Where are the New Towns?
The King’s Speech today, the first formal opening of parliament for a Labour government for 15 years, included an ambitious legislative agenda of 40 new bills, aiming to unlock growth and "take the brakes off Britain". Many of us were expecting some details about the new towns proposed by Angela Rayner at UK REIT on 21st May 2024, where “…a series of new towns, echoing those created by the Atlee government after the Second World War, with high standards for design, quality, affordable homes, green space and infrastructure…” was promised.
““Labour’s New Towns are just one part of our ambitious house-building agenda which will see swathes of good quality, affordable houses built in the national interest.
“Developers who deliver on their obligations to build high quality, well-designed and sustainable affordable housing, with green spaces and transport links and schools and GP surgeries nearby, will experience a new dawn under Labour.”
But today’s speech and the following statement by Kier Starmer failed to mention new towns at all. We know they are central to the pledge to build 1.5 million new homes during this parliament, so where are they going to be built, and will they be included in the draft Planning and Infrastructure Bill?
We’ll have to wait a little longer to find out, but until then, there are already a few likely candidates that came to light during the previous governments 2022 Garden Communities initiative:
Hemel, Hertfordshire
Otterpool Park, Folkestone and Hythe
Manydown, Basingstoke
Harlow & Gilston, Essex and Hertfordshire
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
Taunton, Somerset
St Cuthbert’s, Carlisle
Greater Exeter, Devon
Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
North Northants, Northamptonshire
Each of these 10 ‘Garden Towns’ was allocated a share of £15 million, along with 33 ‘Garden Villages’, as part of a £69 million programme to deliver up to 16,000 homes per year from 2025, just 5% of the governments target of 300,000 per year.
Many of these new communities have been in Local Plan housing objectives for over a decade. Will these towns match Angela’s vision of ‘well-designed and sustainable affordable housing, with green spaces and transport links and schools and GP surgeries nearby’? Will there sufficient funding for sustainable transport, or are they more likely to become ‘Cowpat’ housing developments, adding to congestion and locking in car dependency, with any infrastructure funding aimed at building bypasses, ring roads and motorway junctions?
The current market based model of housing development delivers too few, car dependant homes, and generally fails to deliver the essentials of any thriving new place, such as community buildings, local shops, with sustainable transport links to employment, culture and sports amenities.
Making tweaks to policy, such as the new bills proposal of making Compulsory Purchase (CPO) for councils to buy land at a “fair but not excessive” price is a step in the right direction, but where are the resources within councils to turn those sites into the 1.5 million new homes? How will they help to deliver Angela’s vision?
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