Some of you may have seen the clickbait-style articles doing the rounds mentioning the city. As ever, such pieces rarely involve the authors and researchers actually going to the places featured. Rather they look at data and interpret the numbers through their own biases.
Former BBC Reporter Mark Williamson picked up on this
Above – it’s in a ReachPLC publication. Therefore track back to the original source
As WolfiesBA states, interrogate the data.
If you want to go even further, have a look at the original report here
Above – Cambridge is at the top, and Bluewater is at number 5.
***But Bluewater is [or rather was when I visited] a consumerist hellhole and is an utterly unsustainable site primarily fed by car-travelling shoppers***
“That’s a bit insulting to the people who shop and work there, isn’t it?”
That isn’t so much to do with the people as those that designed, approved, and financed it.
“Who was that?”
Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine for the Conservatives in 1990 (the functions now carried out by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, & Local Government). This was at a time when it was central government policy to build out of town shopping centres that people could travel to by car in large numbers – with *lots* of free parking. What’s even more striking is that over 90% of the floor space was given over to retail, and less than 10% for leisure. (Over 1.6m square feet of space was approved in the planning permission). Therefore it was designed to be a consumerist space rather than the traditional city centres with multiple functions that politicians of most if not all parties are now saying we want to see return.
Have you been?
I went there by train during my civil service days when I was living in London in the late 2000s. This was just before the financial crash. Even back then I figured that it was in trouble. Why?
Because there were multiple retail outlets of the same brands in the same shopping centre – and those brands were aimed by the same oligarchy of brand owners. This was *not* the free market in action. And when the High Street owners imploded, multiple units went with them – as they did across many city centres.
“It has changed, hasn’t it?”
Like many other places, it had to. The collapse of the asset-stripped big name retail brands combined with the rise of online shopping meant the owners had to come up with something new.
“Did they?”
Yes. They built a new adventure centre operated by Hangloose Adventure. You can read some of the planning background from the London-based Murky Depths blog here. As Bluewater was built on the site of an old quarry, the significant variations in height mean that they were able to build England’s longest zipline. Say what you like about shopping but that zipline looks like fun!
But…the point remains that if judging it as a retail hub, then it like many other places are struggling – reflected by the number of former shop units closed.
Cambridge is not immune to the loss of shop units as the Grafton Centre has proved
The long saga of The Grafton Centre and its highly controversial conversion into a sci-tech-bubble hub was finally put to bed when councillors granted it planning permission in Feb 2024, just before the general election. This was also at the time RailPen were ploughing on with their Beehive Redevelopment application which is now in front of a planning inspector because the developers lobbied ministers heavily in the days running up to the date the council’s planning committee was due to determine the application. We should know the result by 09 December according to the Planning Inspectorate.
Above – correspondence in the Planning Portal here, Ref 23/03204/OUT – top document out of 637, dated 16 Sept 2025.
Also, have a look at the completed S106 Agreements only there are some ***significant*** concessions on subsidising new bus routes – see the foot of this blogpost.
It’s getting worse for the Grand Arcade too
Such was their struggle to get retailers to rent the quieter upper floor units that they ended up applying for and getting planning permission to establish a boutique bar/cinema by the Cambridge Central Library entrance, It seems to have gone well so far from family who have been there. (I’m not a film buff – never really have been). But at least it is being used.
The problem now is that at the entrance they lost Ted Baker and they’ve just lost the pop-up shop that replaced it. At peak tourist season in the summer.
Above – The Grand Arcade’s main entrance where both All Saints and Ted Baker recently exited the scene. Late August 2025.
As of September there are *six* empty units according to their guide – including the above-mentioned trio. I hope they fill them with something useful because our city needs it to succeed. Especially for our city’s teenagers who don’t have the range of part-time jobs that my generation once had. (It’s one of the reasons why I think the city should explore persuading supermarket retailers whether to get rid of the automated checkouts if only to provide those entry-level jobs to young people and those that need stable, permanent part-time work.)
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Below – what the S106 agreement for The Beehive Centre redevelopment says:
- You’ll need to explore the document in detail (https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/online-applications/ Ref 23/03204/OUT then select the documents and select the Completed S106 Agreement dated 03 July 2025. And read carefully the other bits I lack the concentration/brainpower/spoons to read.
- The P&R services that the developers will have to subsidise and extend are the Milton Park and Ride, and the Newmarket Road Park and Ride. Work to put these in place must begin by the time 25% of the floorspace has been occupied, and should be up and running by the time 35% of the floorspace has been occupied.
- New regional bus services from
- Ely and Waterbeach to the Beehive Centre
- Huntingdon and St Ives to the Beehive Centre
- Cambourne (and possibly St Neots) To the Beehive Centre
See the screengrabs below. Got some views? Let the Cambridge Area Bus Users Group know!
The Cambridge Town Owl 