The adopted Local Plans 2018 for both councils South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge City, set a housing requirement of 33,500 homes to be built between 2011 and 2031 for Greater Cambridge. This means that to reach this objective, houses must be built at an average of 1,675 dwellings a year.
Authority Monitoring Report
Having set that target, Government expects the two Councils to monitor and report every year, how well they are doing in terms of homes delivered compared with the requirement in the adopted Local Plans. This is one of the tasks that the GCSP service has to carry out to make sure we keep up to date with the plans. The Authority Monitoring Report (AMR) for the period April 2020 to March 2021 has now been published and discussed at Cabinet on Monday 7 February
Homes Delivered
I am happy to report that for this monitoring period, we have not just met that target, we have exceeded it with 1752 net additional houses built of which 1,335 are in South Cambridgeshire, and 417 in Cambridge. Moreover, 362 of these homes were ‘Affordable Homes’; 311 in South Cambridgeshire, and 51 in Cambridge.
South Cambridgeshire had been underdelivering in the early part of the plan period, as you can see from Table 1 showing the housing completions from 2011 up to 2021. So, with this result delivery has exceeded the required rate in four of the last five years.
Spatial Strategy
One thing to note is that housing completions are falling in Cambridge City but this reflects the spatial strategy adopted by both Councils. Sites on the edge of the City had been delivering higher levels previously within the city boundary, but now completions are in South Cambs and the new settlements are also now delivering more homes.
Table 2 further breaks that down into completions by settlement hierarchy. This shows that five year land supply sites have contributed 1,332 to the total sites being built out in South Cambridgeshire-these were permissions granted prior to Sept 2018 as departure to the development plan when there was no adopted local plan in place and South Cambs District Council did not have five year housing land supply.
Housing Delivery Test (HDT)
This is measured over the previous three years against the housing requirement for the district for that same period. There are penalties for those councils that underdeliver, measured as failing to meet 95% of their housing requirement.
For the 2017-2020 period published in 2021, the figure was 176% for Cambridge and 114% for South Cambs. For the 2018-2021 period just published just last month, the figure was 133% for Cambridge and 145% for South Cambridgeshire. Again this confirms the build out strategy employed by both Councils. So there are no resulting penalties for either Council.
Community Infrastructure Levy (S106)
For the first time, we are also having to report on the S106 monies that we secured from permissions granted in the period and received from permissions now being built out. The Planning Service secured £3.2million of new investment to be spent on future community or infrastructure projects.
It also received £3.5million during the year, as existing agreements were delivered. Some of the projects include new sports pavilions at Hauxton and Willingham, a new village hall in Cottenham, a strategic green buffer zone in Melbourn, contributions towards the River Great Ouse improvement project at Over and improvements to Fowlmere Round Moat, and more!
Neighbourhood Plans
There’s a lot more in the report, including the designation of 19 neighbourhood areas, the making of 4 neighbourhood plans. The plans made are for Great Abington Former LSA Estate, Cottenham, Histon & Impington, and Foxton. Four others are at the formal or referendum stages namely, Waterbeach, Gamlingay, Fulbourn and West Wickham.
General Comment
We have created this year’s authority monitoring report in a new format to provide information in a clearer way, showing we are fulfilling our commitment to tackle the housing shortage and provide more affordable homes for those most in need.
It also shows that, contrary to the assertions by some in the media recently, we are assessing current growth in the pipeline and can see how the current Local Plan policies are working as well as the cumulative impact of current growth. We are learning lessons from these developments so that where necessary, those lessons are fed into the emerging Local Plan.
Conclusion
New homes have brought tangible benefits to local communities through contributions to local facilities and infrastructure. And finally, we can see that our policies to support climate change are having a positive impact, more homes featuring water efficiency and carbon reduction measures.