The North West Cambridge site will create yet another new community on the outskirts of the city

CAMBRIDGE does not have a space problem despite a need for 14,000 houses, the city’s head of planning has stressed as critics warn of an unprecedented squeeze on available resources.

A list of 184 potential sites has been whittled down to 28 to meet a daunting council-set target to build 14,000 homes by 2031 – sparking concerns the city will be filled to the brim.

But Patsy Dell, head of planning at Cambridge City Council, sought to label such fears as premature.

“It is too early to say whether we have got a problem. We are gathering evidence on the sites that are available and we haven’t finished that process yet,” she said.

“We do need to plan for growth and we have identified a strategy for that. The market is very buoyant in Cambridge at the moment.

“It’s not normally a problem for housing land coming forward in the city, the issue is, is it the right land?”

Ms Dell said she expected more land to come forward as a result of the consultation.

Cambridge United’s stadium and the Mill Road depot are among the 28 sites, earmarked for 154 and 167 houses respectively.

As the city looks for land, South Cambridgeshire District Council has also published a list of 270 sites which could yield some 21,000 homes.

Carolin Göhler, chief executive of conservation group Cambridge Past, Present and Future, is worried the new Government planning framework, which is biased to encourage growth, will lead to developers choosing where they want to build.

“We are worried about some of the sites in the city, particularly if they do not take into account local infrastructure,” she said.

“And when it comes to outside the city, there has been quite a lot of speculative 
proposals – some we see as totally inappropriate.

“The target set is quite tight. We are wary of some developers trying to decide where developments should be built, which is the wrong way round to do planning. Developments should be built where the best site is.”

Cllr Lewis Herbert has expressed concern about open space in the city before.

He said the 14,000 target is important but would like to see more co-operation between the city and South Cambridgeshire.

“The two councils have to work together to find larger sites because some of the smaller sites proposed are really dredging the bottom of the barrel,” he said.

“Small sites can be fine to use but soon we’ll be at a point where all the sites in Cambridge have been developed, but we still need more houses.”

There are several larger sites on the horizon which will meet a large portion of the housing target.

Plans for new town Northstowe have just been made public and a planning application for the 3,000-home ‘North West Cambridge’ development - on Cambridge University land between Madingley Road and Huntingdon Road - complete with a hotel and 2,000 student flats, were submitted last week.

Northstowe, also to the north west of the city, will include 10,000 new homes. The reappearance of the recession-hit scheme awakens the debate on whether the A14 can cope with any more traffic - an unavoidable consequence of new homes.

John Bridge, chief executive of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce, believes new homes will bring gridlock.

He said: “We know we desperately need more housing, but for the last decade we have been running a growth agenda without the necessary investment in infrastructure, especially in our road network.

“Whatever study is completed, common sense tells you that any new houses built along the corridor in the immediate future and before the essential upgrading of the A14 will generate more traffic on a road that can’t cope now with volume in relation to its capacity.”