Hill Marshall have secured a funding deal with Homes England to accelerate the delivery of 1,300 homes in Cambridge.
Hill Marshall is a joint venture between two private Cambridge businesses – Hill the house-builder and Marshall Group, whose interests span from aerospace to car dealerships. Marshall Group Properties owns Cambridge airport and 900 acres of land around it.
The new development, Wing, will be delivered on 160 acres of Marshall’s brownfield land. The 10-year loan, worth £22.4m, will be drawn from Homes England’s home building fund, set up to help unlock or accelerate the delivery of residential and mixed-use housing developments.
The money will be used to enable infrastructure works for the development, including delivery of a main spine road, a drainage network, pumping station and landscaping. The nearby Newmarket Road will also 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 allows the first phase of housing at Wing to be delivered up to 18 months ahead of schedule.
The first phase of the development will be developed by Hill and, once complete, will comprise 350 private homes and 150 affordable homes. The first homes are expected to be completed in summer 2020.
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