Landowners Anglian Water and Cambridge City Council are also working with development partner TOWN and a design team led by Urbed on the scheme.

U+I will prepare a masterplan and design code, secure planning permission, deliver enabling infrastructure and sell development-ready land parcels to third parties on the 120-acre site.

Regeneration work is expected to take 10-15 years to construct 5,200 homes and one million sq ft of office space.

The site will also include a mix of retail, community and leisure space – providing north Cambridge with a new neighbourhood.

The first stage will involve the preparation of a business plan to secure £193m of funding from the Housing Infrastructure Fund to relocate the current water recycling centre and remediate the site.

The project was shortlisted for funding by Homes England earlier in 2018.

 Matthew Weiner, Chief Executive of U+I, said: “We are hugely excited to have the opportunity to work with Anglian Water and Cambridge City Council on this prestigious site, which deepens our pipeline of PPP projects in the London City Region where we are focused, alongside Manchester and Dublin.

 “We see enormous potential in the site, and our passion for placemaking will help us to transform this quarter of Cambridge into a vibrant place, providing much-needed housing to this currently undersupplied market.”