South Cambridgeshire District Council has granted planning permission for 4,500 homes at Waterbeach New Town East.
LDA Design’s landscape-led masterplan for Waterbeach New Town East in Cambridgeshire is a first for UK housing at this scale because it creates neighbourhoods that place cyclists and pedestrians ahead of the car. The new town has 30 per cent affordable housing provision.
A series of small neighbourhoods, steads, will create intimate, convivial places with cars pushed to the edges. Each residential stead will be fine-grained with its own character, landmarks and facilities. Sociable streets will have the feel of intimate green linear parks with space for communal activities from children’s play, to eating together, to tending community vegetable growing spaces.
The planning permission allows Waterbeach Development Company (WDC), a joint venture between Turnstone Estates, Royal London Asset Management and Aquila Investments Limited, to move into delivery phases. LDA Design has led the vision, masterplanning and co-ordination of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and provided landscape and heritage advice as part of a small strategic leadership team.
Frazer Osment, Chair of LDA Design says that the vision is for an enterprising community, a place to work as well as to live. “Establishing a new town is a social endeavour. Waterbeach will be no isolated dormitory town, but rather a place for businesses to thrive, a place alive with play, and a place where it is easy for all residents to meet and get to know each other.”
Waterbeach is held within a compelling landscape and views to the horizon, under vast Cambridgeshire skies, and the patterns of the surrounding fens inspire its character. There will be over 35 hectares of open space where it will be possible to feel very close to nature. The gentle meandering alignment of an ancient Droveway will connect the new town to a new 20-acre country park in the north and to a bustling town centre and new train station in the south.
The new town will be well connected by rail: WDC has previously secured consent for Waterbeach Station to relocate and re-open by 2027. The station is being made as convenient as possible for the existing community of Waterbeach village, and the new town which brings 25,000sqm of employment space, schools, healthcare and sports facilities.
