City's 150k homes plan may include other counties

The plan for 150,000 new homes in Greater Cambridge was "probably not a daft figure" but could include parts of other counties, a senior official has said.

The government wants the homes built by 2050 and Chancellor Rachel Reeves says the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor has "the potential to be Europe's Silicon Valley".

But when asked at a South Cambridgeshire District Council meeting about the 150,000 figure, Peter Freeman, the chairman of the Cambridge Growth Company, said the area may include Tempsford, 22 miles away in Bedfordshire, and Haverhill, 17 miles away in Suffolk.

The government said it was taking "decisive action" to build more homes in Cambridge.

Last year Reeves announced a £400m investment in Cambridge - one of the least affordable cities in the UK - to boost development with affordable homes, infrastructure and business expansion.

Freeman told the meeting on Thursday: "I suspect that sooner or later 150,000 will be built, whether that's in 25 years or longer, whether it includes things like Tempsford or doesn't, again at the moment we are not naming a number.

"We are completing an evidence base in the next couple of months which we're sharing with the local authority… for the general area, it's probably not a daft figure, but the general area might go into Tempsford or Haverhill."

He also said the district council had focused housebuilding in areas such as Northstowe, Cambourne and Waterbeach, which he believed was "the right thing".

"We think that what most local authorities do, a kind of sharing the pain in every village," he said.

Freeman told councillors a challenge he had not expected was "that there are considerable wards definitely in the city and in some of the villages which are significantly disadvantaged".

"So any growth that we propose must be for the benefit of the communities as a whole. It's not just about international post-docs, it's not just about life sciences or AI, it's about a sustainable city."

He continued: "If the city doesn't work for everybody in the end it won't be able to attract the talent.

"So if the government wants economic growth here, we've also got to have social justice, we've got to sort transport, we've got to sort water."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: "We're taking decisive action to build more homes in Cambridge and across the country so we can restore the dream of home ownership."

Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.