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The East of England needs to build over half a million new homes between 2001 and 2026 if current and future housing needs are to be met.  Of these, over 70,000 are to be built in Cambridgeshire, mostly in or close to the city of Cambridge whose economy is expected to continue to grow rapidly over this period.

Cambridgeshire Horizons was formed in 2004 as a not-for-profit publicly-owned company to work with the local authorities and with national and regional agencies to ensure that the growth strategy is successfully implemented, and in particular to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is provided to support this high level of growth.  We also have an important role in supporting the local authorities’ aspirations for ensuring that the new communities are built to a high quality and enhance, rather than detract from, the quality of life of existing communities. 

A large proportion of the new homes are being planned in large scale new communities on the edge of Cambridge and some of the market towns, or at a freestanding New Town of up to 10,000 homes at Northstowe, five miles to the north west of Cambridge, which will be linked to Cambridge by a new Guided Bus system that will be up and running by early 2009.  These large-scale developments present particular challenges to local agencies, and they are the main focus of Cambridgeshire Horizons’ work.

An early priority for us has been to understand how to ensure that the new growth areas meet the widest possible range of housing needs.  How do we ensure that they will develop into well balanced and genuinely mixed communities with a broad mix of types and tenures of housing, avoiding the past mistakes of, on the one hand, high concentrations of deprived households and, on the other, gated communities for the better off?

Cambridgeshire local authorities have recently sought up to 30% affordable housing in new developments, although the 2003 County Structure Plan raises this aspiration to 40%.  Cambridge City Council was unsuccessful in raising this target still further to 50% and had to be content with a figure of ‘at least 40%’ in its recently-adopted Local Plan.  However, South Cambridgeshire District Council is also trying to raise the bar to 50% through the adoption of its new Local Development Framework, but this is being strongly opposed by local developers.

We commissioned research which looked at the social cohesion of eight examples of recent large scale developments including Cambourne, a new settlement ten miles to the west of Cambridge which is now over half way to achieving its design size of 3500 homes.  This report can be found on our website.

The research concluded that:

• There was no ‘magic’ tenure mix.  The important factor was to avoid significant concentrations of social housing, and that a variety of approaches, including ‘pepper-potting’ different tenures, worked well.
  It was essential to ensure that all tenures of housing were designed to the same high standard of external appearance so that the tenure could not be easily identified.
• The most successful new communities were the ones where residents had a stake in the local management of facilities and shared spaces.  A variety of approaches, including Community Development Trusts, were identified.
  Local facilities needed to be provided early, and of these, a good local school was the single most important factor in supporting a successful new community.
• The needs of existing communities which adjoin the new developments should not be overlooked.  There was a danger that local investment priorities would favour the new communities leading to deterioration in the quality of facilities in neighbouring communities.  Close involvement of neighbouring communities was essential in the planning of new communities.

The potential social mix of new communities is made more complex by two further factors which are too recent to fully evaluate on the ground:  the creation of the ‘intermediate’ housing sector to meet the needs of households who fall between the social and market sectors, and the recent growth of ‘buy-to-let’ which now forms around 20% of the new-build market in Cambridge.  How will these tenures affect the social cohesion of the new communities? 

Concern has also been expressed about the high proportion of one and two-bedroom flats that are being built in high density schemes in Cambridge.  Although not as high as the 85% that has recently been reported in the Thames Gateway, some local Councillors have expressed concerns about whether the communities created by these types of development will be genuinely sustainable over time and question whether the market will ever be able to deliver family housing at prices that local people can afford.

The challenge of creating genuinely sustainable communities in the growth areas of south east England is immense, and this column will discuss other aspects of this task over the coming weeks.

Peter Studdert
Director for Sustainable Communities
Cambridgeshire Horizons