In 2024, the Starmer government created the Cambridge Growth Company, as a subsidiary of Homes England, “to address barriers to growth and help unlock Greater Cambridge’s full potential”. It has now launched a new Development Corporation, modelled on the bodies which built the postwar New Towns. How will it work, and how will it fit with Andy Burnham’s principle of ‘devolution by default’?
Infrastructure first
Planning is normally in the hands of local authorities, which gives it a degree of democratic accountability. But this can often slow important initiatives, since the people already there always shout louder than those who would move into new developments. And local authorities have limited capacity to scrutinise big projects, and limited resources to provide key infrastructure. The result can often be haphazard ‘dormitory’ development on greenfield sites without planning for schools, clinics, public transport, retail and leisure facilities.
The government’s answer to this is ‘infrastructure first’, giving overarching planning control to a development corporation, which may cross the boundaries of existing local planning authorities. With it comes the power to overrule those authorities in some circumstances. In the 1950s and 1960s, this model gave us a generation of new towns, like Harlow, Hatfield, Stevenage, and Basildon. More recently, it has been used to create Canary Wharf and regenerate Stratford round the Olympic Park.
Cambridge: a strategic city
Cambridge is another such area. The success of the city is strategically important to the UK as a whole. It is the home of one of the world’s greatest universities, and the host of research and business organisations which cluster round that. The university contributes nearly £30bn a year to the UK economy, and it supports 86,000 jobs in Cambridgeshire and beyond.
Housing expansion has been progressing rapidly, and transport infrastructure has been improving: work is in progress on a direct rail link to Oxford, with the long-term aim of creating a high-skilled employment corridor between the cities. But rapid expansion in recent years has been putting pressure on infrastructure such as the water supply in the driest part of the country, making coordination of planning decisions critical.
So, the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation has been created, and David Hill has just been appointed as its first chief executive. He has previously worked at Defra as Director General for Water, and Interim Permanent Secretary. Before that he was a Director at Essex County Council.
The government claims that “this major move to unlock growth in the region will deliver thousands of new homes, jobs and long overdue transport links in Greater Cambridge. Working in partnership with local leaders and communities, the region’s biggest Development Corporation will drive faster, more sustainable growth – ensuring transport and services are built alongside new homes, not as an afterthought. It will also rake in millions more in investment.”
The government is investing £800m in Cambridge and Oxford to move these plans forward.
Local government reorganisation
This is happening at the same time as the government is reorganising local government across England. The aim is to replace the current mix of county and district councils with a single set of unitary authorities across England. Each unitary will be responsible for almost all local government services across England, with directly elected mayors coordinating across several unitaries. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough already has a directly elected mayor.
As part of the planning for these changes, ministers asked the existing councils in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to consult the public and propose options for a new map of local government across the area. Four possible maps were submitted, but all of them would treat the Development Corporation area, which covers the current districts of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, as a single unitary authority (although the county council proposal would add the city of Ely to that unitary authority).
So far, ministers have not yet reached a decision on which model to adopt in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, although it is expected that decisions will be made in time for councillors to be elected to the new councils next May – at the same time as Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hertfordshire. The new councils will operate in shadow form for a year, before taking up full responsibility in 2028.
There is an attempt by recently elected Reform-led councils in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk to stop the reorganisation. They have all requested a judicial review of the decision, and we are waiting for the court to decide whether there is a strong enough case for that to go to a full hearing. If that were to happen, it might delay the whole process, but at present, ministers seem confident that the request will be rejected.
Accountability
A Development Corporation is not a democratically elected body, and a government consultation earlier this year found nearly two thirds of people opposed to the creation of the Greater Cambridge Corporation. Similar numbers opposed the planning powers it will be given for development of over 250 houses. But, unlike the New Town Development Corporations of the 1950s, Greater Cambridge will be more limited by current planning law, and it will not have compulsory purchase powers.
The following Interim Board has been appointed by the Secretary of State to take control while a fuller appointment process is carried out.
| Peter Freeman CBE (Chair) | Former Chair of Homes England. Co-founder of Argent (regeneration specialists) and a key figure in the transformation of King’s Cross |
| Baroness Sally Morgan (Vice Chair) | Labour peer. Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge; former Chair of Ofsted and former government minister |
| Professor Sir John Aston | Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at University of Cambridge, Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life. Former Home Office Chief Scientific Adviser |
| Richard de Cani | Senior transport and infrastructure executive at Arup. Chief Officer for Global Business and Markets |
| Ros Kerslake CBE | Chair of the Architectural Heritage Fund. Board of Sanctuary Group. Trustee of Re-form Heritage and the University College of Estate Management |
| Cllr Katie Thornburrow | Leader, Cambridge City Council |
| Paul Bristow | Mayor, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority |
| Cllr Lucy Nethsingha | Leader, Cambridgeshire County Council |
| Cllr Bridget Smith | Leader, South Cambridgeshire District Council. Member Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority |
| Paul Schofield | Appointed expert |
This is an eminent list, and it includes the representatives of the four local authorities directly involved. But all its members are appointed by the Secretary of State, which, on the face of it, fits oddly with the government’s commitment to devolution by default. And South Cambridgeshire District Council has just launched a consultation on a Greater Cambridge Local Plan. It remains to be seen how comfortably all these developments fit together.
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