Cllr Roy Gerstner – Community Activist

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My report slightly delayed.

The full report can be read here:  Click Here…..

Saxon Pit Cumulative Health Impact Assessment published.
(Saxongate Residents Group)

Cambridgeshire County Council has now published the independent Cumulative Health Impact Assessment of Saxon Pit.
This is an important piece of work for Whittlesey. Among the 238 people who completed the survey, the study found a high and widely shared reported cumulative impact.

Half of respondents met all five of the study’s markers of cumulative burden. 
Dust was the most commonly reported problem, with 79% rating its impact on daily life as high and 91% saying it was worse than a few years ago.

Reported impacts from dust, perceived air quality, odour and noise generally reduced with distance from Saxon Pit. The study also found strong concern about longer term health effects, children and vulnerable residents, and about the effect that uncertainty itself is having on people.
Some residents interviewed said they had reduced or stopped reporting problems because they saw no visible change.
Importantly, the report acknowledges that the survey took place during a quieter period of activity at Saxon Pit and that this may understate residents’ longer term experience.

The Director of Public Health says the findings provide “clear evidence that residents experience cumulative impacts which affect aspects of their lives and wellbeing.”

There are also important questions the report does not answer.
It does not establish what caused any reported effect and does not attribute those effects to any individual operator. It was not designed to test causation.
It also does not establish what the dust contains.
The report records this as the question residents most want answered.

Water was not included in the assessment because the earlier Public Health risk assessment had addressed it and identified no public health risk through water. Saxongate continues to question whether the monitoring and testing undertaken are sufficient to support that position, particularly as the Environment Agency has itself recorded grey water used outside the compound and warned of a risk of contaminated run-off reaching King’s Dyke. Eight of the 18 residents interviewed still raised concerns about water quality, discharge or contamination despite water being outside the scope of the CHIA.

Residents, operators and regulators will now have an opportunity to respond, and Public Health will review the findings alongside the five recommendations from its January 2026 report.
We encourage everyone who lives near Saxon Pit to give their feedback on the findings. Until the formal response process is confirmed, questions and comments can be sent to Public Health at: PublicHealth.AdminTeam@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Saxongate will be submitting detailed feedback and sharing it with councillors who have asked to see our response. We are also looking closely at the appeal by Johnsons Aggregates and Recycling Ltd against the County Council’s refusal of its planning application.

Our focus now is on what practical action follows.

Saxongate will be asking for a sustained, joined up programme of dust monitoring and analysis to establish what the dust contains and how this may change over time; better local environmental monitoring; a review of whether the water monitoring regime is capable of identifying changing or longer term risks, particularly those associated with IBA; and for the CHIA findings to be checked against operating levels, vehicle movements, complaints and environmental monitoring during periods of greater site activity.

We also welcome the news that Whittlesey Town Council has voted to fund dust deposition gauges and their analysis. That is a positive step towards building the better local evidence base residents have been asking for.
We would also like to thank the Director of Public Health, Sally Cartwright, for publishing the report and for making clear that publication is not the end of the process.

Thank you to everybody who completed the survey or took part in the interviews.

A year ago we were asking for cumulative impacts to be properly examined. There is now an independent evidence base and that represents real progress. The community is better organised, the evidence base is growing, and people have kept engaging even when they feel nothing is changing.That persistence is making a difference.
The focus now must be on turning this new evidence into practical action.

The full report can be read here:
https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/asset-library/saxon-pit-cumulative-health-impact-assessment.pdf

Photo credit(with permission) Photo: Terry Harris/CambsNews.

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