Huntingdonshire District (formerly a county in its own right until the 1960s) and Suffolk County Council have published a number of documents inviting residents to comment on the future of housing and transport for their areas.
You can see the following:
- Huntingdonshire Local Plan Update to 2036 (note my earlier blogpost here on the subject)
- Suffolk Local Transport Plan
Within / linked to those are:
- Housing needs for specific groups in Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk (2021)
- Haverhill Area Transport Plan
“Why does this matter to Cambridge?”
Because the documents indicate that what happens in Cambridge has knock-on impacts for both councils and their residents. We don’t live our lives defined by administratively-drawn boundaries. My local branch library where I was at for ACORN Cambridge‘s AGM sits within Cambridge City Council’s boundaries, but is in the South Cambridgeshire parliamentary constituency. The Fenland town of Wisbech sits within the boundaries of Cambridgeshire County Council despite being over 40 miles away from Cambridge, while Haverhill that sits in Suffolk County Council is less than 14 miles away from Cambridge. There was the prospect of this being changed back in 1969 but the destiny of local government rested on the sixpence of the general election the following year – one that gave us the general structure that we still have today.
The Cambs and West Suffolk Housing Needs (2021) study has some sobering statistics
It’s a heavy read, but the table on people in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) who are unable to afford either renting or buying at market levels is striking.
Above – 43% of households in the private rented sector cannot afford market level rents or purchases of housing
Which indicates they are spending an unsustainable amount of their incomes on housing costs – a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich, or from those without assets to those with assets.
Demand for Housing as an Investment
You can read the thread by Prof Josh Ryan Collins here, or go straight into his report here. He calls for:
- A major reform of the UK property tax system, abolishing council tax and stamp duty and replacing them with annual property tax on the value of the home [incentivising asset rich, cash poor home owners either to rent out spare rooms or downsize]
- Planning reforms to limit the conversion of primary residences into rental units, second homes or short-term lets [which have a habit of being poorly constructed so lead to ill health and other problems]
- Local authorities and housing associations being given right-of-first-refusal to purchase properties coming up for sale and convert them to social rent in areas of housing need
- Compulsory mortgage insurance and longer term fixed-rate mortgages for first-time buyers to make mortgages more affordable for first-time buyers alongside tougher regulations to limit demand for Buy-to-let mortgages
All of these deal with issues that senior politicians from mainstream politics have been unwilling to deal with: the unequal distribution of housing assets and the factors that cause this.
Suffolk and Huntingdonshire’s supply side relationship with Cambridge’s housing bubble
One of the principles behind improving public transport infrastructure – in particular rail-based transport, is that a greater choice of fast, reliable, and efficient access from home to work place in a greater variety of places provides more choice and more supply for places with existing housing shortages. In principle it doesn’t make much difference if your 30 minute journey to work covers a few miles by bus to 10-20 miles by train or light rail. A short walk from house to transport stop, and a short walk from transport stop to place of work is the ideal. (Don’t do what I did for several years and undertake multiple modes to get from work place to office and back – 3 hours a day every day is not worth it!)
“Should people reply to the consultations?”
It’s up to them. At the same time, Cambridge residents (and those not living in the areas mentioned) can contact their councillors (https://www.writetothem.com/) to ensure that whatever issues they think should be raised by city council officers in the corporate response are actually included. Cambridge City Council should be providing their own institutional responses to both. Ditto Cambridgeshire County Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, and the Combined Authority. In which case you may also want to lobby your county councillors – mindful of the elections coming up in six months time
As mentioned earlier, I’ve already written about Huntingdonshire and how the proposals remind me of where Cambridge was around the Millennium. There are more than a few lessons to learn from that.
Disappointing to see light rail not mentioned
Inevitable perhaps, but if you look at Suffolk County Council’s Transport Plan and scroll down to the ‘West Suffolk’ tab, you can see the market towns mentioned. Personally I think the county council should be far more ambitious on rail transport. You can see the campaigns that Rail Future East Anglia are supporting here
Rail Future East Anglia’s annual Cambridge meeting – Sat 07 Dec 2024
I normally go along to these events even though I can’t really travel by train these days because of chronic ill-health. Old habits die hard!
When: Saturday 7th December 2024 – Cambridge at 14:00
Where: The Signal Box Community Centre, Glenalmond Avenue, Cambridge CB2 8DB (See map here on how to get there from the railway station entrance)
I’ve created a placeholder on FB here for those of you that use it to remind you of events. If you are planning on attending, please please let Peter Wakefield and/or Paul Hollinghurst know by email – see this newsletter and scroll to the back for their contact details. (It makes it easier to plan for refreshments, seats etc. Also it will probably be cold and dark when the meeting ends – time of year!)
In the meantime, happy reading!
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on BSky <- A critical mass of public policy people seem to have moved here
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
Below – have a browse of the responses to large planning applications from Cambridge Past, Present, and Future – in particular the resubmitted Beehive Centre Redevelopment plans. You can join as a member at https://www.cambridgeppf.org/membership.
The Cambridge Town Owl 