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Cambridgeshire Quality Charter for Growth

The Cambridgeshire Quality Charter for Growth is designed to help people understand the big picture of housing growth in Cambridgeshire. It sets out basic principles for achieving excellence in the new housing developments planned for Cambridgeshire and reflects learning from new developments elsewhere, both in the UK and internationally. The Charter aims to ensure the region remains an international leader in architecture, design, community development and low-carbon growth for years to come.

Charter Principles - The '4 Cs'

The Charter is organised around 4 broad themes:

Community - Building a sense of community by encouraging the active resident's participation in the way their neighbourhoods are run, and by providing a range of housing to meet the different and changing needs of residents.
Connectivity - Locating new developments so they are close to jobs and services, with good public transport links and green spaces for walking and cycling.
Climate - Tackling climate change through imaginative landscaping that treats "water as a friend and not an enemy" and through an innovative approach to energy, transport and waste. Cambridgeshire are working to cut per capita carbon emissions in the County by 11% over three years (2008-11). Nationally, road transport is responsible for about 28% of emissions by end user. However, in Cambridgeshire the figure is higher, 33.3%
Character - Creating places of character with distinctive neighbourhoods and public realm encouraging people to walk and cycle.

How will the Charter achieve its aims?

Cambridgeshire Horizons worked closely with a wide range of partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors to create the Quality Charter. The Charter offers a shared vision and understanding of the kind of communities we all wish to create. By showing what has been achieved elsewhere, it continues to inspire the partnership to think in new ways about how they can achieve higher standards for new communities in Cambridgeshire. A Cambridgeshire Quality Panel has been established by Cambridgeshire Horizons and its partners to provide a consistent approach to assessing the quality of plans for the major growth sites in Cambridgeshire, and will continue to provide ongoing examination of proposals for major new developments and help officers and members to uphold and reinforce the high quality aspirations set out in the Quality Charter.

What is its status?

The participating local authorities and agencies have adopted the Charter as a clear policy statement of their aspiration to create high quality new communities. The local planning authorities now use the Charter as a guide when determining planning applications.

The Quality Charter was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2008 Royal Town Planning Institute Awards.