Are the numbers submitted for the Greater Cambridge Local Plan 2031-45 consistent with what’s happening in the wider higher education sector?
“We will be inclusive and welcoming of all who want to study with us, measuring our success by their success. We’ll have a particular focus on continuing to attract and retain international students, and growing our postgraduate student communities.”
The problem is that the higher education has been struggling significantly for a whole host of reasons – not just those linked to the pandemic.
- Universities grip financial crisis – but at what cost to the nation?
- Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens
- Where now for Britain’s Universities?
The above-three were all published in the last month or so.
Note the unpredictability of the current environment in education is also reflected by the unexpected implosion of the Bell Language School in Cambridge – which closed today after over 70 years of activities.
And yet the demand for student accommodation still continues – even though nearly 5,000 net units were completed in the past decade or so.
Above – an additional 4,803 student accommodation units have been added to the city’s student accommodation stock since 2011
“ARU confirmed that its student numbers in Cambridge increased from 10,000 in 2017/18 to 12,800 in 2021/22 (rising from 7,800 to 8,300 undergraduates and from 2,200 to 4,500 postgraduates). Looking ahead, ARU anticipates ongoing growth in student numbers in Cambridge over the next 10 years, indicating a five-year annual rate of expansion for undergraduates of approximately 4.35% for undergraduates and 4.1% for postgraduates.”
Above – Draft Greater Cambridge Local Plan: Strategy Topic Paper (2025), p538
The topic paper goes on to say
“An additional 1,419 student bedrooms are anticipated to be delivered between 2023/24 and 2032/33, which would meet nearly 70% of the identified need. There are a further 1,195 student bedrooms with outline planning permission that are currently anticipated to be delivered after 2032/33.”
Note the University of Cambridge’s colleges are also expanding.
“The Colleges that responded to the engagement [from the city council] have identified a need for up to 1,242 student units by 2032/33.”
Above – Draft Greater Cambridge Local Plan: Strategy Topic Paper (2025), p532
Anglia Ruskin Cambridge’s need for faculty space
“[ARU] notes the acquisition of Compass House and that it continues to monitor suitable sites around the East Road area. ARU’s response also outlines its masterplanning work on all of the sites it controls and that it is assessing its long-term space requirements.”
Above – Draft Greater Cambridge Local Plan: Strategy Topic Paper (2025), p533
This inevitably has implications for the future of East Road and Newmarket Road, and the people who live in those areas.
Both the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University need to have conversations with the wider city about their future plans in the city that they share with residents
The University of Cambridge launched their civic engagement plans recently – see my blogpost here. Furthermore, I am one of the non-university people who has been appointed to their new Community Engagement Advisory Board.
This is a model that Anglia Ruskin University (where I did my PG-Dip in the years after graduating from Sussex in 2002 but before I joined the civil service) could follow. Given that they’ve got just over a year before the start of the new strategic period begins, working out what questions to put to the wider city and what methods of engagement they could undertake should be a priority.
It’s not just about student numbers and impact on housing alone
Back in 2014 I wrote a blogpost about how ARU could connect their students better with local communities
It seems like a very different world compared to today. Some of the issues I wrote in the blogpost are perhaps for wider civic institutions to consider – especially as the governance structures of our city are overhauled.
I think there are some wider questions to be considered on the limits to growth for any economic sector in/around Cambridge simply because of the competition for space and resources. When institutions get to a size where their activities and even their presence has an impact on the settlement they are based in, a whole host of new issues around civic responsibility arise. Local history tells us that. Furthermore, a critical mass of people are beginning to realise that our current trajectory is utterly unsustainable. And I’m not talking about the climate emergency. Our chronic inequalities and broken systems of governance are more than visible in our built environment and street scenes. Looking at the growth of Form the Future CIC who I helped out in various ways in its early days pre-lockdown, has gone from strength to strength going by the range of activities it now offers schools and teenagers, and also by the people who are now stepping forward to volunteer.
Given Anglia Ruskin’s civic roots as the Cambridge School of Arts, and later CCAT, could it learn from its history to re-engage with new generations of residents?
I wrote about ARU’s membership of the Civic University Network in this blogpost in a post where I called for ARU to bring back their old module catalogue.
Above – you can see how useful the modules on UK political institutions, and on elections would be in the present era where democratic institutions, systems, and processes are being routinely undermined
One of the ways I think that ARU can help stabilise its future, reconnect to the wider city, and raise its own profile is to bring back that module catalogue and tailor it towards the needs and interests of local residents.
Finally, ARU is no different in having to adjust to the changing party political environment locally and nationally.
The county council elections earlier this year gave TeamNigel ten seats – nine of which were in Fenland, one in Huntingdonshire. The voters also returned three Green Party county councillors, which means that more than a few ARU students have a Green councillor or councillors – especially those living in Romsey and Abbey wards. Much as I don’t like what feels like daily opinion polls, it’s hard to ignore that both the two parties mentioned have gained so much public support that between then they hold almost half of the preferences in those polls, surveys and models. Whether they can sustain it and whether it will transfer over into the local elections in six months time remains to be seen. History is littered with parties and politicians who score highly in opinion polls only to implode at the ballot box.
That doesn’t mean the underlying issues ignored by the headlines go away. One challenge for ARU to consider as they draft their new long term plan for 2027 and beyond, is how it can work with residents to improve their shared neighbourhoods as well as the wider city.
I hope they can commence a similar civic engagement project (if they haven’t already!) here in Cambridge similar to the one that the ancient sister institution has launched.
Food for thought?
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