Cambridge Growth Company to act as ‘co-ordinator and convener’ between local government and Westminster

Cambridge is poised for a major transformation and the chair of the city’s growth company is hopeful that funding could be allocated in the upcoming Spending Review.

Chair Peter Freeman is working to secure investment in his role of “co-ordinator and convener” between local government and Westminster.

But residents will have to wait to know how many homes the area will be expected to accommodate and where those homes might go. That is likely to be next year.

“But even before that, we would hope to be brokering, arranging loans for infrastructure to some of the big sites,” Mr Freeman told the Cambridge Independent.

He said he would be “disappointed” if they had not announced “some significant deals” by Christmas.

In March last year, Michael Gove, the former Conservative housing secretary, sparked alarm among local authorities, MPs and councillors when he proposed 250,000 homes for the Cambridge region by 2050 to make the most of the area’s status as a science and technology superpower.

After the General Election, Labour confirmed it was “ambitious for Cambridge” and would work with local authorities to plan sustainable growth.

It also confirmed Mr Freeman, former chair of Homes England, would lead the growth company and handed it £10million to develop a plan for the housing, transport, water and wider infrastructure the city needs to “realise its full potential”.

“I think the quarter of a million figure was very, very, very high,” said Mr Freeman. “I don’t think anyone should be thinking about a quarter of a million homes.”

He continued: “We shouldn’t be drawn on a number until we’ve completed the evidence base. And the evidence base involves consultants preparing evidence.”

Mr Freeman said the company should “help broker a newer, more equitable, more functional way of doing things” so that larger land allocations are made that are “big enough to take a mixture of jobs and housing and schools and community venues and good public open space, and the requirement for all of those things is so baked in the land price”.

He emphasised the drive to create “coherent” areas offering a mix of jobs, housing, and community spaces, and referenced the potential of existing development proposals such as Cambridge Airport, when Marshall vacates it, and the expansion of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC).

“I’m looking at the government’s aspirational growth plans for Greater Cambridge, I see it as a number of separate pieces of the scale of a Marshall’s or a CBC that are coherent in good places to live and work in their own right,” he explained.

Mr Freeman said the company will look at the pros and cons of different places, different levels of density, and whether it’s several places that take a lot or a dozen places that take less.

“I’m pretty sure we won’t say it’s split between 50 places, because it’s diluting it,” he said.

“We need to, in the same period, be negotiating with government and the local authorities about what the infrastructure deficit is, what it’s going to cost to make up for that deficit, and how effective public-private partnerships can pay for the infrastructure. And at a personal level, I’m committed to making sure that when this goes ahead it is properly funded, it’s not an announcement without the wherewithal to deliver it.”

He added: “I won’t go into details of which infrastructure projects, but there are some infrastructure projects that are particularly important to local leaders, which I believe we will be able to get financed in the next year or two. At the moment, there isn’t money locally and there isn’t money centrally, but by promoting some of the major land releases and negotiating innovative agreements with the landowners, I believe we will be able to secure that funding , to get the infrastructure.”

The Cambridge Growth Company has said it has committed to developing key transport corridors that enhance connectivity around major anchor sites, although it has not expressed a specific view on existing proposed transport schemes such as the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s controversial Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) or Cambourne to Cambridge (C2C) schemes.

The newly-elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Paul Bristow has pledged his support for light rail in the Cambridge region.

“We’re in a position to look at it through slightly fresher eyes because if we are looking at creating a city at regional scale, where the travel to work population might double, different forms of transport that haven’t been affordable might become affordable.

“I think there have been critics of guided buses, and there’s a limit to the number of people they carry. However, I think they were the right solution for the budget that was available and the population that was available. If both of those are increasing, you could be using the same corridors to have other forms of transport that the mayor has indicated as better, and they are better in respect of carrying more people faster.”

Cambridge has already been experiencing faster growth than much of the South East, with housing growth at 1.7 per cent annually, compared to the region’s average of 0.7 per cent, with Mr Freeman paying tribute to local councils.

However, Mr Freeman pointed out that central government’s support for infrastructure, particularly transport and water, has not kept pace.

“Central government is asking Cambridge to go even further in terms of growth,” he noted. “That help has to come.”

The growth company has an advisory council which is made up of council leaders and the mayor alongside Dr Paul Leinster, chair of the Water Scarcity Group, Baroness Sally Morgan, chair of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and master of Fitzwilliam College, and Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, pro vice chancellor for innovation, Cambridge University.

He says the advisory council is to ensure “transparency” and as much “engagement as possible” and it is “free publicly to disagree” with the growth company.