in Cambridge where height is an issue and info on campaign groups.