Our housing network

Our housing network

Across our housing market area, various groups meet to tackle housing issues together. Here is a network diagram setting out some of the links…

 

  • C = Cambridgeshire, P = Peterborough.
  • The pink lines represent groups set up by the Housing Board.
  • H4C&P is a shortening of the group name “Homes for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough”.

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Public Service Board

More detail to be added

Homes England

Homes England brings together land, money, expertise, and planning and compulsory purchase powers, with a clear remit to facilitate delivery of sufficient new homes, where they are most needed, to deliver a sustained improvement in affordability.

Homes England is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. You can find out more about Homes England here.

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority

You can find out more about housing, devolution and the Combined Authority here.

You can visit the Combined Authority website here to learn more.

This link takes to you a page all about the Combined Authority’s Housing Programme.

Greater Cambridge Partnership

The Greater Cambridge Partnership is the local delivery body for a City Deal with central Government, bringing powers and investment, worth up to £1 billion over 15 years, to vital improvements in infrastructure, supporting and accelerating the creation of 44,000 new jobs, 33,500 new homes and 420 additional apprenticeships.

The partnership of councils, business and academia will work together, and with partners and local communities, to grow and share prosperity and improve quality of life for the people of Greater Cambridge, now and in the future. You can find out more at the GCP website, here.

Cambridge Ahead

Cambridge Ahead is a business and academic member group, dedicated to the successful growth of Cambridge and its region in the long term. Its vision is for Cambridge to be the pre-eminent, small city in the world.

The group aims to represent the city’s business community and partners who share this vision, by offering soundly-based opinion and be an advocate for Cambridge to local and national governments about the opportunities and needs of the region. At any one time Cambridge Ahead will have no more than 10 specific initiatives with defined objectives and measurable outcomes. Cambridge Ahead is politically non-aligned.

Cambridge Ahead will represent businesses and their interests in the ‘Cambridge City Region’, which we define as places which are complementary and subject to the same influences as Cambridge. However, the work may involve CA outside the region where there are directly relevant issues, for instance national transport infrastructure, science policy, and regional initiatives. You can find out more on the Cambridge Ahead website, here.

Local Enterprise Partnerships

The Greater Cambridge-Greater Peterborough LEP and the New Anglia LEP both support economic growth, which links to housing as workers want to live near to jobs so they don’t have to commute too far.

Employers need to know housing is available so it is not a barrier to workers taking up or retaining jobs in their area.

The Housing Board

The Housing Board is a group of senior local authority and partner agency officers,  which meets regularly to work collaboratively on strategic housing issues across eight districts. These are Cambridge, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire, Peterborough, South Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk (formerly Forest Heath district and St Edmundsbury borough).

The Board works with its partners to share learning and experience across the local housing market area on four priorities:

  1. New homes & communities: the Housing Board works with partners to deliver new homes to support economic success, in cohesive communities.  This includes issues of affordability, quality and standards in new homes.
  2. Homes for wellbeing: the Housing Board works with partners to ensure homes and services support better health and wellbeing. This includes housing with support, specialised housing design, homes to meet the needs of an ageing population and the links between housing, health and social care which will help “transform lives”.
  3. Existing homes: the Housing Board works with partners to improve standards in existing homes and encourage best use of all homes. This includes improving housing conditions, improving energy efficiency, reducing the risks posed by poor quality and unsuitable housing particularly for vulnerable people, helping bring empty homes back into use and working to reduce both under-occupation and overcrowding.
  4. Housing need and homelessness: the Housing Board works with partners to identify and meet housing need, extend housing choice and tackle homelessness. This includes working together on our choice based lettings system, working to extend housing options for example through help to buy and using innovative projects such as Town Hall Letting and our Trailblazer partnership to prevent and tackle homelessness.

You can find the group’s terms of reference and meeting papers here.

Cambridge Strategic Housing Group (CSHG)

Cambridge Strategic Housing Group meets to:

  1. Identify, investigate and respond to strategic housing issues across our local area.
  2. Provide a local perspective on strategic housing issues, policies, consultations and research.
  3. Build and support linkages between housing-related groups and agendas.
  4. Provide information to, and accept tasks from, the Housing Board.
  5. The group also supports the development of our Strategic Housing Market Assessment, focusing on this issue at alternate meetings. It covers Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and West Suffolk.

You can find the group’s terms of reference and one years’ meeting papers here.

Homes for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

Alongside the launch of the Combined Authority, this group of fifteen housing association partners has formed with the support of the National Housing Federation, aiming to support the work of the Combined Authority in delivering the new homes promised.

The group is called Homes for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and you can find out more at their website and in this report (pdf).

In 2020, as there was a huge overlap in membership and topics covered, the Homes for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough group merged with our longstanding housing provider & enabler forum.  Terms of reference and meeting papers for 2019 for the provider and enabler forum can be found here.

Housing enablers

The local housing enablers group meets approximately every three months to agree a shared approach between the district councils on housing development and enabling issues. You can find the group’s terms of reference and one years’ meeting papers here.

Planning Policy Forum (PPF)

You can find out more about how planners work together in our area, here.

Cambridgeshire’s health and wellbeing board

You can find the Health and Wellbeing Board’s meeting papers here (opens link to Cambridgeshire County Council website).

Financial capability forum

This long-standing partnership forum covers Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Originally funded through the East of England Development Agency and European Social Fund, the Forum was set up to enable financial capability training and job search assistance for unemployed adults and frontline workers. Citizens Advice led a consortium of partners across the East of England. The Forum is chaired and hosted by CHS group.

You can find the group’s terms of reference and one years’ meeting papers here.

Home-Link management board & operations group

You can find out more about Home-Link by visiting the website here.

Homelessness strategic group

You can find out more about the Homelessness strategic group here (link to be added)