Should we look to the sky to build more homes?

News of a joint venture acquiring part of the former Bourne Airfield in Cambridgeshire, which has the potential to deliver 3,500 homes, makes you wonder if these sites are the key to building housing at the kind of scale needed to meet the government’s 1.5m homes target.

Airfields like the one in Cambridgeshire are often huge, flat plots of land that are perfect for large housing developments. Many of them are already well-connected by roads and railways, making them ideal locations for new communities, whilst also benefitting from being sufficiently far away from existing settlements to avoid being torpedoed during the planning stage by nimbys. By their nature, they have plenty of space for green areas, parks and community facilities.

At the same time, they often present significant remediation challenges, such as where jet fuel may have been stored for many years. Vast areas of hardstanding (ground surfaced with a hard material like tarmac for parking planes and other vehicles on) have to be redesigned, whilst the size of these sites dictates that temporary uses and additional income generators must be found to keep the overall project viable.

There are already some great examples of airfields being turned into housing and other uses: RAF Alconbury has been transformed by master developer Urban & Civic; Dorchester Living has converted the former RAF Upper Heyford near Bicester into a major new settlement; whilst Mildenhall Airfield in Suffolk, once home to a U.S. Air Force base, is set to be redeveloped for homes and shops.

These success stories demonstrate that with the right planning, investment and government support, these sites can be transformed into sustainable, thriving communities that deliver thousands of homes.