IN Brief:
- Hill Group and Homes England have completed the acquisition of Cambridge East from Marshall Group.
- The 700-acre site is expected to deliver more than 10,000 homes and 3m sq ft of commercial space.
- The first phase of up to 500 homes is planned to start in 2029.
The Hill Group and Homes England have completed the acquisition of Cambridge East, unlocking one of the UK’s largest planned urban extensions.
The 700-acre site includes Cambridge City Airport and surrounding land acquired from Marshall Group. Marshall is expected to relocate its operations by mid-2029, clearing the way for development to begin on an initial phase of up to 500 homes later that year.
The wider scheme is expected to deliver more than 10,000 homes, at least 3m sq ft of commercial space, and around 9,000 jobs. Plans also include schools, healthcare facilities, community infrastructure, public green space, transport infrastructure, and a possible regional training hub focused on construction and related skills.
Cambridge Growth Company, a subsidiary of Homes England, will work with Hill to masterplan and deliver the project. The site is allocated for development in the local plan and is expected to benefit from the proposed Cambridge East station, subject to planning consent and funding.
That station would strengthen links to central Cambridge, London, Bedford, and Oxford, placing the development within the wider Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor. A public consultation programme will now be developed ahead of future planning submissions.
The land acquisition gives practical shape to the local delivery push behind Cambridge’s growth plans, following the move to take the Greater Cambridge development corporation into its delivery phase. Cambridge East is now one of the clearest tests of whether housing, transport, employment, and public services can be planned together at scale.
Large urban extensions have often struggled when homes arrive before infrastructure, or when public services and transport links lag behind residential completions. Cambridge East is being positioned as a more integrated growth district, with land assembly, public-sector backing, private-sector delivery, and transport planning aligned before the first homes come forward.
The practical workload remains substantial. The former airport site will require masterplanning, public consultation, planning consent, infrastructure phasing, utility coordination, access strategy, ecology, construction logistics, and long-term stewardship arrangements. On a site of this size, the move from acquisition to serviced development parcels is a major project in itself.
Cambridge also faces a difficult housing and infrastructure equation. Demand for homes and commercial space remains high, but delivery is constrained by planning capacity, transport pressure, water, power, labour availability, and construction cost inflation. Those constraints have made large, coordinated sites more important to government growth ambitions.
For contractors and suppliers, Cambridge East points towards a long pipeline of work rather than an immediate tender. Roads, utilities, public realm, commercial buildings, schools, healthcare facilities, housing packages, energy systems, and potentially rail-linked infrastructure could all form part of the development sequence.
The first homes are still several years away, but the acquisition gives the scheme a clearer delivery structure. Cambridge East now moves from a long-discussed opportunity into a programme that will need detailed planning, infrastructure investment, and sustained construction capacity through the 2030s.
