A masterplan for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus growth is “needed now” as councillors say they have been waiting years.

Councillors from Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council were given a briefing on the situation and were told the plan would unlikely be created until 2024, or possibly even later.

Councillor Anna Bradnam said at a meeting of the joint development control committee on June 21 that a masterplan had been requested for two years.

She said councillors wanted to understand what the wider plans for the site were, including how transport, public navigation, power and water will fit in, to show it was not being developed in a “piecemeal” way.

Officers said it was a “reasonable assumption” that the earliest a plan could be put in place was 2024, however suggestions were made that it would be better to wait until after the joint local plan was adopted, which is due to be submitted for examination in 2025.

Planning officers explained that if a masterplan was put together now, it would have to be based on the existing site, and therefore could only have a “shelf life of two years”, if it was decided through the local plan to expand the campus into green belt land to the south.

Cllr Bradnam said she was “slightly uncomfortable” to not have the plan until 2024.

Councillor Simon Smith said the masterplan was “needed now”, and that he did not want to be in the same position as previous years looking at planning applications without an overall plan for the site.

He said: “I think the officers need to go away and have another careful look at the work programmes and discover that this is a top priority.

“I think this is a strong political signal that we need to give to the officers, we need to get on with this, because we have got all these forthcoming planning applications.

“We have been signalling this strongly to you for over two years and I do not want to be sitting here trying to make a decision on a planning application that is set out of the context of a wider site.

“Please re-prioritise your work programmes, get on with it, if it is a budget matter that can be addressed at the member management board by the two representatives on that board in this committee chamber, and let’s come back and make that progress please.”

Councillor Dr Tumi Hawkins said she appreciated that the councillors needed to see a more up to date plan, but said the planning policy team was “overwhelmed”.

She said: “It is not something that is going to be easy to do, I would love to do it yesterday, it is not something easy to do, but we will look at it.”

Cllr Smith said additional funding for the work had been channelled from government to the Greater Cambridge Partnership, and asked “where has that money gone”.

Cllr Hawkins asked if the discussion could be taken up outside of the meeting.