Ox-Cam Arc plans: what they mean for you, your community and your environment

The Oxford to Cambridge Arc proposals, first set out in their present form in ‘Partnering for Prosperity’ from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in 2017, amount to a regional development plan with the aim of boosting the economy of the five ceremonial counties of the Ox-Cam Arc by up to £163 billion per year by 2050. This, the NIC said, will involve building one million houses for the one million plus workers required, and an expressway to link the houses to the places of work. For good measure, the NIC also recommended resurrecting the Oxford-Cambridge railway line that was last used in the 1960s.

If carried out in full, these proposals will result in an unprecedented level of over-development within a relatively small part of the UK (less than 5% of the land area). The threat of such development to the ways of life of the existing communities has never been considered.

Note: The government cancelled the Oxford-to-Cambridge expressway in 2021, stating that the expressway would not provide 'value for money for the taxpayer'.

We are told we must ‘build, build, build’ our way out of the long-term effects of the 2008 financial crash and the current covid-19 pandemic, and we must avoid what the Prime Minister describes as ‘newt-counting delays’ in doing so. The destruction of nature that the Ox-Cam Arc plans involve (those ‘newt-counting delays’) would be compensated for, the report claimed, using the principles of biodiversity net gain or natural capital accounting, but with the re-assurance to developers that “ Incorporating “net gain” principles needn’t damage the viability of sites or proposals.”

Those “net gain” principles are part of the new Environment Law and are designed to compensate for the destruction of nature in one place (the building sites) with a compensatory increase in nature in other sites (the offset sites). The Durrell Institute for Conservation Ecology (DICE) in the University of Kent has recently reviewed net gain attempts globally and found that only one third of them achieve no net loss (NNL) of biodiversity, and two thirds of them fail (or have equivocal outcomes). Would you let a loved one go in for a major operation in which two thirds of the patients die? Our natural environment - our ultimate life support system - should not be traded away like this, with such a low chance that offsetting will actually work. More recent work by DICE of the ‘early adopter’ experience in England (where developers have already trialled some of the requirements of the new Environment Law) has also shown that 95% of the compensation activities have been on or very near the building sites themselves (this is called ‘onsite offsetting’) a situation that is not covered at all by the new Environment Law (which assumes a majority of ‘offsite offsetting’).

But it seems that nothing will be allowed to get in the way of the level of development that the NIC said is necessary for that economic prize of an extra £163 billion a year. We can have it all, we are told by ambitious Ministers and eager property developers, and we can preserve nature in the process.

Such false promises make snake oil salesmen seem almost respectable.

No, we simply can’t have it all, and there are many, many compromises ahead which need to be aired and decided in public, with the full participation of the 3.7 million people who currently live in the Ox-Cam Arc.

Here we outline the dangers of too much development being applied to just one place in the UK; what SmartGrowth UK calls ‘The Overheated Arc.’

The Road:

• In the UK roads are built for two main reasons; to reduce journey times or to open up more land for development. The case for the Expressway was that it would allow workers to access distant workplaces more quickly; and the result would have been to merge the employment centres of Oxford, Milton-Keynes and Cambridge which are, at present, quite separate. Thus the Expressway would have encouraged longer journeys to work; greater fuel consumption, more green-house gas and particulate emissions.  There couldn’t be a better recipe for increasing global warming, or respiratory problems in our children! Cancellation of the Expressway in March 2021 doesn’t mean these problems have gone away. They have simply been shifted from one, motor-way standard road (the Expressway) to a network of new or existing roads which are to be built or improved under England’s Economic Heartland’s (EEH’s) alternative plans for transport in the region.

• The selection of both Expressway and EEH corridors is also based on the second reason why we build roads in the UK - to open up yet more land for building upon. Developers of greenfield sites require road access for their houses and developments to be viable, but are reluctant to provide such roads themselves. Because the Government’s ambition is for many thousands of new houses to be built each year, it must facilitate developers’ access to new sites. The roads create the sites and the sites justify building the roads.

• The Arc Leadership Group that is supporting all Ox-Cam Arc plans recognises that the natural environment is important for many Arc residents and is at great pains to point out that it is developing a ‘Green Arc’, claiming that ‘sustainable economic growth and the enhancement of the environment are compatible and achievable’; in other words, that we can ‘have it all’. Well, can we?

• Every single one of EEH’s 19 proposed connectivity corridors in its February 2021 Reports “Assessment of Strategic Corridors. Appendix C to the ISA” was judged “Likely to be sensitive to positive effect” (techno-speak for “suitable for”) Local Plan Strategic Housing Sites and Economic Activity. And every single one was judged “Likely to be sensitive to negative effect” (i.e. “bad for”) Biodiversity (3 factors), Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services (3 factors), the Water Environment (3 factors) and Air Quality (3 factors). So, EEH’s transport strategy is likely to be good for houses and the economy but very bad for all aspects of our life-sustaining natural environment. No signs of any compatibility there, then.

Well, are they? Failure to recognise that we really cannot have it all means that our natural environment is still being taken for granted.

The Houses:

• Yes, it really is one million new houses between Oxford and Cambridge by 2050, however much our local politicians and Councillors are in denial about this figure.  A webinar for developers and investors in December 2020 had the strapline 'Developing the corridor - £billions in Construction Works, 1m New Homes, 1m New Jobs'. During a talk in November 2020, a member of the National Infrastructure Commission (whose brainchild the whole Arc idea was) said that one million homes were ‘only 30,000 per year’, and that we really shouldn’t worry about them. But that’s 30,000 a year for the next 30+ years in an area that is currently delivering only half that number per year (i.e. within current Local Plan periods).  We agree that more housing is needed, but not growth of 105% in Oxon, 66% in affected areas of Bucks/Beds, 74% in Northants and 81% in Cambs by 2050 (compared with the 16% predicted for the nation as a whole by the Office of National Statistics). 

  The scale here is the issue.  That one million houses aspiration is made up of about 320,000 houses already in submitted/approved Local Plans running to the mid 2030s, PLUS 680,000 more houses in the period to 2050, the vast majority of which (about 550,000) are for the ‘transformational development’ associated with the Ox-Cam Arc scheme.  All those homes need infrastructure: schools, clinics, hospitals, water and electricity supplies, waste and sewage disposal etc.  For example, one form entry primary school is required for every 800 new houses.  That’s 1,250 such schools across the Arc for those one million new houses by 2050.  Developers. make only minimal contributions to the real cost of infrastructure, which is ultimately borne by the Government, that is by tax- and rate-payers.

• The demise of the expressway does not mean the demise of this one million houses target. As explained elsewhere on this site, from about the middle of 2021 Government documents and spokespeople about the Arc avoided any mention of a specific housing target for the Arc - and the Secretary of State for Housing even denied there ever had been a housing target for the Arc! But those documents (and even the Secretary of State) repeated the same economic and jobs ambitions that the Arc plans originally had. Those ambitions require one million new houses by 2050.

• Still not sure it’s a million houses? Well if you aren’t, Homes England (“We’re the government’s housing accelerator…”) certainly is. Sarah Greenwood, Head of Strategic Growth of Homes England, spoke at a Built Environment meeting on the Ox-Cam Arc in November 2021 (where one of the advertised discussion topics was “1m new homes across the Arc”). This is how the Built Environment described Homes England’s task at the time:

This announcement was rapidly edited when Stop the Arc challenged it, and all mention of a specific housing target disappeared from the website. But, at the same meeting, a Senior Partner in one of the many property developers with business interests across the Arc declared that its development could quadruple the economy of the five Arc counties, a multiple that would require far more than a million houses (which would increase the economy by less than three-fold!).

The same developers produced a Radical Capital report in 2022 claiming that the Arc’s economy could more than double between 2022 and 2030, on exactly the same jobs trajectory as the original Arc plans (i.e. 1.1 million more jobs by 2050). If you need all those new jobs, you certainly need those one million extra houses for them. Where else will the workers live?

The Environment:

• England has destroyed 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s and more ancient woodlands in the forty years after WWII than in the previous 400 years.  Since WWII, we have lost half of all our hedgerows. Environmental resources are providing goods and services – the air we breathe, the water we drink – at little or no cost to ourselves.  Farmers use the landscape to grow our food.  Take any of these things away and we perish. 

  Our politicians point out that only about 10% - 15% of our landscape is urban development, implying that there is plenty of green landscape for further development.  But if we have lost so much with ‘only’ 10% of the landscape developed, how much more do they think we can take without catastrophic declines in our life support systems? Building one million new houses will require a minimum of between 200 and 270 sq. kms of land just for the houses. Infrastructure support (roads, schools, clinic, etc. etc.) will require yet more.  

One of the criteria for choosing new road routes across the Ox-Cam corridor is that they should facilitate housing on a scale and at a pace never before experienced in an equivalent area in the UK (‘unlocking land for development’).  Much is said of using brownfield land (i.e. previously developed land) for houses, but there simply isn’t enough of this across the Arc to meet the requirements of all those houses (and brownfield sites are individually quite small).  An urban planning company, justifying massive, green-field development, puts it well: “In Britain’s ancient landscape the best sites for settlement have long been occupied. New locations need to be created with vigour.”  Rest assured, your favourite view or favourite landscape, or that walk through the woods or by the stream, will be transformed vigorously by eager developers if we do nothing to stop the Ox-Cam Arc plans.

• The UK boasts that by 2017 it had reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 43% below 1990 levels, but this was achieved mainly through switching from coal to gas for electricity; a relatively easy ‘win’.  On 10th July 2019 Lord Deben, the Chair of the Govt’s Climate Change Commission, stated that only seven out of 24 climate change goals are on track, and concluded “the whole thing is really run by the government like a Dad’s Army.  We can’t go on with this ramshackle system”.  Greenhouse gas emissions have fallen in every energy sector, but nowhere near fast enough.  The slowest decline, 3% between 1990 and 2018, has been in the transport sector, which now accounts for more GHG emissions (33% of the total) than any other energy sector.   Car-based solutions to any development problem will only make matters worse.  We need to shift from private to public transport if we are to reduce significantly GHG transport emissions. Even Private Pike can see the sense in that! 

• In late 2021, National Highways (the erstwhile Highways England) announced a plan with zero carbon targets for its own operations, its construction activities and finally the entire vehicle fleet by 2030, 2040 and 2050 respectively. The plan, however, emphasises decarbonisation on a business-as-usual transport growth trajectory (i.e. more cars, LGVs, HGVs etc but all eventually electric or hydrogen-powered). So, not just business-as-usual but yet-more-congestion as usual. We need much more than just a step change in our decarbonisation performance between 1990 and 2018. We need a whole new approach to the way we use transport in our daily lives - an approach based on a sensible spatial plan that integrates transport and housing so that far more of our daily journeys can be by public transport. Unfortunately, in 2022 the Government seems to have lost sight of its proposed Arc Spatial Framework that could have done just that.

Our Health:

• Air pollution is linked to multiple conditions, from asthma, to heart disease, and even psychosis.  Air pollution from developing new or existing road corridors will harm the health of children for generations to come.  Electric cars don’t answer this issue yet.  Public transport does.

The Economics:

• We have looked in detail at the economic case for the Arc as a whole, and are shocked by what we found. Less than 10% of the Government’s claimed £163 billion annual benefit of Ox-Cam Arc plans can be attributed to the ‘Silicon Valley effect’ (technically, ‘agglomeration’) that was used to justify increasing transport links across the Ox-Cam corridor. The remainder was due simply to increasing the number of workers locally and to an assumption that the output per worker would almost double by 2050. Both of these assumptions could be applied to any other part of the country. There really is nothing special about the Ox-Cam Arc’s economic potential compared with anywhere else in the country. You can hear an explanation of this in one of our webinars here (minute 11:38 on for analysis of the ‘Silicon Valley’ effect claimed for the Arc.).

• The economic case for the now-abandoned Ox-Cam Expressway was always weak. Its Benefit to Cost ratio (BCR) showed a minimal benefit of £1.10 to £1.30 return for every £1.00 invested.  Even this low BCR seemed to be an over-estimate, because it did not allow for ‘optimism bias’, (the unfailing ability of civil servants to under-estimate costs of public works) or for a possible switch of travellers from road to rail transport. Allowing for the former would have increased expressway costs; allowing for the latter would have decreased expressway benefits. Thus the benefit: cost ratio would have been even less than Highways England calculated.

• The Government and Highways England wasted £28 million of taxpayers’ money on the Ox-Cam Expressway plans.

• If you believe the expressway was an essential ingredient in the economic success of Ox-Cam Arc plans, presumably cancelling the expressway should result in a re-assessment of the Arc’s economic ambitions (fewer houses, a smaller increase in economic output). This has yet to happen, and Ox-Cam Arc enthusiasts still claim we can have all the economic benefits originally imagined for the Arc with none of the ‘pain’ of the expressway. This is just wishful thinking. The economic case for the Arc (in STARC’s opinion, never convincing) is even weaker than its enthusiasts imagine.

• The claim in 2022 by developers in their Radical Capital Report that the Arc’s GVA (Gross Value Added, a measure of economic performance similar to the more familiar Gross Domestic Product or GDP) could double between 2022 and 2030 was based only on research carried out by the developers themselves - research which so far they have failed to make public or provide to Stop the Arc, despite a public promise to do so. Until examined in detail by independent researchers, these claims are the equivalent of Fantasy Football - i.e. Fantasy Economics. They are, nevertheless, being repeated by Arc promoters, journalists and others.

Electrify East West Rail instead:

• East West Rail (EWR) is a hugely positive step for the region and can provide a much needed, city centre to city centre public transport solution.  Unfortunately, the originally planned full electrification of East-West Rail was a victim of the abandonment of many rail electrification schemes. Post-Covid it appears that even more severe cuts will be made to lines that would have fed into the East-West Rail line. If we are serious about our zero carbon targets for transport, the rail network should be fully electrified to give us a proper 21st Century solution.

• We accept that the new section of EWR, between Bedford and Cambridge, is hugely controversial. The ‘obvious’ Northern route into Cambridge was simply ignored in a recent consultation that offered options only into South Cambridge; options that involve putting the railway on high embankments running through unspoilt countryside. You can read more about these plans on the Cambridge Approaches website here.

• EWR asked for more funding before the Autumn 2021 spending review but got none. This leaves under-funded the Bletchley to Bedford section; and the final Bedford to Cambridge section has no significant funding at all. At the same time, the preferred EWR corridor into Cambridge South would serve none of the major developments proposed for the Greater Cambridge region, most of which are West, North and East of the City. Cambridge Approaches has been continually frustrated in its efforts to see the economic analysis of this final section of East West Rail. It appears that the very poor benefit:cost ratio of the EWR business case could only be boosted by assuming the building of tens of thousands more houses along its track, providing increased daily commuter rail journeys into the City. But there are currently no plans for these tens of thousands more houses along the ‘southern route’ of EWR into Cambridge. As in many other areas, there seems to be very little joined-up thinking between the Ox-Cam Arc transport and housing proposals.

Read more about our Ox-Cam Arc Campaign.

Our campaign against the over development of the Ox-Cam area needs your support. Apart from the now-cancelled expressway, all the other ingredients in the Partnering for Prosperity proposals for the Ox-Cam Arc remain in play in some shape or form. In the first half of 2021 the Government, clearly conscious of the public’s opposition to over-development, no longer mentioned in its ambitions for the Arc the number of new houses required to realise them; a number that various developers themselves admitted had become ‘poisonous’ or ‘like petrol on the fire’ to the residents of the Arc. But, if the overall ambition remains, the housing requirements also remain: requirements that threaten to swamp the Arc with new developments that will ruin the ways of life of the communities already living in the Arc and destroy much of the remaining nature in the Arc.

The arrival in September 2021 of Michael Gove as the new Secretary of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), rapidly renamed the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) brought about significant changes in that Department and a new view of Ox-Cam Arc plans. One of the first things the new Minister did was to disband the 40-strong special unit in the DLUHC concerned with just the Ox-Cam Arc, and to re-assign the staff to other jobs. Does this mean the Arc is to be abandoned? We are getting very ‘mixed messages’ about the future of the Arc at present. Officially the Government professes to be very interested in the future of the Arc but then says it expects more initiatives at the local level - thus ‘bottom-up’ proposals and development rather than the original Whitehall-driven ‘top-down’ approach. Arc Local Authorities are still reeling from the implications of this apparent policy change, which has still not been confirmed officially.

Stop the Arc will continue to stay abreast of all Ox-Cam Arc developments and inform all our supporters of this rapidly evolving situation.