Ever since Michael Gove dropped the bomb of 250,000 homes on Cambridge, residents have wondered what is going to happen. Excitingly, this week we got some answers from Peter Freeman and the team at the Cambridge Growth Company who attended the Performance, Assets and Strategy Scrutiny Committee on 9 December 2025.
Basic facts about the Cambridge Growth Company (CGC)
It is a subsidiary of Homes England (HE) with MHCLG/HE officers as Board Members. HE is the governments housing and regeneration agency who aim to deliver high quality affordable homes. Peter Freeman, who was in charge of the development behind Kings Cross, London is the Chair and the company is recruiting a chief executive. CGC has been awarded £10m to get up and running.
It is set up as a ‘shadow’ development corporation. This means that it does not have any weight for planning purposes i.e. the Council can ignore what it says when considering planning applications. Utilities can also ignore its forecasts when making their long term plans.
The next step for the company is to become a development corporation. These can be central, mayoral or local government led. The government intends to consult on a centrally led corporation. This means that the Secretary of State appoints the board and local political leaders will be voting members of the board. However, they will not have a majority of voting powers and central government will retain control.
A development corporation has the following possible powers to help them operate:
- to acquire land, by compulsory purchase orders if necessary
- to build
- access financial assistance and take loans
- Ensuring provision of utilities
Further powers that the CGC might assume are subject to discussion and negotiation. These include:
- Planning responsibilities (from either the Mayor or the local council)
- Strategic transport responsibilities (currently held by the Mayor)
- Highways Management responsibilities (currently held by the county council)
Naturally, local politicians are concerned that power to determine how our local region grows might be taken away from them so that there is a big loss of democratic accountability in what happens. There were some interesting answers to this question which I will outline below.
The team is now 26 strong and the senior leadership team all attended the meeting. They are mainly local people, having lived or worked in Cambridge for a long time. Peter Freeman was at pains to emphasise that CGC wants to work collaboratively and work with rather than at local people.
Strategic aims
The CGC is tasked with growing Cambridge in more than one direction. It’s aims are set out in a document they published in October which you can see here: https://thecgc.org.uk/index.php?timelineid=50
They state that they want to ‘develop a long-term strategy for housing, employment space and infrastructure’. Essentially, they want to build good places to live so that the interests of residents and the commercial interests of the development dovetail nicely. A public park and nearby schools will add to the value of the properties built.
CGC emphasised that they consider it critical that existing residents also feel the benefits of growth and in fact that this was also essential in getting money out of central government.
The time frame that they are considering is at least 25 years so that the company will outlast the political electoral cycle and way beyond the normal planning timescales. A comparison was made to the London Development corporation who took 3 years to plan and 17 years to build, during which the overall plan did not change.
We were told that Cambridge is ahead of Oxford by one year and new towns by about 2 years in its plans for growth. The implication is that if we do not get on with our plans, the money from central government will go elsewhere and we will miss an opportunity to create good amenities for residents.
What is CGC doing?
It is clear that they see their role as delivering infrastructure as the key to unlock the building of houses and enable sustained and sustainable economic growth. This means they are doing the groundwork now for the long term delivery of these goals. Getting infrastructure in place before the money flows in from development is very hard and this is the area where CGC feels it can best help.
- Accelerate development
CGC is unblocking stalled sites for development and has already secured £23m funding from HE alongside a £20m contribution from the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) to relocate the train station in Waterbeach to enable housing to be built there.
It was acknowledged that the Cambridge Investment Partnership (CIP) has been very successful in building houses and there is a need to preserve that relationship.
- Hospital
Other major infrastructure needed in a growing city includes hospitals and so the rebuilding of Addenbrookes is vital for a bigger Cambridge. CGC secured £3m for the preparation of the business case to do that.
- Water
They are working together with the water Scarcity Group and other partners such as Anglian Water, to help ensure water supply but also deal with waste water. You will be aware that the government pulled out of funding the move of the waste water treatment plant from Cambridge to Honey Hill. This was apparently on the basis it would have cost the government £100,000 per home built and this was too much. So now they are looking accelerate upgrades to the existing facilities. However, according to CGC, Anglian Water does not seem to be too concerned and upgrades are not a priority as they will not result in higher income for the company.
There is a ministerial taskforce looking at the building of the reservoir and this is a high priority. There are other solutions being looked at also. The CGC acknowledged that there is some scepticism about retrofitting houses to use less water. This is proceeding with council properties and the funding came from the water scarcity group. Beyond that there is the possibility of a credit trading scheme but this has not yet materialised.
- Planning standards
Cambridge has a history of design excellence which the CGC would like to continue i.e. proper landscaping, open spaces, high environmental standard and all types of home from detached houses to flats. CGC is aware of the need for social as well as affordable housing. They are also very supportive of community centres. There are plans to have employees of the CGC whose job will be to make these things happen.
Cultural amenities are also very important in making a good place to live in and attract people who might otherwise prefer Boston or Zurich to come to Cambridge.
CGC wish to respect the development hierarchy which means that the new developments come in the most sustainable place which is cities with good transport links and other amenities rather than isolated villages. This is the approach taken in the draft Local Plan.
- Transport
CGC is also supporting the public transport links that are planned for the region on which the new draft local plan relies. They secured £7.2m funding to advance the Cambridge South East Transport (CSET) project and provided a funding letter to enable the project to move to the next state of approvals.
A concern was raised about the effect of inflation on the costs of the new transport links such as busways which are now going to need to rely on s106 contributions from developers. If projects are not built due to economic conditions, then the funding will also be delayed. We were assured that this has been raised at the highest level of government and a request made for solutions.
The recently announced £400m will go (among other things) towards exploring mass rapid transport (MRT) links together with the CPCA. It will be vital to get government support to do this given the huge costs involved. I have always thought that these are far to high for a city of Cambridge’s existing size, but as we get bigger this may become more viable.
- Time horizon
Since we are looking at a time horizon of over 25 years, key to all of this will be a phased approach, deciding what needs to be done when.
- Ear of central government
Another key way in which CGC will be able to help is to ensure that central government ministers hear the concerns of local people. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department of Transport (DoT) will be heavily involved and so it is necessary to keep them abreast of local developments.
Key issues
Geography of the Development company
What area will the development company cover? Possible options are the whole of the greater Cambridge area (i.e. Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire) or selected sites for development. This is critical because of the possible planning powers the CGC might assume i.e. if the whole greater Cambridge area is covered and the company assumes planning powers then there will be little for the City Council to do and local democracy will suffer.
This is a ministerial decision. Greater Cambridge would align with the current planning arrangements as we have one joint plan for the whole area and is how the government thought about it at the start. We will have to wait and see.
Democratic deficit
How can we deal with this? Bridget Smith, Liberal Democrat Leader of South Cambs has requested that the CGC respects what is already happening locally and Peter Freeman agreed that the intended way forward was to be complementary and not disturb local decisions.
Councillors emphasised the need for the CGC to work in collaboration with local councils. The need for transparency is critical to ensuring residents and politicians are involved in the process.
There was an offer to talk to more local groups. This is a good way of hearing concerns but to me does not really get around the loss of control by locally elected politicians.
Extra powers
In response to a question as to whether CGC needs extra powers, the point was made that the company needs to be effective and be able to take touch decisions that perhaps politicians would not.
As far as planning powers are concerned the suggestion was made that they will only be taken over for selected and big sites, leaving the award winning Great Cambridge planning team in charge for most of the area. Again collaborative working was emphasised.
This is something that the CGC is thinking about at the moment. The consultation will influence how that decision is made.
What can the CGC do that a council can’t do?
One benefit of the CGC will be a focus on this development strategy without the need to worry about the day to day delivery of services.
There is always pushback from developers about the extras (such as community centres) that they have to provide as part of obtaining planning permission. However, since the CGC anticipates that a large amount of land will pass through their own hands or be owned by the corporation and therefore CGC will have a large element of control. Copenhagen is an example where there has been similar activity. Land was given by the city to developers at a fixed price and contracts awarded on the basis of the design and the extras provided.
On the other hand, a comparison was made with the GCP which is another entity set up by central government who did not trust the existing councils to manage the desired projects. The GCP want to do the right thing but have provided an extra set of hurdles and administrative process to get through before anything gets done.
Summary
The team is clearly a good one, based locally and well intentioned. However, given the time frames involved, personnel will change and so a structure for the long term needs to be set up.
We are currently not at all clear on how what planning powers the CGC will take over and this will be critical to how things will proceed. It is a ministerial decision so we will have to see what they decide.
There is no getting away from the fact that there will be a democratic deficit. This was touted as a benefit, in that the Directors will not have to worry about the election cycle. I am not convinced that much consultation really solves this problem. The CGC will have a lot more power than the GCP and will affect residents lives substantially. There is a real need to involve them in decisions.
Clearly the access to ministers in central government will help with progressing projects. Ultimately, this whole project will depend on funding from central government. Things like community centres and sport or concert halls don’t come cheap. The idea of providing infrastructure upfront is a good one and I hope it materialises.
Implementation of all these good things that were promised will be key to the long term success of this project.
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