Witchford residents are rejoicing as plans to include the Witchford North East development of 720 homes have been dropped from East Cambridgeshire District Council’s Five Year Plan.
During the full council meeting, many councillors praised Cllr Coralie Green and the officers at East Cambs for their work on this document but many said they were supporting the motion to drop Witchford for all the plan to go ahead for the greater good. Stopping speculative builds by “greedy” developers seemed to be main reason given. The plan has a long way to go.
With this development out of the way, the full plan is now in order and the 57-page document, which has taken thousands of hours to prepare with managers from various departments at East Cambs, is firmly secure.
Now at this point, I am going to apologise. I do kind of understand it so I will pass on the information I can see.
The document highlights homes to be built throughout the whole district and East Cambs claims it will build over 10,000 homes over the next 19 years of which nearly 3,000 will be within five years and the remaining over the following 14.
Ely won’t see a build in the North till 2018/19 with 665 expected to be completed on the two northern sites within five years. These do not include the 10 homes on the controversial Barton Road development. These two sites will see 3000 homes developed with the 19-year plan.
Soham is set to get a further 1000+ homes in the plan but work is not due till 2020/21 and Highfields Farm in Littleport will continue with 50 news home per till complete in 2022/23. Two other major builds are planned in Littleport with 550 homes starting in 2019.
Affordable housing is included in the document as is much focus on Community Land Trusts (CLTs). East Cambridgeshire is currently one of the most desirable places to live and with the house and rental prices on the rise, more homes are needed to meet the need.
Some housing prices in the past year have risen by 20% and in the last 5 years some rentals are nearly double
This piece is written as an editorial by Mark Cooney
