A trade-off between bats and lighting

A plan to improve safety on a road in Cambridgeshire, originally submitted in 2022, has been withdrawn following objections from the county council’s biodiversity team. The team expressed concerns for local bats, stating that permanent lighting on the road would cause "unacceptable illumination” in a potential bat crossing area. In a meeting on 12 February, the plans were declared to still be at an impasse, with the head of programme at the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) saying the issue had become "a trade off between bats and lighting”. This follows the identification of a rare species of bat at the Paradise Local Nature Reserve in 2022, which caused a nearby student housing project to be delayed. The next GCP meeting is planned for 5 March. 

Evening buses for Ramadan

The Mill Road Traders Association, Stagecoach, and Cambridge Central Mosque have collaborated on an initiative to provide an evening shuttle bus service during the month of Ramadan. Running from 17 February to 19 March, the service will travel to Cambridge Central Mosque and other mosques along Mill Road for worshippers attending nightly prayers. The paid service will operate alongside existing Stagecoach routes, ensuring that worshippers have multiple accessible travel options. Stagecoach is also offering certain discounted tickets as part of the initiative. 

Cambridge Festival on truth and technology

The programme for the 2026 Cambridge Festival has been announced, featuring over 350 events focused on interrogating "the nature of truth in the digital age".  Beginning on 16 February, the festival will involve talks, performances, and debates spanning several topics, including artificial intelligence, technology, climate change, and the transatlantic slave trade. The festival's manager, David Cain, said that topic selection "was shaped by a sense that many of the assumptions we’ve lived with about truth, progress, democracy and even expertise are under real strain”. Most of the events are free to attend.

BBC filming at Wolfson 

On Wednesday (18/02), Wolfson College hosted a live recording of BBC Radio 4’s culinary panel programme, The Kitchen Cabinet. In an email to Wolfson students, the College offered ten spare audience tickets, allocated on a first come, first serve basis, courtesy of the BBC. The Kitchen Cabinet, hosted by journalist and food critic Jay Rayner, has previously made visits to Cambridge. In 2013, the show filmed their series finale at Clare College. More recently, in 2018, The Kitchen Cabinet filmed an episode at Wolfson College, Oxford.