Towns, Gowns and Gridlock

Having nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening, I drove 90 minutes for a talk (and a free dinner) and 90 minutes back again the same evening, late at that. The talk was about the future development of ‘Greater Cambridge’ presented by the Chairman of the Cambridge Development Corporation.

As a rule, I’m not a fan of Dev Cos. They’re appointed by central Government to take away from locally elected authorities decisions about local planning and development issues. In other words, they’re undemocratic as a concept, so Starmer Stalin (good riddance) is bound to think they’re the bees’ knees. Given that Dev Cos seek to build-build-build regardless of any environmental obstacles, like populations of pollinators, maybe bees’ knees isn’t such an apt idiom. Rat’s arse doesn’t mean the same as bees’ knees, or even cats’ whiskers, but Starmer (has he not gone yet) liking something because it’s the rat’s arse works pretty darn well in other respects, don’t ya think?

True to form, the Cambridge Dev Co has been appointed by the Government as a “a centrally-led urban development corporation with the legislative powers, focus and resources to unlock the area’s potential.” To add to unease, the CDC is just one part of the Government’s wider Oxford-Cambridge ambitions, a similar Dev Co being formed for Greater Oxford.

Off and on, I’ve campaigned for planning decisions to be made by local planning authorities in consultation with their voters. And I’m vehemently opposed to the over-development of the Ox-Cam Arc (as it used to be called) because of the unavoidable impact on food security, the natural environment, and the opportunity cost to less wealthy areas of the country. I took my eye off the ball a wee while ago and fell behind with what was happening in the Arc, hence the drive to Cambridge for a catch up.

Another reason I wanted a refresher was that I’m losing patience with the democratically elected authorities around that neck of the woods, and I was curious as to whether the CDC might be the lesser of two evils. Here are just a few examples of why my patience is wearing thin.

Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire District Council introduced a four-day week for five-days’ pay. The fact that the Chief Exec was researching the effectiveness of such a concept for her PhD was purely coincidental. M’Lud. Then the Council was economic with the analysis of the scheme’s effectiveness. Can’t trust ’em to be fair and open with planning applications, now can we?

As for Cambridge City Council, the then-ruling Labour group voted to increase their leader's allowances, against the independent advice they had commissioned, and in a year when they had cut council staff and public services. If they can do that, they’re capable of voting through planning applications that are more likely to fill their personal purses, and deny applications from people they just don’t like. 

(SCDC and CC jointly manage planning requirements and processes through the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service. I’ll come back to that.)

Lib Dem Cambridgeshire County Council referred a Reform UK councillor for investigation because his choice of language, while probably accurate, was deemed to be insensitive. In other words, being arbitrarily clumsy with the English language is a greater crime than fleecing the public purse, but only if you’re Reform UK. Natch.

Then there’s something called the Greater Cambridge Partnership, “a local delivery body bringing … together key partners to work with communities, businesses, and industry leaders … supporting growth with [an] integrated transport plan, offering viable alternatives to driving, off-road active travel and leisure routes.” This includes the controversial busway requiring the destruction of an ancient orchard which has gone down with the populace like Starmer (in the name of God, go!) at a Hawkstone Choir concert. The GCP was also responsible for the proposed and abandoned Cambridge City congestion charge that went down with the populace like Ed Miliband in Aberdeen.

So Cambridge’s local authorities are sub-standard, and a conglomerate of their local authorities and interests are unpopular and failing. Will the non-local, unelected CDC succeed and actually deliver, and deliver what? In its favour is the Chairman, Peter Freeman, who has overseen magnificent projects as an entrepreneur, including the redevelopment of Kings Cross in London and Brindleyplace in Birmingham. He understands about putting people at the heart of his development concepts, a sense of place and community, and that infrastructure must be delivered in line with homes, not afterwards.

One of the first projects in Cambridge for the CDC will probably be the development of the former Cambridge Airport that was recently sold to Homes England (a government quango previously chaired by Freeman) and commercial developers The Hill Group. After which, the fun starts. Developing a contained urban or brownfield site, at which Freeman excels, is one thing. Should he move into the open countryside and destroy popular landscapes or force community coalescence, then he’ll go down with the populace like David Lammy at a Mensa convention. 

Many people identify transport as Cambridge’s biggest problem. The city is synonymous with gridlock, and it’s getting worse, and it can only continue to get worse the more the area is developed. Freeman openly admitted that it was a big problem and at the moment he doesn’t have the answers. I asked him what he thought of the built-from-scratch Forest City 1, the proposed new city on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border for over 1m people. He didn’t think it would work. OK, but piling more traffic onto gridlocked roads will?

As for other concerns, like water supply or lack of it, the CDC’s new CEO is David Hill (I assume no relation to the development company mentioned above), a former interim Permanent Secretary at DEFRA and Director General with national responsibility for water policy. Sounds like, on paper, a wise choice, and I chatted with him over dinner. Nice chap. But he’s a civil servant, not a seasoned corporate operator, so only time will tell.

On the way home, in between navigating the A428 temporary lay-outs, the hellishly-confusing-still-being-rebuilt Black Cat Roundabout, the unexpected closure of the A421, and the even more unexpected detour through the narrow roads and mini-roundabouts of an industrial estate, with a mega HGV in front of me and another behind me, I wondered what the problem was with Cambridge and why it was thought a Dev Co was the answer. 

Here’s an avalanche of data to get the juices flowing. As at 2024, the population of Cambridge was approximately 150,000, having grown from 123,900 in 2011. This was iteratively fuelled by exceptional growth in the local economy over the past six years, with a 4.5% annual increase in corporate employment. This growth is primarily driven by the Knowledge Intensive economy, which has seen a 6.2% annual percentage increase. The overall corporate growth in Greater Cambridge is still above the national average, with a 3.0% annual percentage increase in non-KI sectors. The average house price in Cambridge has seen a rise of approximately 50% to 70% over the past 10 years. 

It’s obvious to me from this data that ‘too many’ businesses want to locate and grow in and around Cambridge and ‘too many’ people want to live and work there. Success breeds success. Therefore, if we don’t want Cambridge to grow because of impact on food security, water supply, transport gridlock, and loss of biodiversity, we need to make Cambridge less successful. Easy – put Rachel from accounts in charge. Alternatively, we make other areas of the country more successful to attract (some) businesses and workers away from Cambridge. But then those areas would grow, and the problems currently faced by Cambridge, even before it grows further, would be repeated elsewhere. The third problem with Cambridge – with everywhere in fact – is that land prices are artificially high and build-out costs ridiculously expensive because the market is unable to correct itself owing to lefty-inspired legislation and regulation. That’s why Homes England, i.e. the tax payer, had to step in to partner with The Hill Group to purchase Cambridge Airfield, rather than Hill go it alone.

Let me join the dots. Cambridge growth is directed by its local planning authorities, the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service, the Greater Cambridge Partnership, Homes England, and now the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation. And to the mix Natural England, who care nothing about natural England, judging by their desire to kill Dartmoor ponies. All in all, the organisations that actually build things kinda get lost amongst all this clag.

Replicate this level of bureaucracy throughout the Ox-Cam Arc, and you get an even bigger money pit, a blackhole of unproductive expense that is born by the tax payer and businesses, who then have less money to actually build things. If Freeman’s talents are stifled within Government and quangos, what hope for the less able (of which there are many)? As Chairman of Homes England, he delivered 28,370 homes (up 15% from 2023/24), and started the build of a further 30,087. Think of these ‘achievements’ in the context of the Government’s push for 1.5m new homes by 2029. A drop in the ocean. Also consider that a few years ago I calculated that a minimum of 10,000 new ‘social homes’ were needed each year across the five counties that make up the Arc (Beds, Bucks, Cam, Northants and Oxon).

Here’s a second set of data to chew on. Unemployment in the UK is currently 1.76m, but the number of people of working age not looking for work is 9.2m. Net migration to the UK totalled 2.253m just over the last four years. We’ll always need to build more homes and provide more services – with consequent impact on traffic, food security, biodiversity, blah blah blah – if our population keeps growing, and our population will keep growing as long as we need additional workers because we don’t sufficiently educate, motivate and incentivise our home-grown talent because the root of all evil, DEI, gets in the way of what is really important – merit. 

There’s much much more to correcting the housing market than cutting DEI, and quangos, off at the knees (not bees’). Let’s be radical. Let’s remove from the fray politics and politicians, think tanks and ideologues, and hand a totally blank sheet of paper to Freeman and a bunch of kindred entrepreneurial spirits. Ask them to start from scratch to develop strategies for the provision of market and social housing nationwide. They would have to consult industry leaders from agriculture, energy, water/sewage, telecommunications and technology and, of course, Mother Nature. Upon reflection, I've decided I would invite Joe Public to contribute to this exercise. While much of his/her input might not be strategic, it is not impossible to 'translate' or 'upscale' local preferences into pertinent blue-sky concepts. When our industry leaders come up with their plan, it can be reviewed and voted on through the democratic process, so my fundamental support for democracy still stands. 

If anyone has a better idea, book yourself a speaking slot in Cambridge and I'll drive over to hear it.