Cambridge Airport is more than a runway. It is a working monument to British aviation — a site of national significance that proposed development would erase forever in favour of 10,000 homes the surrounding infrastructure cannot support.
100+
Years of aviation heritage
10,000
Homes proposed on the site
1
Working grass airfield left in the area
0
Additional road or rail capacity currently in place
Opened in 1929 by the Marshall family, Cambridge Airport has shaped British aviation for nearly a hundred years. It trained Royal Air Force pilots during the Second World War, has overhauled the RAF's heavy-lift fleet for generations, and remains a centre for engineering excellence in the East of England.
From 1939 the airfield became No. 22 Elementary Flying Training School, where more than 20,000 RAF pilots earned their wings. Spitfires, Tiger Moths and Lancaster bombers all passed through its hangars. That legacy is woven into the fabric of Cambridge itself.
The airport supports air ambulance services, business aviation, pilot training, and a globally significant aerospace engineering cluster. Its 1,965-metre runway is irreplaceable infrastructure — once concreted over with housing, it can never be brought back.
1929
Marshall family opens Cambridge Aerodrome on the eastern fringe of the city.
1939–45
Trains over 20,000 RAF pilots; services and overhauls front-line aircraft.
Today
Home to a world-class aerospace engineering cluster and emergency services.
We are not opposed to housing. We are opposed to building it on top of a strategic asset, in a part of the city that cannot absorb it, when better-planned alternatives already exist on our doorstep.
Cambridge's roads, schools, hospitals, water and sewage are already at — or beyond — capacity. There is currently zero additional road or rail capacity in place to absorb 10,000 new homes on the eastern edge of the city. Building first and hoping the infrastructure catches up is congestion by design.
A New Town of up to 11,000 homes is already under construction at Waterbeach, with Cambourne, Northstowe, Bourn Airfield, Darwin Green and other major developments in and around Cambridge collectively delivering tens of thousands of homes on land specifically planned for growth. Repeating it on a working airfield, with worse transport links, makes no strategic sense.
The Marshall hangars and grass airfield are nationally significant. Cambridge Airport deserves the same protections as any other heritage asset — not demolition for short-term housing targets.
Retained as a working airfield, the site can continue to support aerospace innovation, sustainable aviation research, training, and emergency services — high-value jobs that align with the Cambridge cluster.
Public comments from signers who chose to share their reason.
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