What the Local Plan proposes.
Huntingdonshire District Council's emerging Local Plan to 2046 proposes around 24,000 new homes across the district, more than double the size of Huntingdon itself, which has roughly 10,000 today. As of 15 July 2026, the scale of that number, and how much evidence sits behind it, is the live argument in local politics.
Around 70% of the district's proposed growth, close to 17,000 homes, is concentrated in a single corridor: the stretch between Huntingdon and St Ives that already carries the A14. The figure comes from a handful of large, named sites rather than an even spread. Land near the former RAF Wyton, adjoining Houghton and Wyton, is pencilled in for around 4,000 homes. Lodge Farm, north-east of Huntingdon, could deliver 4,900. The Lattenburys, south-east of Godmanchester, is down for 3,800. Smaller allocations follow at Bluntisham (140 homes) and land north-west of Needingworth (290 homes).
“The evidence simply isn't there yet.”
Which villages are affected.
Sorted honestly, the picture across the patch is uneven. Houghton, Godmanchester and Huntingdon sit directly against named sites. St Ives and Bluntisham sit inside the wider growth corridor even though their own allocations are smaller. Hartford, Hemingford Abbots, Hemingford Grey and Hilton, all on the same A14 corridor, would feel the traffic and infrastructure knock-on without hosting a large site themselves. Villages elsewhere in the patch, out toward the A1 corridor and the far west of Huntingdonshire, sit outside this specific growth corridor entirely.
What Pause the Plan is asking for.
That scale is what brought a coalition of parish councils together as the North Huntingdon and St Ives Cumulative Impacts Group, known locally as Pause the Plan. The group's argument is that individual sites are being assessed on their own, without a shared picture of what they add up to for roads, water, wastewater and school places across the corridor as a whole. At a public meeting on 9 July, campaigners described the scale of growth as amounting to a new town in all but name, and asked why it hasn't had the master planning a formally designated new town would get.
That argument now has a political vehicle. Councillor David Keane has tabled a motion, Infrastructure Readiness and Evidence-Based Growth Planning, for debate at Huntingdonshire District Council's full council meeting this evening, 15 July 2026. The motion, according to its own wording, asks for “relevant, proportionate and up-to-date” evidence on transport, viability, flood risk, water management, health, education and community facilities before the plan moves further forward.
What happens next.
The council has already given itself more time on the process: the next stage of consultation, when the plan becomes a formal pre-submission document, is now due to start in September 2026 rather than sooner, partly to allow time to factor in the outcome of local government reorganisation. That gap is where tonight's evidence question gets decided in practice, not in the final vote on the plan itself.
For anyone buying or selling in Huntingdon, Godmanchester, Houghton, St Ives or the villages between them, none of this changes today's market. But it is worth watching. A growth corridor with the infrastructure evidence to back it tends to support demand over the medium term through more jobs, more services and a stronger case for transport funding. One without that evidence risks years of appeals and delay instead. If you are weighing a move in the corridor now, our Huntingdon estate agents team can talk you through what this specifically means for your street, and a free valuation is a sensible first step either way.
Sources: Huntingdonshire District Council Local Plan Update; The Hunts Post coverage of the 9 July Pause the Plan public meeting and Councillor Keane's infrastructure readiness motion.