i. Notes progress on preparation of the Huntingdonshire Local Plan to 2036 and its supporting evidence base, including confirmation that the Core Strategy (2009) meets the Government’s requirement to have a submission Local Plan by March 2017, and the update in relation to highways and transport infrastructure projects;
ii. Endorses the use of approach B as detailed in paragraph 4.3 of the Officer’s report (the revalidated Cambridge Sub-Regional Model for the Strategic Transport Study (CSRM)) as follows:
‘Priority is to develop a defensible transport evidence base: this would involve waiting for the revalidated CSRM to be available which could provide forecasts up to 2041 if required and would be based on an up-to-date data set. This would form a more robust evidence base for the Local Plan Examination and be less susceptible to challenge from developers. Preliminary work could be undertaken in the short-term but this approach would necessitate delaying modelling the four development scenarios until the revalidation work on the CSRM is completed; checking to test accuracy for the Huntingdonshire area could be incorporated within the scope of the Strategic Transport Study.’; and
iii. Request that Cambridgeshire County Council provides an explanation as to why the Highway work is delayed and provide absolute assurances that they will commit to the amended timescales.