Cambridgeshire Partnerships Limited - Trumpington Meadows
Cambridgeshire Partnerships Limited (CPL) has recently been established to deliver new affordable housing across the Cambridge Challenge Sites within Cambridgeshire. This is a brand new organization bringing together a number of well established affordable housing providers with the largest being Bedfordshire Pilgrims Housing Association. CPL won a Housing Corporation competition to secure a long term funding commitment to initially help deliver approx. 3,300 new homes across the Challenge Sites.
The Cambridge Challenge will eventually provide new communities with up to 16,000 new homes in three major new developments; Cambridge Southern Fringe, North West Cambridge and the new town of Northstowe.
Project Description:
Trumpington Meadows is a new estate development including a school and country park. Planning requires that 40% of the dwellings, or 480 units will be affordable social housing units. Henry Riley LLP's current appointment from CPL is as Employer's Agent and Quantity Surveyors for the first 142 of these affordable units, comprising a mixture of flats and houses spread amongst the developers sale units. The dwellings will be delivered via a Development Agreement with the overall estate developer, Trumpington Meadows Land Company and the house builder Barratts, who have purchased the first few parcels of land. The 142 units will be divided into smaller parcels of housing and will be let via JCT Design & Build Contracts based on a Completed Unit Price arrangement included in the overall Development Agreement for the whole estate.
Sustainability:
- All the affordable units will be built to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 with extremely high levels of insulation and both solar thermal and Photovoltaic panels on the roofs.
- The estate is linked to Cambridge via a new guided bus route. It has an adjacent park & ride bus site and all the dwellings will have cycle stores to encourage the use of ecofriendly forms of transport.
Key Challenges:
- Balancing the commercial pressures of the estate developers and the house builders with the community building and public funding requirements of CPL.
- Working alongside Barratts to ensure that an acceptable mix of affordable flats and house sizes and a fair distribution of these around the site is provided.
Form of Contract: Development Agreement & JCT Design & Build
