This is the future

But this veneer of traditional Englishness masks the fact that Cambourne is only five years old, a new settlement in the Stansted-Cambridge "growth area" defined in the Communities Plan. And it may be on the brink of immense change.

The four growth areas – the others being the Thames Gateway, the Milton Keynes-South Midlands area and Ashford in Kent – are one of the tools deployed in the Communities Plan to tackle the South-east's acute housing shortage. Cambourne's local authority, South Cambridgeshire, has 2500 people on its housing waiting list; the city of Cambridge has a further 3865. It's not as though there isn't any room for more homes: the Stansted growth area could accommodate up to half a million by 2031 if infrastructure were provided. But, although the plan anticipates 155,000 new households nationally each year, housebuilding actually fell to just 162,400 completions in 2001/02 – the lowest level since 1946.

The real sticking point for the growth areas is infrastructure. The high-profile Thames Gateway region has been promised £446m for roads, bridges, and schools over the next three years, while the other three areas will share a £164m three-year pot. This may sound like a lot, but a study by consultant Roger Tym & Partners suggests it's far from enough: the Milton Keynes area needs more than £8bn for infrastructure. Other sources suggest that Ashford needs £7bn.

Cambourne is a prime example of how infrastructure can be an issue. When complete, it will have 3300 homes, with 650 for rent belonging to Granta, Circle 33 and Cambridge Housing Society, plus 250 for low-cost ownership. Developers are applying for permission to build 1744 more. However, this would still leave the village short of the 6000 homes required to merit its own secondary school under county council rules, so children are bused to a school seven miles away. If the expansion goes ahead, it will take 20 double deckers to fit them all in, says Kate Wood, Cambourne's planning officer at South Cambridgeshire. "The school would have more pupils from Cambourne than its own village," she says.

Cambourne does have a primary school, library, nursery, doctor's surgery, improved roads and more infrastructure on the way, all courtesy of private developers and their section 106 planning gain agreements. But section 106 can only do so much, as John Slater, Bovis Homes' managing director for the eastern region and spokesman for the private developers at Cambourne, explains: "There is always a danger that councils will require excessive section 106 contributions that make the development unviable." Developers draw the line at major projects such as flood defences. So, if private funding is not forthcoming, will Whitehall foot the bill?

Local politics can also be a problem for projects, such as the growth areas, that involve numerous councils. Officers from small councils often fear losing control of land to larger neighbours, while their bigger partners worry that development will put extra pressure on their infrastructure.

Cambourne's local authority partnership has been a success, but that doesn't make the expansion of the village a certainty. South Cambridgeshire, the planning authority for the area, thinks proposals for a density of about 50 houses a hectare in some areas is too much and would prefer a smaller increase. Residents agree. Mike Jocelyn, a member of the village's management liaison committee – precursor to the parish council that will be set up by 2004 – says: "We were sold this place as a village. An extra 1744 houses will alter its whole character."

In any case, the completion of even the first tranche of housing is under threat: ironically, from another element of the Communities Plan. The abolition of Local Authority Social Housing Grant could jeopardise the building of 84 units. John Wheelhouse, development manager for Circle 33, is confident that the Housing Corporation will come to the rescue as the scheme has planning permission and is ready to go. "If there isn't funding for Cambourne, where would they fund?" he asks. But after the dust has settled on the new funding regime, it is still doubtful whether the eastern region growth area will find itself with any more money.

A regional housing board (see "Here's one we made earlier", page 24) will look after the new regional funding pot, which amalgamates the Housing Corporation's Approved Development Programme and the local authority housing investment programme for London, the South-east and East Anglia. The regional housing board brings together many of the region's big players, but perhaps it's an urban development corporation that would really drive growth. The Thames Gateway will get two urban development corporations, whose powers could include compulsory purchase and planning control. However, not all the councils in the London-Stansted-Cambridge growth area know where exactly it starts and ends. As Nigel Howlett, chief executive of Cambridge Housing Society, explains: "Take Huntingdonshire. Everyone here thinks it is clearly part of the region but it is not part of the designated M11 corridor. But if you go down the road to Uttlesford, it sees itself as M11 but also London commuter belt. We need to know what borders we are talking about. This needs to be sorted out before you can get UDCs in place to drive things along.

We were sold this place as a village. An extra 1744 houses will alter its whole character 

Mike Jocelyn, Cambourne resident

"Wherever you draw the borders of the Cambridge subregion, there is nobody who represents that area."

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is currently grinding its way slowly through parliament, so there is a sense that change is imminent. This creates its own problems. "Every time we have change, we have inertia," says Malcolm Harris, group chief executive of Bovis Homes. "Councils won't squander scarce resources on a system they know will be replaced; they will wait until they see how the new system will operate."

As if these issues weren't enough, there are also problems in planning: a recruitment crisis is slowing the already cumbersome process even further. The government's response has been to give planning departments £75,000 each to aid hiring and speed up planning departments' work, but there may also be problems scraping together the land to build homes on as housing associations find some sites are too fragmented or expensive to use.

In response, English Partnerships got a beefed-up role in assembling sites and Housing Partnership, a new joint venture, will bring English Partnerships' land holdings together with the Housing Corporation's funding role.

The Communities Plan also attempts to ease this problem by proposing that employers contribute land or resources to providing homes for their workers. NHS Estates, the property arm of the health service, is already beginning to do this, working on a deal where it leases some of its land to a housing association at a reduced value. The association builds the houses while the NHS retains ownership of the site.

Low-cost homeownership
More affordable housing to rent is not the limit of the Communities Plan's ambitions. Low-cost homeownership is also a priority and will be pushed forward by a taskforce chaired by outgoing Housing Corporation chair Baroness Dean. Steve Walker, chief executive of Tower Homes, the homeownership arm of London & Quadrant Housing Trust, says low-cost homeownership needs to be made easier to understand. At the last count there were 13 models, including Homebuy, shared ownership and DIY shared ownership, all aimed at different groups and funded in slightly different ways.

He favours whittling the system down to two models: a version of Homebuy, where the buyer can purchase a variable percentage of their home from the association with grant covering the remainder, and classic shared ownership, where the buyer takes out a mortgage on a portion of the house and pays rent on the rest. In addition, the taskforce hopes to raise the profile of low-cost homeownership among associations, where it has been something of a "Cinderella" activity, and with the public, who are largely unaware of it. On a personal note, he would like to replace the right to buy with a model of shared ownership, although that is unlikely to go down well with a government that sparked tabloid outrage when it cut back right-to-buy discounts in 41 areas.

The law will also be an important tool in the implementation of the Communities Plan. In Cambourne, the focus is on building homes, but elsewhere in the growth areas, notably in the Thames Gateway, scores of existing homes lie empty and new laws are needed to tackle this. The Local Government Bill, which is currently being debated in the House of Lords, could be the answer: it will allow local authorities to cancel the 50% discount on council tax paid on empty homes, and 10 authorities are in line to pilot compulsory leasing, although more primary legislation would be required to roll this out nationally.