Water issue 'needs fixing ahead of house-building'

Housing minister Rachel Maclean said it was important to the whole of the UK for the government to help solve Cambridge's water supply problems

The government is working on ways to fix water shortage issues in the Cambridge area to deliver its plan to build 250,000 homes by 2040, the housing minister said.

A Cambridge 2040 Delivery Group is to be set up to develop a master plan aimed at "supercharging Europe's science capital".

The Environment Agency has formally objected to five large housing developments in the wider Cambridge area because of fears they did not have sustainable water supplies.

Rachel Maclean, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, said the city and wider sub-region needed more houses and "we need to solve this water problem if we are to build the right number of homes".

Rachel Maclean praised Cambridge University's Eddington development

"We're working very closely with the Environment Agency, with water engineers, with local authorities and all the other layers of of local government, because we need to solve this water problem if we are to build the right number of homes," the minister added.

Ms Maclean was speaking as she visited Eddington, a housing estate built by Cambridge University two miles south-west of the city centre to address a shortage of affordable accommodation for its workers.

She said the mix of "affordable rental housing" and private homes for sale was "a great example of the kind of design that we want to see as part of our long term plan for housing being repeated".

The estate offers 1,500 homes for university and college staff, 1,500 private houses for sale and has accommodation for 2,000 postgraduates.

Ms Maclean said: "Cambridge has potential to be a science superpower, to be the Silicon Valley of the United Kingdom.

"In order to do that we need to have more lab space and we need to have more housing for people to work in the labs.

"So it's really important for the whole of the UK that we come together as a government to solve these [water] problems."

Cambridge's Labour MP Daniel Zeichner said: "Conservative failures to plan ahead on water availability have left areas like Cambridge struggling when it comes to new housing.

"In contrast, our Labour city council have managed one of the largest council house building programmes anywhere in the country - I hope the minister learned from her visit to Eddington that when Cambridge people are given the chance, we have answers."

The Cambridge 2040 plans are opposed by Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, saying they will be "enormously destructive of our environment and way of life".