THE Government has promised Cambridgeshire nearly £15million for 2008/09 to help provide infrastructure associated with nearly 50,000 new homes in the Cambridge sub-region by 2016. It was Whitehall s first response to a bid for £130million over the coming

THE Government has promised Cambridgeshire nearly £15million for 2008/09 to help provide infrastructure associated with nearly 50,000 new homes in the Cambridge sub-region by 2016.

It was Whitehall's first response to a bid for £130million over the coming three years that included nearly £21million for Northstowe and £24million for market towns, including Huntingdon and St Neots.

The Government has indicated that it will provide a further £21million over the two following years, the board of Cambridgeshire Horizons, the not-for-profit company set up to deliver the infrastructure, heard last week.

But a response on the largest part of the £130million bid - a £27million bid for a rolling infrastructure fund - is not expected until early next year.

Horizons chairman, former Housing Minister Sir David Trippier, said: "We are promised that we shall get as much money as we have asked for, if not more."

But John Bridge, chief executive of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce, protested that the funding offered was "totally inadequate for the investment we need".