The article in The Times, headlined ‘Cambrige College in housing dispute’ (Sarah O’Grady, Saturday, 26 April 2025) opening sentence tells us all. It confirms the shallowness and the ignorance which attaches to so much media commentary about the housing market. It opens with ‘Angela Rayner could force the ultra- wealthy Cambridge college attended by the King to build 2600 new homes’.
This claim is false. The power to do so does not exist. And if it did, the outcome of compulsion would be a slum. Because Trinity College values highly its reputation it is not taking the building lead. Instead it prefers to quietly sell as these sort of contentious housing projects are precisely the sort of schemes reputable investors wish to avoid. They do not want the odious publicity associated with building homes that fires up local opponents of change. . It is far easier to walk away. Statements quoted from the MHCLG that ‘Once planning permission has been granted, we expect those involved to build as quickly as possible so we can deliver the homes that people desks need’ will simply accelerate the wish of wise investors to exit controversial projects fast.
The scale of ignorance in government and some council members about how the land markets work is appalling. It is illustrated by the the follow up remarks by a Whitehall source who, O’ Grady says pointed to the powers held by local authorities to issue a completion notice to developers demanding they complete their development………If they fail to do so, the planning permission for the development will lapse’. Bullying like this is counter-productive. Governments and local councils think they have the means to make long term investors do what they want. Experience shows they don’t. Long term investors call their bluff, and eventually councils cave. I recall a fund manager and owner of a large Home Counties building site stating that the local council were insistent their site be redeveloped with warehousing. Whereas the investor wanted a business park. He said they would wait. It took ten or fifteen years before that council’s spatial policy was reversed. It is now a business park. Lot of opportunities foreclnomic growth were lost in the meantime.
Another client, senior bursar of a famous Oxbridge college asked me about the potential for some empty fields on the middle horizon, once again located in the South East shortly after I had sold a big chunk of land for them to a food storage company. He was assessing the sequencing of their land selling policy. I said fifty to one hundred years at least, dismissing its potential as marginal. To my surprise he laughed and said that’s all right then! I asked how long had they owned it. Since about 1450 was the answer!
Apparently Kevin Deanus, a Surrey County Councillor has written to the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner asking her to compel Trinity College to build the homes. My light hearted reply might be to ask him to go and learn Italian. My personal number one failure! Or more to the point encourage his fellow councillors to become wise long term investors. To take back spatial control of their areas, and adopt a long term civic duty towards long term change. Instead he is quoted as saying ‘ )It’s essential that wealthy landowners are not allowed to let large brownfield sites sit idle. Trinity recently notified Waverley that they intend to ‘ mothball’ the site indefinitely and will not be pursuing development. This decision is disastrous…..( Trinity) cannot be allowed to simply ‘landbank’ the site at the expense of the local community and greenfield sites across Surrey’. The reality may be that Cllr Deanus knows that with a brownfield site of over 600 acres its capacity is not 2600 new homes but redeveloped at appropriate medium and high densities with few or no private cars and significantly better public transport connections the aerodrome site has the capacity for 10/15 homes per acre, say 6/10,000 new homes. 2600 is negligible. And if this judgement is not his real agenda, why isn’t it? Surrey desperately needs lots more new homes, and here is one large brownfield site ripe for development by the county council themselves. Builder partners, big and small would line up behind Surrey County Council if only it would show show some signs of leadership. After all, Trinity College is not slamming the door on the County Council. It simply will not take on the role of builder itself. Significantly the College’s Senior Bursar, Richard Turnill says
’We know how much these new homes are needed and we have invested tens of millions of pounds cleaning the site from its historic pollution. We are committed to spending millions more on the clean-up to make it fit for development. We share the frustration of Waverley borough council and local residents at the delay, and we hope it can be resolved as quickly as possible so that hundreds of families can get new homes’. Which begs the question. who moves next?
Sooner or later to move Dunsfold forward Surrey must take on the mantle of developer. Perhaps they can work with the College. The partnership then has two responsibilities. One to maximise the capacity of the site for Surrey’s next generation and today’s ratepayers and two sell off individual building sites to SME builders in accordance with a master plan that is endorsed and the infrastructure is fully funded by the scheme. Are Surrey County Council brave enough to become big boys? No evidence so far.
Ian Campbell
27 April 2025
