The Royal Air Force station at Alconbury opened in 1938, and was subsequently also used from 1942 by the United States Army Air Force, with operations continuing at the base after the Second World War had ended. By 2009 flying operations from the base had ceased, although the American air force continued to use part of the site. Most of the redundant land at RAF Alconbury, including the former runway, was sold to a development company, Urban and Civic, in 2009 for £27.5 million.[1]
The old airfield had straddled the civil parishes of Alconbury (after which it was named) and The Stukeleys, with many of the buildings on the site closely adjoining the village of Little Stukeley. The parish boundaries were redrawn in April 2010 to put the whole of the site into the parish of The Stukeleys.[2]
New Shire Hall: headquarters of Cambridgeshire County Council
In 2011, the UK Government designated the Alconbury Enterprise Zone covering the site, to encourage development delivering new jobs and homes in the area.[3]
Planning permission was granted in October 2014 for up to 290,000m² of employment floorspace and up to 5,000 homes, with supporting infrastructure and facilities, including shops, schools, health and leisure facilities and open spaces. The application also reserved a site for a possible new railway station on the Great Northern Railway, which skirts the eastern edge of the site.[4] Residents began occupying the first new homes on the site in 2016, with the first school on the site opening in September 2016.[5]
In 2018, Cambridgeshire County Council decided to vacate its former headquarters at Shire Hall, Cambridge and move to a new building at Alconbury Weald.[6] The new building was named "New Shire Hall", with the council's first committee meeting there being held in September 2021.[7]
^Planning application 1201158OUT for Alconbury Airfield, Ermine Street, Little Stukeley, submitted by Urban & Civic to Huntingdonshire District Council 15 August 2012, granted 1 October 2014.
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