See the 03 Sept 2025 edition of the Cambridge Independent. Plus the state of the region reports from the Combined Authority (item 7 here) – read carefully!
Above – p4 of this week’s Cambridge Indy. Buy the paper for the full story.
“Haven’t we been here before?”
We have. Just over half a century ago as it happens.
Above – from the British Newspaper Archive here
That was followed by an effective ban on new large housing developments in Cambridge a year later – and not lifted until the late 1970s due to fears the additional demands would deluge the Milton water works.
I’ve not seen any press release at the time of typing, but Anglian Water has confirmed that £300million of new equity will go to pay off a maturing bond (rather than being spent on infrastructure investment) which…exactly. So much for everyone being a winner with privatisation that we were promised in 1994.
“So…what happens now?”
We wait for the Cambridge Growth Company to announce its plans. Given its target set by the Minister for Housing, chances are Anglian Water will need to build a new water works / sewage processing plant of the same if not greater scale somewhere around the city. Furthermore, the Chancellor will have to announce how that will be funded – most likely by some sort of land value capture / infrastructure levy on the profit made by landowners gaining from agricultural land made available for development.
“Isn’t this bad for house building?”
No because developers are far behind on building out their existing planning permissions. Therefore they have more than enough to be getting on with in the meantime. This also makes it harder for developers to throw speculative applications at the city with the loss of the waterworks site (due to there no longer being a five year land supply) because if the water company responsible for supplies and sewage do not have the capacity to service the new developments and put in an objection saying so, that is enough for councils to refuse planning applications.
“When can we table public questions about this?”
Probably not until Full Council on the 09 October 2025 or the meeting on the local plan the day before. Planning isn’t mentioned in the meeting papers for the new scrutiny committee covering planning policy that meets on 09 September 2025.
South Cambridgeshire residents have their next full council meeting on 02 October so keep an eye out for any papers from 20 September onwards at which you might be able to table Qs. See also county council meetings for this month here, and also Combined Authority meetings here.
“That’s a lot over overview and scrutinising for the CPCA”
Above – what sort of a state are we in? See the papers at item 7
The headline stat: Cambridge’s population is now over 150,000 people. (Note the ‘Built Up Area’ will not match the population within the council boundary areas because they cover slightly different geographical areas – Peterborough’s BUA covers a smaller area than the council boundaries, while Cambridge’s BUA spills over the city council’s boundary)
With comment on Birdsite from former councillor Sam Davies, and Mark Williamson, the latter now blogging at The Cambridge Eye here.
Talking of Addenbrooke’s you can send in your public questions to them for their next board meeting here – deadline 08 Sept 2025.
On inequalities
The tackling inequalities paper at Appendix F here has some sobering statistics:
- “Cambridge had the largest inequality in life expectancy years, locally, in every year for females.” [App F p4]
- “Cambridge had the highest income inequality ratio at 4.2” [meaning the top 20% of earners earns at least 4.2x the income of the bottom 20% of earners]. [App F p6]
Note the income ratio figures date from 2018.
Also, does anyone know why the gender pay gap in South Cambridgeshire shot up from 2022-24?
Above – App F p7
So…there’s lots of talking ahead and lots of meetings coming up, but so far precious little in terms of action. (See Cllr Bridget Smith’s column in this week’s Cambridge Independent on the continued lack of infrastructure funding following the pulling of funding for the waterworks site relocation). For the record, The Chancellor has just confirmed The Budget will be on 26 November 2025, so we may not get any firm decisions on anything until that date.
I’ll try and be awake in the meantime but for some strange reason I’ve had a bit of a flare up with CFS/ME which caught be by surprise. Hence far fewer blogposts (mercifully!) over the past couple of weeks.
Above – when the rings around your eyes are darker than the hair on your head…!
Which may mean one or two event cancellations in the next couple of weeks as I try to recharge.
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