Cambridge 1 Event Debate Green Belt

A ‘’grown up’’ conversation is needed about the Cambridge green belt; the Leader of the South Cambridgeshire Council has said.

Responding to a question at our Cambridge event about how the city’s growth is frustrated by tight protections on land encircling it, she said: “We need to start having some grown up conversations about the green belt.”

Tim Holmes, Managing Director of Endurance Estates, told delegates that the green belt is the ‘’elephant in the room’’ when it comes to discussions about development in and around the Varsity city.

Pointing to the ‘’real pace’’ in the growth of the recent extension to the north west of Cambridge, which is within cycling distance of the city centre, he said: “It is close to Cambridge: people want to go there.”

Smith told delegates in her presentation that South Cambridgeshire’s ‘’number one priority’’ is to update its local plan, work on which had begun immediately after the current blueprint was adopted last year.

She said: “The mandate from the electorate of south Cambridgeshire is that they want to see things done differently. There are no elections for three years so there is quite a clear field to start doing things differently. We won’t just have people deciding to plop garden villages all over south Cambridgeshire in unconnected places because it’s just bad planning. We have to have the right houses in the right places at the right time.”

Smith, who took over as Leader following the Liberal Democrats victory in last May’s elections, said the authority had been “somewhat passive” during the early stages of the local plan process.

She said that a recent review had identified the need for “significantly” more houses per annum than current local plans allowed for.

South Cambridgeshire is also keen to raise the energy efficiency standards of the new housing coming forward in the district, the Lib Dem politician said: “We want housing that will be affordable to live in. We need you to factor in the cost of living into the housing you are building. There is enormous scope to cut the cost of energy, water and communication by good design and place making.”

But she said one of the main factors holding back development across the district is infrastructure, adding that the council is lobbying to push an upgrade of the A508 up the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayor James Palmer’s list of priority projects.

She added that the district would be in a “mess” if other developments took as long to get off the ground as the new town at Northstowe, where it took more than a decade for work to begin on new housing.

Endurance’s Holmes told delegates that development at new settlements around Cambridge have been slower than at the urban extensions to the south and north-west of the city. Large ‘edge of city’ sites, like Endurance’s plans for a 1,200 dwelling urban extension to Cambridge, provide the required numbers of new homes in sustainable locations with a greater range of transport options, he said.

The application for the site north of Cherry Hinton, which has been jointly submitted with joint venture partner Marshall Group, is due to be determined by council planners this summer.

The company’s chief concern however is the availability of power with the area’s electricity network operator UK Power Network already claiming it cannot fulfil requests for grid connections. Holmes said: “If we have a massive growth in electricity, it will cause massive problems in this region, a lot of cost and slow down the process.”

He also identified a shortfall in homes being brought forward through the planning process in south Cambridgeshire’s villages. A total of 860 dwellings have been allocated on six sites in four villages, which equates to just 4.4% of the local plan’s requirement for new homes – but he said that all of the 336 homes, which Endurance has secured permissions for, have been sold to house builders.

Cambridge 2

Hayden Dolby, Managing Director of Taylor Wimpey East Anglia, told the event that sales at their large Northstowe development have “picked up”, doubling to two per week recently.

Dolby added that the reserved matters application is proceeding for the company’s 2,350 homes at Camborne West. The potential for rent to buy or private rented sector (PRS) housing is being examined on the site which is due to see the first dwellings delivered at the end of this year.

Turning to the wider housing marker, Dolby said that trading has been good so far this year despite uncertainty surrounding Brexit, and that the risks from looming changes to the Help to Buy scheme are “manageable”.

He said delivery in 2019 is expected to be similar to last year with growth in volumes pencilled in for 2020 and 2021.

Chris Mills, Director of Aitchison Developments, said his company’s scheme for 30 acres of employment land at Bourn Quarter is the largest commercial development to the west of Cambridge.

Due to its location, he said the development would benefit from the growing focus on the Oxford to Cambridge corridor, particularly given that the rents will be at a discount to those on offer in the city centre.

Mills said that the scheme, which will be built to BREEAM Very Good minimum standard, will create opportunities for more than 600 jobs.

Stuart Field, Associate Planning Director at L&Q Estates, said that Northstowe’s secondary school is due to open in September this year with Homes England submitting an outline application for the 5,000 home third phase of the new town later this year. The first of the 3,500 dwellings planned in phase two of the Northstowe project are due to be occupied next year.