Unlocking the East: Ely Junction Positioned as the Master Key to Regional Growth

Unlocking the East: Ely Junction Positioned as the Master Key to Regional Growth

A £466m upgrade to Ely Junction is essential to unlock at least 32,000 new jobs and sustain Cambridge’s booming life sciences economy, regional leaders will argue at UKREiiF.

The Cambridge Biomedical Campus and Wellcome Genome Campus will expand by a combined 32,000 roles over the next decade, 23,000 at CBC and a further 9,000 at Wellcome, the equivalent of building a workforce the size of the entire town of Morley.

This level of demand cannot be met within Cambridge alone. To keep pace, the city must be connected to talent across the East of England and that requires infrastructure capable of matching its ambition.

That is the message from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) at UKREiiF 2026, where regional leaders are making the case that unlocking Ely Junction is the single most important intervention needed to sustain the UK’s fastest-growing innovation economy.

At a panel event  ‘The Role of Rail in Scaling Life Sciences and Technology Corridors’ (Thursday 21 May, 11:00–12:00) the Combined Authority presented a new report positioning the Ely Area Capacity Enhancements (EACE) as the ‘Growth Intersection’: a high-impact, enabling project with the power to unlock economic growth across the East of England.

At the heart of the issue is a Victorian-era bottleneck where five rail lines converge at Ely, restricting both passenger services and freight capacity.

Without intervention, this constraint will continue to limit access to jobs, slow the movement of goods, and hold back nationally significant growth.

The report sets out a compelling investment case. A £466 million upgrade would deliver a 5:1 return on economic benefits, while transforming connectivity across the region.

It would enable more frequent rail services between Cambridge and key centres including Peterborough, Norwich, Ipswich and Stansted Airport, while also shifting freight from road to rail, removing 98,000 HGV journeys from the A14 each year.

For investors and Government, the proposition is clear: a single infrastructure upgrade that unlocks labour markets, supports housing growth, strengthens international gateways, and underpins the UK’s ambitions in life sciences, technology and trade.

The Combined Authority and its partners are already progressing delivery, including exploring alternative funding routes, establishing a strategic taskforce to engage Government, and reviewing local infrastructure to maximise network capacity.

Mayor Paul Bristow said:

“Unlocking Ely Junction is critical to delivering our ambition to triple the regional economy by 2050. A Victorian-era bottleneck is constraining a 21st-century growth engine.

“At UKREiiF, we are setting out a clear, investable proposition to remove this barrier and accelerate growth across the East. We have strong cross-party support for this scheme, and if given the green light, partners are ready to move at pace to deliver.

“We are taking a united mandate to Government to get Cambridgeshire and Peterborough moving. If you’re at UKREiiF, come and speak with us about how we can secure the UK’s future together.”