This decision is interesting because, uniquely amongst DCOs, the rationale for the scheme was planning need to free potential development land for housing and economic development rather than operational need for a new Wastewater Treatment Plant. Other points of note are:

• The weight placed by the Secretary of State on the national mission of economic growth and the national and regional importance of Cambridge
• Assumptions made about housing requirements and Cambridge’s drinking water shortages in the context of an emerging Greater Cambridge Development Plan
• Major development permitted in the Green Belt on the basis of Very Special Circumstances

Anglian Water applied for a DCO for a new wastewater treatment plant, including associated infrastructure and decommissioning works to the existing Cambridge Waste Water Treatment Plant. The proposed WWTP is to be sited on a field within the Green Belt approximately 2 kilometres to the east of the existing WWTP, which is located within north-east Cambridge. The draft Order did not seek consent for any redevelopment of the existing site. The proposed redevelopment was supported by HIF funding which was increased to £277million during the course of the examination.

The proposal was the subject of a Planning Act 2008 s.35 direction that it should be treated as development for which a DCO is required. It was, as the Secretary of State said, an ‘unusual’ case, in that the rationale of the scheme was primarily that relocation of the existing WWTP, occupying the last significant brownfield opportunity within the Cambridge conurbation, would enable the redevelopment of that site for housing and economic development. There was no operational need for a new WWTP. Rather, the application was ‘justified by reference to a need to “free up the site of the existing WWTP… to enable its development and provision of a new city district”’.

The Examining Authority found that the delivery of a vacated site that would have to be cleared and prepared for development did not attract substantial weight in the planning balance, finding that it was ‘unclear whether the proposed relocation of the existing WWTP would achieve objectives to significantly boost the supply of homes or to realise the vision for NEC’. In doing so it agreed with much of the argument raised by third party objectors regarding the interpretation, status and weight to be given to planning policy documents including the NPSWW and adopted and emerging planning policy. However, the Secretary of State disagreed, considering the rationale for the Application ‘to be clear’. In so finding, he referred to economic growth as the Government’s ‘central mission’, including improved infrastructure and increased housebuilding as ‘critical elements’ of its plan for growth. This acceptance of the justification and need fundamentally affected his approach to the planning balance. The Secretary of State regarded the ‘evolution‘ of the ‘long held policy ambition of redeveloping’ that part of North East Cambridge as a weighty consideration. Rejecting third party alternative sites and their associated case on lower housing numbers, the Secretary of State proceeded on the basis of the combined Councils’ estimate which he considered ‘reasonable’. He took account of action on water shortages being taken by the Greater Cambridge Partnership, supported by the Government’s Water Scarcity Group. While he accepted that the consequential housing and economic benefits were not guaranteed by the DCO, he considered that they were ‘a highly likely consequence of development consent’.

The Secretary of State agreed with the Examining Authority that there would be moderate harm to Green Belt purposes, which attracted very great negative weight in the planning balance. He found that this harm, together with less than substantial harm to heritage assets, landscape and visual harm and carbon emissions as well as a number of other more minor harms, was outweighed by the benefits of the project. He rejected the Environment Agency’s flooding objection on the basis of disaggregating the increases attributable to the relocation from those which would occur anyway as a result of population growth, rejecting the submission that the Applicant alone must mitigate flood risks which would arise independent of the Project. In conclusion, therefore, the Secretary of State considered the need for and principle of the development to be clearly justified and he gave ‘very great weight’ to the benefits associated with delivery of that need. His heritage and Green Belt balance exercises reflected these conclusions.   

Objections raised by National Highways (‘NH’) to the acquisition of the subsoil under the strategic road network were rejected. NH had argued that the Applicant could rely on its powers as a statutory undertaker and, moreover, that there would be serious detriment to their statutory functions owing to the loss of potential ransoms as landowner.  Neither the Examining Authority nor the Secretary of State was impressed and concluded that the ownership of the subsoil would be necessary, reasonable and proportionate to the carrying out of the Project.

Save Honey Hill issued a pre-action protocol letter setting out details of a proposed challenge to the Secretary of State’s decision on 24 April 2025.

Morag Ellis KC appeared for the Applicant, Anglian Water Ltd, instructed by Paul Maile of Eversheds Sutherland.

Esther Drabkin-Reiter appeared as junior counsel for the main objecting interested party, Save Honey Hill, instructed by Jennie Pratt of Ashtons Legal, and made oral submissions on Save Honey Hill’s behalf at the DCO examination hearings on need and environmental issues.