Campaigners have launched a legal challenge against a proposed Cambridgeshire bus route arguing that it threatens areas renowned for their environmental, agricultural and heritage significance.

In November, the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) submitted a Transport Works Act Order application to the Department for Transport seeking approval for the £200m Cambourne to Cambridge bus road.

The submission followed four rounds of public consultation.

Jo Baker, GCP project manager, said the new road would ‘give more travel choices, making it quicker, easier and more reliable to get to where people need to go.’

However, a coalition of Cambridgeshire villages, farmers, charities, and conservationists have joined forces to challenge the plans, arguing that the section of the route running through the countryside will have an impact on wildlife habitats and farmland.

James Littlewood, the CEO of the charity Cambridge Past, Present & Future, which is spearheading the legal action, said bus services would be enhanced by increasing the number of bus lanes alongside existing roads, which would avoid the ‘unnecessary environmental damage’ of a dedicated bus route.

Lord Whitty, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Environment, also lent his support to the campaign.

He commented: ‘I do not dissent from the objective of providing public transport links between the new and expanding villages and the centre of Cambridge but am appalled by the destruction of such a high-value biodiversity site when there is a cheaper and dramatically less nature-damaging route that could more easily be built more rapidly as well as more cheaply.’