Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council have reached the Proposed Submission stage of the first joint Greater Cambridge Local Plan, setting out how one of England’s fastest-growing economies could accommodate tens of thousands of homes and jobs to 2045.
The headline housing need is 48,069 new homes between 2024 and 2045. The plan actually identifies a total supply of 52,032 homes over that period, providing 8.2% headroom, while planning for 73,300 additional jobs.
Those are enormous figures, but the more interesting planning story is whether the growth can be delivered at the required pace. Water supply, wastewater, transport, the electricity grid, environmental capacity and social infrastructure are not background issues here: they are central to the soundness and effectiveness of the strategy.
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What the Greater Cambridge Local Plan covers
The Greater Cambridge Local Plan covers Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire together for the period 2024 to 2045. The two councils work through Greater Cambridge Shared Planning and have calculated housing need jointly, rather than treating the city boundary as the edge of the housing market.
The Proposed Submission consultation opened at 9am on 3 August and closes at 5pm on Friday 25 September 2026. This is the Regulation 19 stage: the version the councils consider ready to submit for independent examination.
For a wider explanation of how this stage fits into plan-making, see our guide to Local Plans and the Regulation 18/19 process.
For a practical example of consultation documents being corrected and reissued during Regulation 19, see our report on the Blaby Regulation 19 Local Plan.
48,069 homes are needed – but 52,032 are in the supply
Policy S/JH identifies a minimum need for 48,069 homes, equivalent to 2,289 dwellings a year across Greater Cambridge.
The development strategy then builds in headroom. Its housing supply tables show:
- 48,069 homes of identified housing need
- 38,378 homes counted as current supply, including adopted allocations, sites with planning permission or a resolution to grant permission, and the windfall allowance
- 13,654 homes from new sites proposed by this plan within 2024 to 2045
- 52,032 homes total supply over the plan period
- 8.2% headroom above the identified housing need
There is an important accounting point here. The 38,378 “current supply” figure is not simply a count of live planning permissions. The plan says just over 31,715 homes are already in the underlying supply from 2024/25 completions, adopted allocations and sites with permission or a resolution to grant permission expected by 2045; it then adds a windfall allowance of around 6,660 homes.
Separately, the councils say that at March 2026 there were just over 34,400 homes with planning permission anticipated to build out during the plan period and beyond. Those figures answer different questions and should not be swapped around in representations.
Where does the growth go?
The strategy follows a clear order of preference, having regard to the purposes of the Cambridge Green Belt:
- within the Cambridge urban area
- on the edge of Cambridge
- at an expanded Cambourne
- at other new settlements
- in the rural southern cluster and wider rural area at identified centres
That does not mean most of the new housing is inside Cambridge. The plan’s broad distribution to 2045 is approximately 11% in the Cambridge urban area, 30% on the edge of Cambridge, 44% at new settlements and 15% in the rural area, including windfalls.
Major proposals include Cambridge East, which is planned for around 8,000 homes in total with 3,950 in the plan period; an additional 2,500 homes at Eddington; 1,000 homes at Cambridge Biomedical Campus; Cambourne North, planned at around 13,000 homes overall with 2,550 by 2045; and Grange Farm, planned at 4,500 homes overall with 2,550 in the plan period.
Existing strategic developments such as Northstowe, Waterbeach and Bourn Airfield also continue to contribute heavily to the supply. The councils expect urban extensions and new settlements to deliver a further nearly 24,000 homes beyond 2045, which shows how far the strategy reaches past the formal plan period.
73,300 additional jobs changes the scale of the infrastructure question
Policy S/JH plans for 73,300 additional jobs between 2024 and 2045. The councils’ central forecast assumes strong growth of around 3,500 additional jobs a year, particularly in Greater Cambridge’s knowledge-intensive economy.
The employment evidence identifies needs for approximately:
- 302,600 square metres of office floorspace
- 600,000 square metres of research and development floorspace
- 317,000 square metres of industrial and warehousing floorspace
The plan already has more than one million square metres of employment floorspace in the broader supply, but says additional land is still required for sectors with particular locational needs.
This housing-and-jobs relationship is one reason Greater Cambridge matters nationally. A plan can allocate land, but if homes, laboratories, transport and utilities do not arrive in a coordinated way, the area risks reinforcing the very affordability and commuting pressures the strategy is trying to solve.
Water is a delivery constraint, not a side issue
Greater Cambridge is one of the driest parts of the country and the Cambridge Water supply area is recognised as seriously water-stressed. Existing abstraction from the chalk aquifer has also been associated with environmental pressure on chalk streams and other sensitive habitats.
The Proposed Submission Plan therefore contains unusually demanding water-efficiency requirements. Policy CC/WE proposes:
- no more than 80 litres per person per day for residential schemes of 100 homes or more, requiring some form of water reuse or recycling
- 90 litres per person per day for residential schemes below 100 homes
- a 60% reduction in water use, expressed through BREEAM Wat 01 credits or equivalent, for non-residential development unless demonstrated impracticable
But efficiency within individual developments cannot create strategic supply infrastructure on its own. The plan’s own trajectory acknowledges that sustained housing completions at or above the new annual requirement are not expected until the second half of the plan period, in part because major water and transport improvements are expected later.
The Government’s Greater Cambridge work identifies the Grafham Water Transfer Scheme, targeted for 2032, and the Fens Reservoir, targeted for 2036, as important medium-term supply measures. Wastewater treatment capacity is another constraint.
For an examination, the question is not whether water is difficult – everybody agrees that it is. The more important soundness question is whether the strategy and trajectory are effective and deliverable with a sufficiently credible relationship between development timing and infrastructure delivery.
Transport and infrastructure have to arrive with the growth
The Proposed Submission Plan is accompanied by an Infrastructure Delivery Plan covering transport, schools, community facilities, sports and leisure and other requirements. Strategic allocations are heavily dependent on major transport and utility interventions rather than simply local junction works.
That dependency runs through the spatial strategy. Concentrating growth at the edge of Cambridge and at large new settlements can support public transport and reduce pressure for dispersed rural growth, but it also creates long lead-in periods and substantial up-front infrastructure requirements.
The plan expressly says delivery relies on local and national partners reflecting the Greater Cambridge strategy in their own investment programmes and providing water supply, wastewater and sustainable transport infrastructure at the right time.
What is the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation’s role?
The Greater Cambridge Development Corporation is now more than a proposal. The establishment Order was made in June, approved by Parliament and came into force on 23 July 2026.
It does not replace this Regulation 19 exercise. The current Greater Cambridge Local Plan is being prepared jointly by Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council. Government’s published approach is that the Corporation’s initial phase should work with the councils and delivery partners to unlock strategic sites, including locations identified in the emerging Local Plan.
The Government has also said that a separate statutory instrument will confer planning powers and functions. Its June response envisaged the Corporation exercising plan-making powers after the current Local Plan is adopted, anticipated in 2028, with earlier intervention only if the existing or draft plans do not deliver the required scale and pace.
That makes the relationship important but not interchangeable: the Local Plan sets the present strategic planning framework being tested; the Corporation is intended to become a powerful delivery and planning actor around that framework.
Regulation 19: what should representations address?
The consultation closes at 5pm on 25 September 2026. At this stage, representations should focus on whether the Proposed Submission Plan is legally compliant and sound.
For landowners, developers and consultants, that means moving beyond a general preference for more or less development. A useful representation should identify the policy, allocation or evidence being challenged, state which test of soundness is engaged and explain the modification required.
In Greater Cambridge, obvious examination themes are likely to include:
- whether the 48,069-home requirement properly aligns with the economic growth strategy
- whether the 52,032-home supply and trajectory are robust and deliverable
- whether strategic allocations can be serviced by water, wastewater and transport infrastructure when required
- whether the distribution of growth is justified against reasonable alternatives and Green Belt considerations
- whether employment land provision is sufficient and appropriately located for the forecast growth sectors
- whether environmental mitigation and infrastructure requirements remain viable alongside the scale of development proposed
Our guides to the development plan and local housing need and the standard method provide useful background to those arguments.
What happens next?
After the Regulation 19 period closes, the councils will consider the representations and intend to submit the plan and supporting evidence to the Secretary of State for independent examination. Greater Cambridge says it aims to submit before the end of 2026.
An independent Planning Inspector will then test legal compliance and soundness. If necessary, main modifications can be recommended to make the plan sound or legally compliant. The Government’s published Greater Cambridge Development Corporation timetable assumes Local Plan adoption in 2028, although the actual date remains subject to the progress and outcome of the examination.
What makes this examination unusually consequential is that the plan is doing two jobs at once: accommodating very high local growth and forming a key planning foundation for a nationally significant Cambridge growth programme. The difficult part will be proving that infrastructure and environmental capacity can keep pace with the ambition.
Primary sources
- Greater Cambridge Shared Planning: Local Plan and Regulation 19 consultation
- Greater Cambridge Policy S/JH: New jobs and homes
- Greater Cambridge Policy S/DS: Development strategy
- Greater Cambridge Policy CC/WE: Water efficiency in new developments
- GOV.UK: Greater Cambridge Development Corporation consultation outcome
- UK Parliament: Greater Cambridge Development Corporation (Establishment) Order 2026
- Planning Inspectorate: Procedure Guide for Local Plan Examinations
Created: 24th August 2026 | Greater Cambridge Local Plan
