Greater Cambridge Development Corporation (Establishment) Order 2026
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 22 Jul 2026 · 17 speeches · Official Report
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the Order laid before the House on 4 June be approved. Relevant document: 5th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
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...
Amendment to the Motion
Moved by
At end to insert “but that this House regrets that the geographic scope of the Development Corporation proposed in the Order is not extended to correspond to the functional economic geography of the Cambridge-based economy; and that this Order is not accompanied by an Order setting out planning powers for the Development Corporation focused on very large new sites for development.”
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...
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
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...
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...
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...
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. The next criticism is the locally shared diagnosis that development in the Cambridge area is hampered by inadequate transport, as we have just heard, water resources, which is well known, energy and the affordability of housing. Despite the scale of the proposed development corporation, the solutions to the fundamental infrastructure problems lie with private companies, such as Cambridge Water, and central government to enable the development of much-needed improved transport structures. The Minister said that there will be another £400 million to do all this good work. That is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required in terms of...
My Lords, I make the House aware of my potential interest as a councillor in central Bedfordshire, which neighbours this area. I support my noble friend Lord Lansley in his amendment. I was going to say how important Cambridge is to the economy of the UK, but I think the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, has done a far better job than I can. It is an absolute critical part if this country is going to be successful and have the growth that it desperately needs. However, Cambridge is hamstrung by a lack of housing, infrastructure and commercial space for biolabs, technology and so forth. You have a town of around 150,000 which every day, according to the 2021 census, has 55,000 commuters coming in-bearing in mind that that was during Covid, the actual number is probably far higher-largely by car. The Government are right that Cambridge needs to grow. That is why I was pleased that the last Government progressed with east-west rail, the A14 dualling and the A428 Caxton Gibbet to the A1, but there is much more to do. Cambridge, as I said, needs more housing, lab space and commercial space. It also needs to work with other areas of the wider geography. It is not just the Ox-Cam arc; it is the golden triangle, spanning Oxford to Cambridge to London, which is a global powerhouse in technology and biotech among others. It encompasses the Minister’s Stevenage, and it has central Bedfordshire at its geographic heart. A DCO can be a useful delivery mechanism, but it needs to be one...
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in a very interesting debate on the future of Cambridgeshire and the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for his contribution to Cambridge. We had a visit there and I could see his involvement in how Cambridge is developing. I thank my noble friend Lord Smith for setting out the benefit to the whole UK economy of the growth and innovation that is taking place in Cambridgeshire and how important it is to continue investing in that-not just for the local area but for a national purpose. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for welcoming the development corporation approach to these major growth areas. All the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, with her slightly negative perspective on the development corporation, were made in the 1940s and 1950s about the development corporation for my town. We need the growth that Cambridge offers. The Green Party may want our country to stand still, but this Government will not let that happen. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as usual, for her thoughtful comments about the engagement of local people in this project. I start with the boundary issues, which are the subject of the regret amendment and are important. The boundary proposed for the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation covers a broad geography which will enhance the ability to maximise funding and enable land value capture, increasing the viability of strategic...
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this really interesting, albeit short, debate. We have to understand that this is the first of what will necessarily be further debates at some point later in the autumn in relation to the order setting out what the planning functions of the development corporation will be. I thought what the Minister had to say about maintaining a review of the boundaries was a really helpful and important thing to say, but it has to be understood that there is no legal requirement that the development corporation’s boundaries should align with the administrative boundaries of local authorities. They can differ. Perhaps we ought to give ourselves the freedom to think that they should differ in this instance, because we do not know what the unitary council is going to look like, and it is not absolutely necessary that the development corporation aligns with the unitary council when it comes. When the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, explains how well Cambridge has succeeded, he is, in a sense, reinforcing the fact that the place I represented and the local authorities which I supported-South Cambridgeshire was a Conservative authority for years-worked together to enable the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to be established by releasing green belt. We worked together to allow Trumpington Meadows to happen, and Cambridge City Council worked with the university to enable Eddington to be built, which is an award-winning development...
Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.
Motion agreed.