Home Building Fund accelerates delivery of 1,300 homes for Cambridge
Hill Marshall LLP, a joint venture between two of Cambridge's leading family-owned businesses - has secured a funding deal with Homes England that will help progress Wing development.
The new development, Wing, will be delivered on 160 acres of brownfield land owned by the Marshall Group.
The 10-year loan, worth £22.4 million, will be drawn from Homes England’s Home Building Fund (HBF). The HBF helps unlock or accelerate the delivery of residential and mixed-use housing developments through both development loans and loan funding for the infrastructure needed to prepare land for development.
The money will be used to enable infrastructure works for the entire development, including delivery of Main Spine Road, a strategic drainage network, pumping station and strategic landscaping. New transport infrastructure will also be delivered as part of Wing and the nearby Newmarket Road will be upgraded to create access to the development.
Homes England is also funding the relocation of the ground running enclosure at the airport – a purpose-built enclosure to reduce noise effects from aircraft engineering testing and a key planning requirement to be completed before any houses are occupied at the site. The relocation of the ground running enclosure will also support the creation of up to a further 1,800 new homes in development sites around the airport.
The funding is being made available in advance of full reserved matters approval being obtained, which is the normal point at which high street lenders would be able to provide funding. This would allow the first phase of housing at Wing to be delivered up to 18 months ahead of schedule.
Hill Marshall LLP is a joint venture between Marshall Group Properties – part of the Marshall Group – and Hill, the award-winning UK housebuilder,
The first phase of the development will be delivered by Hill and, once complete, will comprise 350 private homes and 150 affordable homes – including shared ownership and affordable rent tenures.
A spokesperson from Hill Marshall LLP said: “Marshall Group and Hill are two like-minded family firms committed to making Cambridge one of the best cities to live in the UK. We are delighted to have secured new funding from Homes England’s Home Building Fund for this development in the city – it will ensure we are able to deliver an outstanding new community for local residents in half the amount of time it would normally take.
“Cambridge has long been established as one of the best places to live in the UK and this new community seeks to add further to the city’s success.”
Nick Walkley, Homes England chief executive, added: “At Homes England we’re using our land, finance and expertise to speed up the delivery of new homes. This loan through our Home Building Fund is a significant step towards seeing this 1,300-home new community at this key development site in Cambridge become a reality and I look forward to seeing work start on site.”
To commemorate the funding announcement, James Palmer, mayor of Cambridge & Peterborough Combined Authority, Andy Hill, chief executive at Hill, Rob Hall, deputy managing director at Hill, Robert Marshall, chief executive of Marshall Group, Richard Howe, managing director of Marshall Group, and Nick Walkley, chief executive at Homes England, attended a signing ceremony at Cambridge Airport on May 21.
The homes on the first phase of Wing are designed by the award-winning team at Pollard Thomas Edwards architects and will offer a range of properties including one, two and three-bedroom apartments and two, three, four and five-bedroom houses.
The development will also be home to a wide range of facilities to support the new community, including a new primary school, sports pitches, allotments and retail and commercial space.
Wing is well connected with the new Cambridge North Station just 1¼ miles away and regular buses to the city centre from the nearby Park and Ride car park. Sales are expected to launch at the development in late 2019, with the first homes expected to be complete in the summer of 2020.
