Chancellor announces support for the Oxford to Cambridge Arc
The government has announced new plans to invest in the Oxford to Cambridge Arc. In a speech on Wendesday, The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced that the Arc, now called the Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor, has the potential to become ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’.
In her speech, Ms Reeves announced support for the following developments for the Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor:
Funding for the East West Rail line, including a mainline station at Tempsford.
New and expanded communities along the East West Rail line route.
The government says it has received proposals for new towns, as well as 18 submissions for ‘sizeable new developments’.Investment of £7.9 billion in water companies to build nine new reservoirs, including a new Fens Reservoir to serve Cambridge.
An upgrade of the A428 between Milton Keynes and Cambridge.
4500 new houses in the Cambridge area.
The opening of an Innovation Hub in Cambridge city centre by the University of Cambridge.
A new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital.
The development of the Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor will be overseen by Lord Patrick Vallance, the former HM Government chief scientific adviser.
In his response to the government’s plans, Stop the Arc’s chairman, Charles Pither, said:
‘Everyone agrees the country has a housing problem, and a growth problem. But the Chancellor's proposals are set to deliver the wrong kind of housing, in the wrong places.
‘She talks of 'relaxing' planning processes, which simply means more free rein to developers, and less democracy in decision-making. She talks of making it easier for developers to get on, “without worrying about bats and newts”, which just means allowing developers to buy their way out of environmental issues.
‘The government’s objectives for the Oxford Cambridge Arc, and the routes to achieving them, have not been properly thought through. Salvaged in panic from the waste basket of the previous regime in today’s dash for cash. But the plans cannot deliver the growth she claims in any useful time scale. Instead the government needs to refocus on supporting innovation with seed capital, and a workable social housing programme for those key employees who will never afford Ms Reeves’ overpriced sprawl.’