“Once you’ve got it right the first time, then you can repeat the process,” says Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric (pictured above, right). The developer is about to test itself for the first time as the masterplanner of a £3bn new-build town in Cambridgeshire.
Earlier this year, Homes England and Capital & Centric signed an agreement to deliver a mixed-use neighbourhood in Northstowe, near Cambridge. The 30-year masterplan is expected to deliver 10,000 homes, half of which will be affordable, and a town centre with up to 538,195 sq ft of commercial floorspace, including shops, workspace and community facilities.
Homes England has already delivered roads, public transport routes, cycleways, green spaces and schools to support the development of the scheme. Peter Denton, chief executive of Homes England (pictured above, left), says: “We want to set an example, we want to do something, and then we want the market to do it themselves. We don’t want to do it all.
“The market has taken a very significant fall, generally, on housebuilding, for a number of reasons, but not least because of what happened in the autumn of 2022 [with the then Conservative government’s mini-Budget] and the impact that had on the market. But we have beaten our [2023-24 financial year] targets. The real challenge is: how do you harness the need for homes with local growth in place?
“One plus one equals three, which is done by bringing in different pots of money, different skills and resources – that’s how you get it going.”
Marching ahead
Capital & Centric will be responsible for the design and delivery of the new Northstowe town centre. It will also set out plans for a mix of contemporary flats and suburban homes.
Heatley says: “We are often developing in new locations where there is no perceived demand for the product we are trying to deliver – or at least if you walk around a lot of the places that we develop, it’s hard to see where that demand can come from. But we continue to march ahead no matter what, and we always seem to find people who are keen to move into new extensions of towns and cities and to be the first into a pioneering part of a new project and development.
“Generally speaking, [community needs] are the same, which is really good-quality homes at an affordable price but delivered at scale. It is interesting that every town or city that we go to thinks that it has a unique set of challenges and circumstances, but often we see the same challenges repeated throughout different cities that we’re developing in. That’s why Homes England has brought us into Northstowe to do a whole new town, because it needs our skill set.”
In with the new
Capital & Centric is best known for breathing life into brutalist and historical sites, the majority of which are listed, across the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands. However, over recent years the firm has begun to add a new-build element, where possible, gaining an expertise in putting projects together from scratch.
“Now that our projects have got bigger, we find ourselves building new developments almost everywhere,” Heatley says. “Many of our schemes now have a few hundred homes drafted in each one, and old buildings on their own just aren’t big enough to fit them.
“We did old buildings, and still do, because we were asked to and because we are good at it. We normally go and fix other towns and other building problems, but there is nothing to fix in Northstowe. It’s just an empty, clear site and we can start from scratch to build an entirely new town – one the like of which hasn’t been built in the UK for decades.”
Capital & Centric has already begun mapping out the town centre, locating the sites for a church, a pub, a post office, a market hall, food stores and green spaces.
“We pioneered a lot of temporary use of spaces and buildings,” Heatley says. “We became well known for staging events, activities, TV shows and whatever it might be in buildings while we’re under construction.
“We are also as much an operational company as we are a property company because we keep almost everything that we build. We have a big team of people who run our buildings, look after our communities and make sure that they are vibrant and busy, and this is the learning that we are going to apply to Northstowe.”
Perfect partners
Although the nervousness of embarking on a new development journey persists, Heatley’s confidence in the success that Capital & Centric could deliver at Northstowe is backed by other development partners involved in the project, including Keepmoat and Town. The former will oversee the delivery of multi-tenure homes close to the town centre. The developer already has a 300-home development in Northstowe called Stirling Fields, which is set for completion in 2027. Meanwhile, profit-with-purpose developer Town has been appointed to deliver a co-housing community.
Heatley says: “If you remove any one element then it doesn’t work, so you have to be able to come together.
“Projects take a long time, so we are looking for partners that we feel we can get on with and enjoy working with, because projects can take a decade.”
Homes England’s Denton adds: “I think it’s quite fun as well. People only do things with people they like, and I think that’s quite awesome.”
Photo © Capital & Centric
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