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My Lords, the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980 sets out that the Secretary of State may designate an urban development area where they are of the opinion that it is expedient and in the national interest, and following a public consultation. Between 4 February and 1 April 2026, the Government held a public consultation on establishing the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation to promote ambitious, high-quality and sustainable growth, and unlock the full potential of Greater Cambridge for the benefit of its communities and the country as a whole. I am grateful to all those who took time to engage and provide thoughtful and constructive feedback.
Consultation respondents were clear that Greater Cambridge faces increasingly complex challenges relating to infrastructure provision and the supply of affordable housing. This is having a detrimental effect on quality of life and holding back the region’s ability to scale its globally significant innovation economy.
The Government believe that these challenges cannot be met by incremental change alone. Delivering nationally significant growth in Greater Cambridge requires a bold, long-term approach, and a genuine step change in how infrastructure is planned, co-ordinated and delivered. The Government consider that establishing a centrally led development corporation is the most effective way to unlock nationally significant growth at the pace and scale required, combining responsiveness to local priorities with national leadership and influence.
To show the Government’s commitment to fulfilling the full potential of the region, since publishing the consultation the Chancellor has announced a further £400 million of funding for the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, doubling the £400 million announced in October 2025.
Once established, the boundary of the development corporation aligns with the combined administrative boundary of Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council. This will enable the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation to deliver on its objectives and make effective use of its powers, enabling the scale of growth necessary to deliver on both local and national interests.
As we set out in the consultation, the development area captures the core functional geography of the Cambridge economy, enabling a holistic approach to growth and infrastructure delivery. It will enable coherent planning across a wide area, strategic land assembly and land value capture to fund infrastructure. However, the success of the development corporation will also of course depend on strong partnership and proactive engagement with neighbouring authorities, and transport and utility providers beyond its boundary.
Although the development corporation will predominantly focus on its designated development area, it will also have influence beyond its formal boundary. This includes the ability to acquire land outside its development area to enable it to meet its objectives. The development corporation will bring a combination of powers, financing and national influence beyond what is available to existing local organisations. The development corporation will provide clarity and certainty through a clear vision for place and a stable governance framework.
The development corporation is intended as a joint national and local endeavour, combining local insight and input from local democratically elected representatives with national leadership, powers and investment. It will have direct access to central government and the ability to convene and co-ordinate partners around shared priorities. The democratically elected local leaders from Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council, and the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, will be invited to join the board.
The Government also recognise that resident voices from across Greater Cambridge will form an integral part of the joint local and national endeavour in shaping the area’s future. The Government will therefore ask the development corporation to create structured forums for engagement that reflect the diversity of places and lived experiences across the region and serve as an exemplar of innovative, transparent, continuous and deep engagement. In short, it will provide Greater Cambridge with the tools, certainty and investment needed for sustainable, infrastructure-first growth. The model will form an exemplar for integrated powers and funding, setting the standard for housing development elsewhere in the country.
This establishment order will establish the GCDC as an entity, upon which it will be granted automatic infrastructure, financial and land assembly powers. My officials are now preparing the powers and functions order, a negative statutory instrument that is due later this year, which will equip the GCDC with planning powers, including the ability to determine planning applications for strategic development. Prior to the point at which we define the strategic sites, the development corporation will use minimum thresholds as a proxy to provide a clear and proportionate mechanism to focus the development corporation’s resources on sites of strategic importance. The development corporation will also take on plan-making powers, but it is anticipated that this will be once the draft local plan has been adopted, subject to public examination.
This combination of powers will provide Greater Cambridge with the tools, certainty and investment needed for sustainable, infrastructure-first growth. The model will be an exemplar for integrated powers and funding, setting the standard for housing development elsewhere in the country, delivering the good growth that this Government support.
To conclude, this order will establish the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation and set out the boundary in which it may operate. The Greater Cambridge Development Corporation will be focused on the delivery of strategic, nationally significant growth in its boundary, and work collaboratively with councils both within and bordering the development area, transport bodies and utility providers, to help supercharge growth and unlock development opportunities. It will support the delivery of new homes, infrastructure, and business and laboratory space.
I extend my thanks to the local leaders and their councils for their hard work and for their ongoing collaboration in delivering nationally significant growth in Greater Cambridge. I also thank the Cambridge Growth Company, under the leadership of Peter Freeman, for its ongoing work in Cambridge that has helped unlock planning applications for over 9,000 homes and 528,000 square metres of commercial space. While I am standing at the Dispatch Box, I also thank my noble friend Lord Vallance, who is standing down from the Front Bench but has made a huge contribution to the development of the OxCam arc in his time as a Minister. I am very grateful to him for that work.
I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting the order. I beg to move.
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My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the order and setting out so clearly what the Government are seeking to achieve. I have tabled a regret amendment, not because I oppose the establishment of the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation but because I think what is in the order and in the Government’s plans both is insufficiently ambitious in terms of the geography and what needs to be achieved and overreaches in what the Government are seeking to do for planning and plan-making powers in Cambridge itself.
I should declare an interest. Of course, for 18 years I was Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire, the area that the development corporation will cover, and for the last decade I have been chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I have had only the most positive continuing engagement through that role with local planning authorities and the Cambridge Growth Company. I agree entirely with the Minister that we will very much miss the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, in his role as the Minister for the OxCam growth corridor, and I hope that the Government will continue to follow through on the excellent work that he implemented.
Why do I say that the Government are insufficiently ambitious? When we look 25 years ahead, we are looking for a development corporation to add value to what is already being done in Cambridge. We are already building. The university has helped to build Eddington. We have built out at Trumpington Meadows. We allocated green-belt land and are building out at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. It is the Government who prevented us from proceeding as we wanted to in Cambridge North because they would not pay for wastewater treatment and removal. We have just had Homes England, Hill Residential, the local authority and the Cambridge Growth Company coming together to set out plans for the redevelopment of Cambridge City Airport as the Cambridge East development, with East West Rail coming through. There is no shortage of impetus from the planning authorities. Indeed, last year, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, a shared service between Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, was the planning authority of the year.
We need to look at this development corporation and ask: how does it add value? The Minister was absolutely right: it is by building out the infrastructure. I will give just one example: the mass rapid transit requirements around Cambridge. Cambridge Ahead has said recently, on where the Cambridge cluster really extends to, that in the years ahead we are looking at what is, in effect, a polycentric system of Cambridge and related large settlements which will form part of a functional economic geography. If you look at a map, a 20-mile radius around Cambridge includes Ely, Newmarket, Haverhill, Royston, St Neots and Huntingdon.
Huntingdon is an excellent example. We need mass rapid transit to Huntingdon, in addition to the A14 and the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. We have the space to do it. Huntingdon’s local plan process is currently looking at some 24,000 additional homes in the plan period and beyond, in places such as Alconbury Weald and Wyton. If the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation is going to deliver that infrastructure, it has the powers to do that beyond its territory, as the Minister said. But, if it wanted to take responsibility for major settlements such as Alconbury Weald or Wyton or, heading to the east, somewhere such as Westley Green, it is technically beyond the boundary that we are looking at. If the Minister wanted to add value to the local planning process, she might like to have a look at East Cambridgeshire District Council, which is not proceeding with any local plan process, unlike Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, which are in the midst of creating a very ambitious local plan and expect to conclude it by the end of 2027.
What I ask the Minister to do is to think very hard about this regret amendment and accept that the development corporation should not be confined to the geography that is set out here. It should, in time, potentially be responsible for other major settlements. Within Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire, it should not take general planning powers and, specifically, should not take the plan-making powers after the point at which the current local plan is adopted. That would be an outrageous abuse of the democratic process and would vitiate all the partnership working being done in Cambridge city and beyond in the Greater Cambridge area to try to deliver precisely the nationally significant growth that the Minister has been advocating.
We are talking here about the establishment order, but I think the Minister fully understands that what we are really talking about is that, when the subsequent planning functions order comes forward, that should be an opportunity for her to think again about the results of the consultation and to bring forward something focused on red-line sites for major, strategic settlements, and not taking responsibility for plan-making powers. I beg to move the regret amendment in my name.
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My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the case for the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation. Unavoidably, it sounded like something out of the 1970s, rather than something fit for the 21st century.
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, although my perspective is very different from his. One of my regrets about his amendment is that it is only a regret amendment, for there is clear evidence that there is strong local opposition to the creation of the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation—and there is very good reason for that. It might be said to be the last thing the city, its residents and its environment need or want. You would think it is also the last thing the Government should need or want, given that we have a new Prime Minister acknowledging that far too much focus has been put on, and resources sunk into, the development of a small area of the country, while the north, the Midlands, the south-west of England, many parts of Wales, and far too many coastal communities and market towns have been ignored and stripped of resources by austerity.
I return to Cambridge. The corporation model is designed to accelerate growth far beyond what local infrastructure, water supplies and fragile ecosystems can sustain, while stripping democratic control from Cambridge and Cambridgeshire residents. Developers, not communities, stand to benefit: the corporation risks becoming a vehicle for speculative development, with profits privatised and costs—from water shortages to traffic congestion—pushed on to residents.
The structure of the corporation is profoundly undemocratic, taking away from local councils control over planning decisions, thereby undermining the power of representatives whom local people voted for. The consultation showed majority resident opposition. The local Green group has told me that it is apparent from the debates that have taken place in the newly elected Cambridge City Council—no party now has overall control, but there is a ruling Labour group, the Greens are the second-largest party and the Lib Dems are close behind—that none of the parties supports the corporation.
More, the corporation plan is severely underfunded. What it is due to receive will do nothing to address the existing shortfall in infrastructure. It focuses on all the wrong outcomes, including growing the bioscience and IT sectors. Before any more commercial development happens, what needs to be addressed in particular are the chronic water shortages, the transport bottlenecks, the acute social housing shortfall—which new, high-priced housing estates will not resolve—the insufficient electricity supply, the limited sewage capacity, the lack of sufficient hospital places and the overstretched schools.
The inadequacy of the infrastructure there has been demonstrated by the conditions in Addenbrooke’s Hospital during the recent heatwave. Media reports indicated that four staff members went home ill and two more collapsed at work—and that is the staff. There is a clear need for significant investment there, as well as in the more than 60 schools that either closed early or indicated that pupils could leave because they were too hot. We need to fix the existing infrastructure before we think about going further.
Water stress is, of course, the biggest issue. No one has provided a substantive answer as to where the water will come from for future significant development proposed under the corporation—Lincolnshire or Wales, maybe. Both of those places in this heavily water-stressed land might well have something to say about that. The Environment Agency, as is well known, has opposed local planning applications already, such as the west Cambridge site, due to the lack of water supplies. The trees in the area—this is filling the local media at the moment—are dying because there is not enough water for them. That has been absolutely dominating the local press in the last few days.
I note that recently, the Labour group on the Cambridge City Council amended—downgraded—the Green group’s motion on the rights of the River Cam. Even though it was downgraded, the Labour motion still said:
“We regard the river as an integral part of the life of our city. Threats to our rivers are a threat to us all”.
I hope that the new Government are listening to their local representatives.
This development corporation is an idea that comes from the 20th century—a failed model that has caused the climate and nature emergencies, the terrible state of public health and the rampant inequality of the UK of 2026. It is ironic that this is happening while we have a new Prime Minister who says that he wants to give a greater say to communities. This corporation takes away that say. To quote local Green councillors, this is a “power grab”, not a plan. I realise that the Minister may not be able to provide a fresh perspective today, but I hope that a fresh approach does appear in the new Government over the summer.
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My Lords, I note the criticisms of the new development corporation for Cambridgeshire, as spelled out by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, from his expert local knowledge, but my comments are from the broader policy perspective. The use of the development corporation model represents a huge opportunity up and down the country to reorder the development of new homes and infrastructure and the regeneration of existing neighbourhoods. Criticisms have abounded of the major housebuilders and developers failing to deliver the quantity or quality of new homes, facilities and infrastructure that they have promised.
Development corporations can do so much better. By capturing the land value, now without the necessity of incorporating hope value, with the possibility of using compulsory purchase powers as a last resort, a development corporation can deliver a high-quality master plan to include much-needed affordable homes and social and community benefits. Delivering new and regeneration schemes is a long-term proposition, during which there may well be changes of political control within local government for the area. The value of the development corporation is not only its public accountability but its longevity, irrespective of the local uncertainties our democracy creates.
Of course, planning decisions that are bound to cause local upset but which are in the national or regional interest—and we need to build 1.5 million new homes—are hard to take at the local authority level. We know from the success of the development corporations already up and running that this model can be a game-changer. Greater Cambridge would be well-served by having its own.
I support this order, and I greatly welcome in principle the establishment of the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation, with or without the modifications recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.
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My Lords, with permission, I will express a few thoughts, and I speak as chancellor of the University of Cambridge. I welcome the establishment of the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation. It will, quite simply, speed things up and cut through bureaucratic delays.
We need to acknowledge the growth potential of our best universities, and Cambridge is, I am proud to say, one of them. The best place for start-up businesses in Europe is currently Cambridge. The alumni of the University of Cambridge in recent years have founded 2,600 venture-backed start-ups—more than anywhere else in Europe. We are rivalled only by the Bay Area in California and the other Cambridge and Boston area in Massachusetts.
Cambridge, since 2024, has raised more venture capital investment in deep-tech industries per capita than anywhere else in the world. We have had particular success in oncology, AI drug discovery, semiconductor manufacturing, chips and processing, cardiology and aerospace. The Government must recognise the world-class opportunity for catalysing growth that is represented by our leading universities, and especially by Cambridge. The development corporation is therefore very welcome.
I give three small words of warning, however. First, we have heard warm words before. The Oxford-Cambridge arc, especially the new rail link between Oxford and Cambridge, has been promised before. It must now happen.
Secondly, one other potential problem is the issue of water resources highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. At the moment, all of Cambridge’s water comes from boreholes dug into the aquifer below ground. In the long term, the huge pressure for development makes that resource unsustainable. I hope the Government will therefore do everything possible to ensure that the new Fens reservoir, which is desperately needed, can indeed happen.
Thirdly, there must be full and considered local consultation. I am delighted that the Minister has committed the Government to ensuring that that happens. The development corporation is a great start, but please make sure that Cambridge’s full potential is actually realised.
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My Lords, development corporations have been widely welcomed—with one exception—because they have an important function in enabling development decisions that cover a wide area. So, the question for us is not the about principle of development corporations, but whether the Greater Cambridge devco is the most effective vehicle for achieving the purposes set out in the order.
I have a number of criticisms, and the first is about geography, which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, pointed out. Decisions on local government reorganisation have, so far, specifically excluded a decision on the Cambridge area, yet here is a proposal with boundaries that may not conform to those decisions. This particular order is, therefore, in that regard, premature. Further, the boundaries proposed may actually constrain provision of the much-needed infrastructure.