Your Guide: Cambridge Housing and Water Woes
Southern Regional Area Surveyor:
Steven Foreman, MRICS
A recent article by the Cambridge Independent has outlined the concerns of the local planning authority and their recommendation to decline permission for a further 1,000 homes to the North West of Cambridge. This is said to be on the basis of a lack of adequate water supply, without depleting the aquifer that sits below the Cambridge area.
This is an area that currently is gaining a lot of interest across Cambridgeshire. As a Chartered Surveyor in Cambridge and having completed my undergraduate degree in physical geography, this is a keen area of interest for me.
As part of my undergraduate degree, I wrote a dissertation assessing the impact of the proposed expansion of Cambridge’s housing supply, and projected future climate change on the long term security of Cambridge’s Water supply.
This was back in 2010/11, during which the impact of housing developments such as those South of Trumpington, The West Cambridge site (Eddington), and other similar planned schemes, were assessed along with climate projection data, running a model into the future to see if/when the water demands of Cambridge would outstrip supply and begin depleting the aquifer upon which the area sits.
The results of this fairly basic model were that under some of the worst-case scenario’s of future climate change, the water supply would become critical in the summer months during the 2050’s.
Jumping forward to present day (2024), whilst the planned developments my dissertation considered have been built, there is a further expansion of Cambridge’s housing stock underway, with Michael Gove having outlined plans for a further 150,000 homes in the Cambridge area.
Read the BBC News article here!
In addition, the impacts of climate change are being felt, and we are seemingly heading towards the worst case scenario’s modelled by way of climate change within my dissertation project.
It has therefore come as no surprise to me that the water supply issue has been picked up by the experts in this area, and is now at the forefront of planning discussions.
Whilst I am not surprised that this is happening, I am shocked that it is becoming critical in 2023/24 and not further into the future such as 2050 as predicted in my dissertation.
The question of course is what should happen next?
A proposed Fenland Reservoir which may help the current issue is not planned to come online until the 2030’s, so what should be done in the meantime?
Should the development of further housing in the Cambridge area be prevented until the future water supply can be guaranteed? If so this runs the risk of stifling the economic success of the city and wider region, due to lack of supply of housing for workers in the region to live in.
This then potentially impacts the ability to recruit or retain the top talent in key sectors for Cambridge, such as Bio-Technology, Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals, Research and the Technology sectors.
A curbing of the supply of new homes would directly impact the local housing market, driving up prices in an area. This is an area where the multiple of average income to house price is already one of the highest outside of London.
The knock on impact would also be felt within the social housing sector, as 40% of new homes built are required to be affordable, but with no new development, where is the supply of new affordable homes going to come from for those in need?
What are the alternatives?
The alternatives would be to continue to permit new homes to be built, but risk depleting the water supply to an extent where not only do hose pipe bans become the summer norm, but worse restrictions on the amount each home can use may come into play.
We have to ask the question of whether we run the risk of degrading the natural environment through over extraction of water? Or do we carry on and hope that this won’t be critical before the proposed reservoir is built?
Another position to consider is that perhaps is it time that rainwater harvesting technologies are implemented in larger-scale housing schemes, not just left to the pioneering self-build sector.
This leads us to ask if planning policies could play a part in enforcing a reduction in water demand per home, by mandating such technologies in new developments.
This could include garden hoses and flushing toilets using grey water, stored in underground tanks, collected from rainwater during wetter months.
Would a technological solution in fact be very much in keeping with the wider Cambridge ethos of pioneering innovation and pushing the boundaries at the very forefront of what can be done with technology in our homes?
In conclusion, this is certainly a prominent issue for all those living and working across Cambridge, with many potential ideas of how to aid the lack of adequate water supply.
I fear that this is not an issue that is going to be easily sorted out any time soon, and will continue to be a factor in the Cambridge Housing Market and for property surveyors to consider for some time to come.
