Planning consent granted for Future Phases of Eddington, North West Cambridge
Last Wednesday (16th September), the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service granted outline planning permission for the Future Phases of Eddington designed by Hawkins\Brown.
Today’s decision allows us to move forward with a practical response to one of Cambridge’s most pressing challenges. By providing more homes for University key workers, people working in the knowledge-intensive industries, and the wider community, the future phases will support the talent behind Cambridge’s research, teaching and innovation, while helping to reduce pressure on the wider housing market.
The masterplan builds on Eddington’s success so far, while learning lessons and deepening design principles, particularly around providing open spaces for community cohesion, health building, and planetary regeneration. The future phases set out up to 3,800 new homes, half of which will be affordable for University of Cambridge key workers, thereby reducing pressure on the city’s wider housing market and bringing the total number of homes in Eddington to over 5,500.
More than a third of the site will be dedicated to open green space. This reflects the research done by Hawkins\Brown, sustainability consultants Max Fordham, and the University of Cambridge, published earlier this year as “Nourishing Neighbourhoods”, a report examining strategies for integrating green space to improve neighbourhood health and wellbeing. Shared gardens form a key part of the design, allowing for growing, playing, cycling and passive recreation.
Hawkins\Brown was very careful with […] balancing green infrastructure, BNG and community amenity. The outcome is an appropriately dense scheme that gets the most from developable area, with 30% of the site retained as open green space.
