(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Katrina Murray, who will speak for about 15 minutes.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered new towns.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for this important debate. As we reach the 80th anniversary of the New Towns Act 1946, it feels like exactly the right moment for the House to pause and reflect on what was, at the time, a bold and radical idea, and one that sought not just to build houses, but to shape communities. Eight decades on, as we again face the challenge of large-scale house building and the prospect of a new generation of new towns, it is right that we reflect honestly on both the shortcomings and the successes of that legacy.
This debate has a personal resonance for me. I was brought up in Markinch, on the edge of the new town of Glenrothes. I went to school there, and like many people growing up in and around a new town, it simply felt like home. It was a place shaped by decisions taken long before I was born, but that defined everyday life. It feels like a fitting symmetry that, years after leaving school in 1989 and embarking on my own career journey, I now have the privilege of representing another new town in this House. Cumbernauld has just marked its 70th anniversary, and its story of ambition, achievement, challenge and renewal mirrors the experience of so many new towns across the country, which is why I am so pleased that Members from across the House are taking part today. This debate gives us the opportunity to reflect not only on what new towns have delivered, but on what they can still teach us.
To understand new towns we have to remember why they were created in the first place. Post-war Britain faced severe housing shortages, overcrowding and poor living conditions, and there was a clear recognition that simply expanding existing towns and cities would not be enough. For many families, that was not abstract policy, but daily life. One local resident, who is now a close friend, described moving from a top-floor slum with damp walls, no hot water and a shared toilet on a stair landing to a three-bedroom home with a bathroom, her own bedroom, a garden and space to live. That move was life changing.
The new towns programme was a deliberate choice to do things differently. It was not just about building houses quickly; it was about planning whole communities, with homes alongside jobs, schools, services and green space, so people could build decent lives. For those of us who grew up in or around new towns, there were some very familiar signs. You know you live in a new town when your second driving lesson is entirely about roundabouts—not because your instructor has it in for you, but because there are so many of them. Let us be honest: the only traffic lights in a new town are generally on a roundabout. You also know you live in a new town when housing numbers make no sense to anybody arriving by car, because No. 1 is across from No. 25 and can be seen from No. 43, while the next street starts at No. 420. It looks a bit like next week’s lottery numbers, but residents know—and delivery drivers very quickly discover—that it is designed to make sense on foot, as it works by paths and walkways through neighbourhoods. It may confuse the satnav, but it has been the postal worker’s friend for decades.
Behind those quirks, however, there was a serious purpose. Cumbernauld, which was designated in 1955, was built to meet urgent housing needs and offer better living conditions, access to work and a strong sense of community. It was part of a wider post-war belief that planning done properly could improve people’s lives, and for some families it changed the course of those lives entirely. Another resident told me that they do not believe they would ever have gone to university if they had not escaped Glasgow and attended a Cumbernauld school that treated children with dignity and ambition.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The hon. Member is making an excellent speech about the importance of new towns. I was brought up just outside Kilwinning, which is part of the Irvine new town in Ayrshire. She and I are probably of a similar age, so does she remember the campaign—the iconic campaign—in the 1980s: “What’s it called? Cumbernauld”? In her view, how successful was that campaign in bringing people to the town and new employers to the area?
Katrina Murray
The fact that you could not go anywhere in the ’80s without seeing that statement meant that people across the country knew about Cumbernauld. I remember seeing that wording on the tube on my first trips to London. Other new towns tried to get in on the act. “Living in Livingston” did not quite hit as well, but those ideas showed the beauty of development corporations shining a light on design more widely.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Lady for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch—I hope I have pronounced that correctly; apologies if my Ulster accent has destroyed that word. The last new town we had in Northern Ireland was Craigavon back in 1965, some 60 years ago, when I was a 10-year-old starting secondary school. Does she agree that, with a growing population across the United Kingdom, new towns should be established in areas that have the space? Does she also agree that a working group must look at this issue UK-wide to provide people with communities, not just simply houses? It is not just about a house; it is about a community.
Katrina Murray
The hon. Gentleman must have read the other parts of my speech, as I will come to that point. As I was about to say, new towns were never meant to just be housing schemes. They were meant to be places: planned communities, where jobs, homes and services developed together, so people could build stable lives close to where they worked. That vision is clear in how Cumbernauld was developed. It brought together families moving out of overcrowded parts of Glasgow, alongside others, often younger people and professionals, who moved there specifically to work. Employment was central, not an afterthought. Major employers, including Burroughs, played a central role in the town’s early growth. It provided skilled employment at scale, initially manufacturing mechanical adding machines—remember those?—and later moving into computers and printers.
People moved to Cumbernauld for work and opportunity, and to put down roots. As industries changed, the site evolved into what is now the Wardpark industrial area, which continues to support employment in different forms. Around that, neighbourhoods were designed to function as real communities. Social housing was central, not marginal, and each area had its own shops, post office, parking, garages and public transport, with regular bus services connecting people into Glasgow and beyond. When new towns are discussed now, the focus is often on buildings or concrete. What often gets overlooked is the thought given to how people would actually live—how housing, employment, transport and green space all fit together. Cumbernauld is sometimes judged by its built form, but it is also defined by its green space deliberately woven into daily life. That is the new town model at its best.
It is impossible to talk about Cumbernauld without mentioning the town centre. In the 1960s it was genuinely celebrated: award-winning, internationally recognised, and seen as a confident expression of modernist and brutalist design. It was officially opened by Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. For families arriving at that time, that optimism was real: with the modern buildings, light, space and public services, they felt like stepping out of the 19th-century conditions they were used to and into the modern world.
Decades later, that same town centre went on to win awards of a very different kind, including the Carbuncle awards and the Plook on the Plinth in the early noughties. That contrast tells its own story. It is about not a lack of ambition, but what happens when bold design is left without sustained investment, renewal and long-term stewardship. Today, the town centre is undergoing long-term regeneration, made possible with the investment of the UK Government focused on making the centre work for modern life, rather than erasing what came before.
The same issues can be seen in parts of the housing stock. Houses that were built quickly, using methods that were innovative at the time, did not always stand the test of time. In Cumbernauld, areas such as Ainslie Road were affected by concrete deterioration, leading to homes having to be demolished, while flat-roofed housing—very much of its era—proved less suited to Scotland’s climate as buildings aged. But that experience has also supported local expertise, including firms like BriggsAmasco—a Cumbernauld-based flat roofing specialist investing highly in skills and apprenticeships.
These challenges were not unique to my town. Across the new towns, infrastructure and housing aged at the same time, without the funding or the governance structures to renew them properly. When development corporations were wound up and assets sold off, responsibility became fragmented. In many cases, ownership passed from hedge fund to hedge fund, with no real long-term stake in the place beyond what appeared on a balance sheet. What went wrong was not the new town concept itself, but the failure to plan properly for what came next. That is the lesson we cannot afford to ignore. If we are serious about learning from new towns, and about building new ones, the ambition at the start has to be matched by responsibility over the long term.
When we talk about new towns, it is easy to focus on plans and buildings. What really made places like Cumbernauld work were the people who stepped up, saw what was missing, and got things done; that early generation who made sure that this was their community. One of those people was Sheena Walker, a true pioneer in disability care. When she moved to Cumbernauld in the late 1960s, there was no local support for children with learning disabilities. She refused to accept that. Through sheer determination and tenacity, she brought parents together and worked across the development corporation, the council and social work to create community housing, day centres and respite care. Her drive was the difference, and the services she helped to build became so strong that families later moved to Cumbernauld specifically because of them.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on housing and care for older people, we are about to complete an inquiry into intergenerational communities. Will she join me in calling for the new new towns to be built and designed for all ages and all abilities as inclusive communities?
Katrina Murray
I very much commend my hon. Friend’s suggestion. What is clear is how important it is to have intergenerational towns and accessible housing.
Another local legend was Danny McGowan, who taught generations of Cumbernauld’s children to swim. He founded Cumbernauld swimming club and built it into a competitive force, driven by his passion for the sport and for giving young people confidence in the water, all despite the small challenge that the council had built the swimming pool to the wrong size for it to be a competitive pool. Rather than being put off, he worked around it, and thousands—probably hundreds of thousands—of children benefited as a result. Both those stories matter because they show that new towns were never just about infrastructure, but about people with commitment and imagination shaping communities from the inside and making places work for those who lived there.
So what does all of this tell us not just about Cumbernauld, but about new towns more broadly? One clear lesson is that long-term responsibility matters. Building homes and infrastructure is only the beginning. Without clarity about stewardship, places struggle to thrive decades later. Another lesson is that homes and jobs must be planned together. New towns worked best when people could live close to where they worked, and not allowed to become purely commuter settlements. Renewal has to start with people. Regeneration is not just about buildings and masterplans. It has to involve communities and to respect the identity of places that people care deeply about. This feels particularly relevant as the Government look to build a new generation of new towns in England. If we are serious about doing that well, we have to learn from the first generation: planning for stewardship from day one and giving communities a real voice as places grow and change.
Our first generation of new towns are no longer new towns in any meaningful sense; they are simply towns with families, histories, challenges and pride built up over generations. People were born there, raised there, worked there, stayed there, left there and came home—that is what matters when we talk about the future. I hope this debate will help to ensure that as we build again at scale, we are not simply creating new places, but committing to them for the long term. I look forward to hearing the contributions from across the House.
Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)
I would like to make it clear that I am speaking in an individual capacity as the Member of Parliament for North Bedfordshire. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on her speech and on the extraordinarily human way in which she described her life in a new town. For people in North Bedfordshire, the hon. Lady’s testimony may be a timely one. I would like to draw the focus of the debate to the proposals for new new towns that are recommended by the Government’s new towns taskforce.
Tempsford is a historic village in North Bedfordshire. It was the site of a decisive battle in 917 AD when the forces of King Edward the Elder stormed a Danish stronghold, killing the Danish King and effectively breaking Danish power in the region. It includes the former RAF Tempsford airfield, from which multiple special operations were flown to send people to help resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries. It is a village of 234 households, comprising fewer than 500 people, and one that has been in two parts since the dualling of the A1 in 1962. It is also a village that, according to the report by the new towns taskforce, presents
“a unique opportunity with potential to provide over 40,000 homes in a standalone greenfield settlement”.
Tempsford is the largest of the proposed new towns and would turn this village of 500 people into a new town of at least 40,000 homes—that is 100,000-plus people.
I want to take a few minutes, speaking in this individual capacity, to raise points that have been voiced by my constituents in recent meetings with residents, the parish council and local councillor, Adam Zerny. One of the questions, of course, is, “Why Tempsford? It’s not what we want—we don’t want this change,” and so on. That is an important issue for consideration, and we await the final decision of the Government on it.
If that decision is made, the No. 1 source of scepticism is that much of Tempsford is a floodplain. There is a legitimate question about how the flood risk will be managed in any new town. Tempsford is a floodplain for both the River Ouse and the River Ivel. Sticking on the theme, local residents have for years dealt with a range of sewage overflow issues; I myself have been witness to a number of these incidents and have helped residents with them. This is important because the water company will obviously wish to improve this issue if we have a new town, so adequate funding must be available both to provide the necessary waste water and sewage water infrastructure and to solve the existing problems.
As the Minister will be aware, the pressure on water resources in Bedfordshire is extensive. We are also the site of Universal Studios’ new theme park, which will attract between 8 million and 10 million people a year—the equivalent of an additional population of 50,000 in terms of water usage. The site is being developed over the next five years. The River Ouse is the one source of water running through this area, which contains both the theme park and the new town, so we need to make sure there is a plan for this river. Bedford borough council has set up the North Bedfordshire water management group, run by Paul Leinster, formerly of the Environment Agency. I encourage the Minister to meet him to discuss the issues of both Universal Studios and Tempsford.
The Minister should also recognise that the proposal for this new town fits into a context of very rapid housing growth. Hon. Members should be aware that the number of households in Bedfordshire has been growing at two and a half times the national average for the past decade or more, meaning that we have already had a build-up of additional pressures on local services over the past 15 to 20 years. At the meeting held last week with the parish council and residents, the main issue other than the floodplain was the provision of local services, as people already do not have sufficient access to GP and transport services. Just a few miles away is the village of Northstowe, which is sort of the poster child for getting it wrong with local service provision. All the things the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said should already be there were not there in Northstowe—there were no shops and no GPs for a number of years while residents were moving in. Obviously residents do not want to see that happen with Tempsford new town, if it comes forward.
Tempsford is a village that still runs on oil heating—there is no other power supply. A number of residents were keen to understand whether solar and ground source heat pumps would be a prerequisite for housing in the new town.
A key point for a village with a proposal for a new town of up to 100,000 people is, of course, its village identity and heritage, in particular around RAF Tempsford, and there is a lot of concern about one of the most important buildings there, Gibraltar Barn. Any plans must take account of that.
My residents are also connected to nature and wildlife. They chose to live in a rural area, and they are proud of their rural environment—the head office of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is just 5 miles away from Tempsford. It is crucial, if the Government move ahead with this proposal, that we do whatever we can to maintain the nature and wildlife of the area. There are also questions about the adequacy of road networks and the type of employment.
I will briefly cover a couple more areas. Professor Doug Clelland and Dr Nigel Moor, two independent planning experts, have completed research on Tempsford in the past two years and provided evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee for its report “New Towns: Laying the Foundations”, relating to the footprint, scale and timeline. In the evidence, Professor Clelland and Dr Moor present a “compact centre” of 25,000 homes over 4.5 square miles with a footprint connecting St Neots to Sandy in an area between the A1 and the Great Northern rail line—an extensive area. There is also a wider footprint that could accommodate the building of an additional 15,000 homes in satellite developments stretching south from Tempsford to the village of Blunham and on to Great Barford, Wilden and Little Staughton then across to Hail Weston, including the villages of Staploe, Honeydon, Roxton, Potton, Everton and others, with a similar impact on the Cambridgeshire side of Tempsford.
I do not expect Members to know all those villages, beautiful though they are; they are well worth visiting, and Members should do so. I simply want to ensure that local residents are aware of the scale of what might take place if this proposal goes ahead in North Bedfordshire and in parts of Cambridgeshire. I am not sure that local residents have internalised that. If the Government decided to move forward with these plans, there is a lot of work they would have to do, in particular with regard to the use of farmland, as this is a primary agricultural area.
If I may, I will leave some questions with the Minister. First, the Government have a housing target of 1.5 million —personally, I am not sure they have got off to a particularly good start on that. That target may have an impact on the type of housing being built, so I would be interested to hear the Minister comment on that with regard to Tempsford.
Secondly, I have mentioned that the housing growth in North Bedfordshire is two and a half times the national average. It is the Government’s position that new towns should not count in that total, but come on—we are already struggling to keep up. There is no way we can plop this additional amount of housing on top of that pace of growth and expect things not to break.
Thirdly, will the Government’s specific social housing target apply in the context of these very large new towns? Fourthly, can I alert the Minister to the fact that the new town is potentially just one of six nationally significant infrastructure projects in Bedfordshire, two of which are directly within this footprint? One is the Black Cat roundabout, which is under way and will be completed, so that is fine. There is also a proposal for a large-scale solar farm of over 1,900 acres—that is the size of Gatwick airport and a bit more—within that satellite boundary. What on earth will happen with that? Clearly, it is a choice: we can do one or the other, but we cannot possibly do both.
Local residents are keen to make sure that their voice is heard. I had a meeting with the civil servant who is dealing with this issue, for which I prepared some documents, and she was 100% on board with that— I can see that the Minister is nodding. My residents are clear about that. Once the decision is made, if Tempsford is one of the new towns, I would strongly encourage the ministerial team to come and visit, have a conversation with the villagers and listen to them, because there is so much that can be done. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, in the end this is about people. If the Government take people along with them at the start when they make that decision, they will set themselves up in a much better way.
Ms Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for securing this important debate. As she said, her constituency is one of Britain’s great post-war new towns, and she clearly knows a lot about the subject. It was evident from her speech that there are a lot of opportunities and responsibilities to come, because we are shaping places for the long term—building not just homes, but communities. I congratulate Cumbernauld on its recent 70th anniversary and I pay tribute to the generations who have made it a place of identity, pride and resilience.
It is always an honour to follow the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and to hear about the proposals for the new town of Tempsford. I agree with him about the importance of bringing those communities that are likely to receive a new town along on the journey, so they do not feel divided as part of the process. I will talk about that as well.
I want to speak in this debate because my constituency of Erith and Thamesmead faces a similar moment of opportunity that will shape the lives of my constituents for decades to come. I was delighted when, last September, Thamesmead Waterfront was listed by the new towns taskforce as one of the 12 locations nationally in the next generation of new towns. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), and the Minister know the area quite well, and I am sure they will agree that there is an opportunity to have a new town there.
I welcome that huge opportunity to tackle London’s housing crisis, boost economic growth and unlock long-overdue investment in transport and infrastructure for my constituents. Thamesmead Waterfront is a 100 hectare site that offers capacity for up to 15,000 new homes, alongside thousands of new jobs, an expanded new town centre and high-quality green spaces. It is one of the most deliverable, large-scale opportunities in the country. It will happen through a joint venture between Peabody and Lendlease that is already in place, with a vision for the area that is backed by the Government and my council, the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which is led by Councillor Anthony Okereke, as well as by the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
Central to the success of Thamesmead Waterfront is an extension of the docklands light railway, which I have campaigned on since I was first elected to the House in 2019. The proposed DLR extension is critical to unlocking those thousands of homes and jobs, with Transport for London estimating an economic boost of around £18 billion. It would finally connect SE28, which is the only London postcode without a rail or tube station, to the wider city. That is a question of fairness as much as growth. I hope that, once it is done, you will come on the DLR to visit my constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker. Local residents want the DLR extension as well: 85% of respondents to a TfL poll supported it, so it would be widely welcomed.
This is exactly the kind of infrastructure-led development that the new towns programme should champion—building homes in the right places and in the right order, with transport planned from the start. Alongside my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham and Beckton (James Asser), I was therefore delighted to hear the Chancellor’s commitment in her November Budget to work with TfL and the GLA to support the DLR extension to our constituencies.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
The hon. Lady is correct that I am familiar with the site in her constituency that is proposed as one of the new towns. I acknowledge, accept and support her argument that the DLR infrastructure would stimulate the regeneration of Thamesmead. Is it therefore a cause of regret that that site is not included in the three new towns that are scheduled to begin work before 2029?
Ms Oppong-Asare
I thank the shadow Minister for recognising and supporting my work in Thamesmead. I feel very optimistic about the Government’s proposal of Thamesmead as one of the new towns, and that is why we are collaborating with the Government on it. Part of the reason why we are having this debate, and why the Government have prioritised it, is that they recognise the issue, alongside the Chancellor’s announcement in November, about the extension of the DLR to Thamesmead. I remain optimistic and I hope the shadow Minister can support me in that.
If we are serious about new towns, we must also be serious about learning the lessons of the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) has been highlighting the lessons from Milton Keynes, which is a new town from the ’70s, so that when we look at the new towns of the future, we recognise the importance of not making the mistakes of the past. He has been working alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which has been looking at evidence about new towns.
To echo what other hon. Members have said, the new towns must be built with existing communities in mind. They should be designed to bring real opportunity, identity and community to the people who will live there. Engagement must go beyond consultation: young people, families and future residents should help to shape the identity of the place from the start. Stewardship must also be permanent, not temporary, and there must be clear accountability for maintenance, renewal and adaptation as the town evolves over decades.
One of the strong lessons from past new towns is that housing numbers alone are not enough; we need to treat schools, health services, cultural venues, transport links and public spaces as a priority, not as an afterthought. We also need to look at how well-designed streets and public spaces work, because they are important. Those aspects are not a luxury; they shape how people feel, how they live and where they want to live. It is vital to get the right housing mix. There are worrying examples from the past of a lack of provision for the elderly, for those of different income levels and, worryingly, for those of ethnic minority backgrounds.
New towns have a bright future, but only if we apply those lessons to ensure that they are inclusive, integrated and successful for the long term. Thamesmead Waterfront offers a unique opportunity. It can serve existing communities, future residents and the wider London and national economy. Backing it as a new town would provide additional momentum, and would help to align central Government, the local council, transport plans and delivery partners. With that ambition, leadership and long-term commitment, alongside lessons learned from the past, Thamesmead Waterfront can become a new town that genuinely improves lives. It can be not just a housing scheme, but a place that people are proud to call home.
I know that decisions are being made, especially on viability and delivery models. Can the Minister clarify how new towns will continue to receive the long-term stewardship they will need to remain inclusive and well-managed communities over the decades, and not just during the build-out phase? That will be important.
I welcome the new towns taskforce, and the Government’s ambition to deliver new towns as part of our wider goals of delivering more homes and economic growth, and making Britain a better place to live. I urge Ministers to recognise the strength of the opportunity in Thamesmead as decisions are taken in the months ahead.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on securing this debate, and I thank her for outlining her experience, and for her passion in representing a new town. When we talk about the next generation of new towns, it is important to listen to the experiences from new towns like Cumbernauld. I am pleased to see many other Members who represent new towns; I am sure that they will give us a flavour of what they have seen in their area. We must think about the challenges that those towns have faced, and what Members for those areas may say in this House in 70 years’ time, when we have all left.
The Town and Country Planning Association’s new towns network highlighted some of the common features of new towns in a 2021 report. It highlighted both the positive legacies, to do with innovation, accessibility and social housing, and some of the challenges to do with town centre renewal, and the need for whole estate regeneration, not rushed, poor-quality housing. If we want new towns to last, it is critical that the Government listen to the experiences of new towns today, so that we get the place-making element of the new towns programme right, and so that current and future new towns get the support that they need from Government, in recognition of the unique challenges that each location faces.
When the Government announced the new towns, they described the original new towns programme as
“the most ambitious town-building effort ever undertaken in the UK”,
saying that it
“transformed the lives of millions by providing affordable and well-designed homes”
in well-planned and beautiful surroundings.
The new towns taskforce made 44 recommendations; I am sure that hon. Members have read them all. They include making sure that new towns are built at a density sufficient to enable residents to walk to local amenities, and ensuring that they support public transport, unlock better social infrastructure, and create active and liveable neighbourhoods with clear minimum density thresholds. New towns should also provide a diverse range of high-quality housing, as Members have highlighted. This should include a minimum target of 40% affordable housing, with at least half of that being available for social rent. New towns should support thriving communities by ensuring access to schools; to cultural, sporting and healthcare facilities; and to other social infrastructure that meets new residents’ needs from the outset.
Another recommendation was that the starting point for the delivery of all new towns should be the development corporation model. The Government must also be clear on the interactions between new towns and local housing need targets, which the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) highlighted. The taskforce found through its place investigations that there was strong support for homes delivered through new towns to count towards local housing targets.
It was good to see the Government and the Secretary of State welcome the taskforce’s recommendations. The Government have announced the commencement of a strategic environment assessment to understand the environmental implications of new towns. This assessment is intended to support the final decisions on location.
I welcome the Minister to the House to discuss new towns for the second time this week, following our session of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on Tuesday. I do not want to completely rehash that session, but I do want to follow up on a few things that were said, and I hope the Minister can give some answers today. In response to the taskforce report, the Government agreed that development corporations should be the primary delivery body for new towns. That is welcome, but on Tuesday the Minister acknowledged in answer to questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) that development corporations can take a long time to set up, and that may come after rounds of consultation. How soon after making a final decision on location will the Government seek to set up the first development corporations? I know we are all keen to see spades in the ground on at least three sites by the end of this Parliament. How many does the Minister expect will have development corporations in place?
Secondly, our Committee recommended, in our report last year on land value capture, that the Government should enable greater use of tax increment financing instruments to fund infrastructure in new towns. That model allows local authorities to borrow money against the anticipated tax receipts resulting from the future infrastructure. TfL used that system to finance London Underground’s Northern line extension to Battersea and Nine Elms—I declare an interest, in that the lovely new Nine Elms station is in my constituency. Our committee heard that this method of financing could be used more widely across England. Are the Government considering that, and if not, why not?
The Minister told our Committee that funding for new towns will come from the Department’s existing programmes, including the £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. That pot of funding is welcome, and it is the biggest investment we have seen in the affordable homes programme; it shows the Government’s commitment to building those much-needed new homes. Bidding for the social and affordable homes programme opens next month, but answers to our Committee indicate that we will see significant building on the vast majority of the sites in only the early 2030s. That could mean that it is years before those homes come down the line; that will do little to address the acute homelessness crisis facing 300,000 people in the UK today. What discussions has the Minister had with Homes England on prioritising funding from that pot? Will any new weighting be given to social housing in the shorter term?
The Secretary of State told our Committee in November that he was committed to the new towns delivering a minimum 40% affordable housing, but the Minister told us on Tuesday that this was “an aspiration” and that
“we cannot discount viability entirely”.
Affordable housing was at the centre of the taskforce’s report, at the centre of the recommendations around place-making, and part of the Government’s gold standard for new towns. Can the Minister confirm that, as the Secretary of State highlighted to us in November, he is committed to the recommendation that new towns should deliver a minimum of 40% affordable housing, at least half of which should be for social rent?
Finally, stakeholders, and Members this afternoon, have stressed the importance of local communities being involved in new towns from the beginning. Dr Victoria Hills, chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, said:
“The first wave of new towns showed what can be achieved when government and planners work at scale, but they also highlight the importance of getting design, infrastructure, and community voice right from the very start. Public support for new towns will depend on learning those lessons and making sure they reflect the aspirations of the people who will live and work in them.”
I know that the Minister is committed to ensuring that the public are brought along, and to the important principles of community engagement and community leadership. It is important that the Government continue to listen, to provide opportunities for local communities to shape the infrastructure and the vision, and to make sure that everyone is committed to the end goal of new towns being built.
I hope that the Minister agrees with us, and shares our ambition that the new towns should offer the opportunity for economic growth, support communities and build the new homes that we desperately need. We cannot keep saying that we are in a housing crisis and not doing anything about it. They should secure those national objectives and make sure that we get good, honest infrastructure at scale and pace. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch for securing the debate, and I know that there will be many more discussions to come.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I will not introduce a formal time limit, but if Members keep their speeches to under eight minutes, that will help everybody else.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
In Macclesfield, one topic has dominated conversation for several months: the proposed new town at Adlington. It has been talked about on every street corner, in every coffee shop and at every parish meeting. Well, almost—for one glorious weekend, Adlington was briefly knocked off the top spot by the small matter of Macclesfield beating Crystal Palace in the FA cup. I am on dangerous ground, because I think the Minister was brought up in south London, so I will leave the football at that.
Jokes aside, this is an important debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for securing it. I am not a nimby. I support house building and development, and I support the principle of new towns, done well, in the right places, with proper planning, and in the right manner with proper infrastructure. This country needs homes, especially genuinely affordable ones, and new towns have a proud history of delivering them, when they are carefully planned and sensibly located. I do not oppose that ambition; I welcome it. But supporting the principle of new towns does not mean signing a blank cheque for every proposed site, and it certainly does not mean abandoning the basics of good planning—which brings me to Adlington.
Adlington is not an empty space on the map. It is a small rural community of about 1,000 people, first recorded in the Domesday Book. It is a place shaped by continuity, with fields and farms; its working farmland is still producing food, supporting local jobs and sustaining wildlife. The proposal before Macclesfield would place up to 20,000 homes on 1,000 hectares of strategic green belt, wiping out 15 working farms, ancient hedgerows and bluebell woodlands, and fragmenting some of the most environmentally sensitive land in Cheshire. That matters, because the green belt is not an accident. It exists for a reason: to stop urban sprawl, protect countryside and make sure that we regenerate brownfield land. Once green belt on this scale is gone, it is gone forever.
I want to make a broader point about the new towns taskforce and its shortlist, because it is quite telling. Among all the sites recommended, Adlington stands out, not as the most suitable, but as the one that has faced the greatest opposition. That opposition has come not from one group, one parish or one campaign, but from across the community, across political lines and across civic society. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me before Christmas to discuss those concerns. It is particularly striking that the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has not opposed a number of the other new town sites recommended by the taskforce, has taken a clear and firm position against Adlington. When it singles out one site among many, it is because something genuinely does not stack up.
If that were not enough, Cheshire East council has voted unanimously against the proposal. That almost never happens in local government, and that alone should tell us that this is not a narrow ideological objection, but a considered judgment by the democratically elected planning authority for the area.
I want to talk a little more about Cheshire East, because it really matters. It is not a council that avoids building homes. It has met its housing targets consistently in the past, it has adopted a sound local plan, and it has delivered thousands of homes and continues to do so. It is not a planning authority that is dragging its feet or shirking its responsibilities. It is now preparing a new local plan, which will set out how housing need will be met in years ahead—transparently, democratically and with proper public engagement. That is how planning should work. The council has delivered before, and with its new plan it will deliver again—but without dropping 20,000 homes into the open countryside, against the opposition of local communities. Opposing the Adlington site does not mean opposing housing; it means respecting the plan-led system rather than bypassing it.
I mentioned brownfield land, and there are brownfield sites across Cheshire, Greater Manchester and the wider region that are crying out for regeneration, many of them close to jobs, transport, schools and services. Building there first is not anti-growth; it is sustainable planning. Indeed, there are alternative new town sites in the north-west that could be considered. Let us not jump straight into one of the most sensitive stretches of green belt in the region, next to a national park. Let us think again.
Powerful points have been made already this afternoon about infrastructure. Those concerns have not been convincingly addressed in the case of Adlington, which has limited rail services, constrained road capacity and utilities that were never designed to support a town 20 times its current size. Fixing that would take decades, not years, and there remains no clear answer about who would pay, who would deliver or when any of it would realistically be in place. That has been compounded by the way that we have gone about this. We need engagement with residents, but there has been only one engagement session with local residents by the company Belport. Communities have been left scrambling for information about the proposal. That is not how to build confidence in a major national project.
Before I finish, I want to thank local campaigners and activists—people who never expected to become planning experts, transport analysts or ecology specialists, but who have given up their evenings, weekends, and indeed savings, to engage constructively, responsibly and in good faith. They have not shouted from the sidelines; they have done the hard work of evidence, scrutiny and civic engagement. That is democracy at its best. They deserve recognition.
Let me be absolutely clear once more that this is not about saying no to development; it is about saying, “Not like this, and not here.” We should be building homes where infrastructure already exists, where growth can be absorbed sustainably, where local authorities are partners rather than bystanders, and where the environmental cost is justified by an overwhelming and proven need. Adlington does not meet that test.
I will end with a bit of history, because this House likes its history. In the Minister’s office hangs a picture of Clement Attlee, who I think is a hero to both of us. It was Attlee’s Government that created the green belt, precisely to protect landscapes like this from unchecked development. It was not anti-housing; it was pro-planning. It is about balance, foresight and stewardship. We owe it to that legacy and to future generations to show the same care now, so let us support new towns, let us build the homes our country needs, but let us also say calmly and clearly, in the Attlee spirit, that Adlington is the wrong place.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca). Telford is a little further ahead than his and other proposed new towns, having been designated in the 1960s. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on securing the debate and on her powerful speech. Telford was in the second phase of new towns and learned from her community’s journey. It is a delight to see my hon. Friend the Housing Minister in his place. Unlike so many of his predecessors, he not only understands housing but has been in his position longer than a few minutes.
New towns such as Telford, Cwmbran and East Kilbride, and the hundreds of thousands of people who live there, are the physical embodiment of hope and opportunity. First made possible by the Attlee Government, new towns gave families like mine a chance for a new life. The increase in affordable, high-quality housing made home ownership and renting away from the big cities possible for people who had never dreamt that that could be their future or reality. It was life-changing not just for the newcomers, but for those who, like my family, were in the area before the new town designation. They saw opportunities for their children and grandchildren that they could not have dreamt of for themselves.
As the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), clearly outlined, these new new towns need to learn lessons from those that came before them. New towns are not only important as symbols of hope and aspiration; they are incredible achievements in their own right. Telford still grows at a rate unlike almost any other town in the country, with 1,800 new homes built last year alone. Despite being one of the biggest and most YIMBY towns in the country, Telford excels in access to nature. Thanks to the national authority, since its existence Telford has designated 10 local nature reserves covering 600 hectares, and has more than 300 protected green spaces and more Green Flag parks than ever before. These spaces are loved and cared for by volunteers, such as Richard Shaw of Rick’s Environmental, and thousands of street champions and countless friend groups that have love, passion and pride for their communities.
New towns were built on the principle that people do not just live in houses; they live in homes in communities, and they need schools, jobs, healthcare, transport and green spaces. The community of Telford is thriving thanks to the dedication of groups, such as Telford Community Support and Telford Crisis Support. New towns continue to offer unique opportunities. Thanks to good transport links, Telford has become a hub of industry and manufacturing in particular for the defence sector, with Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land manufacturing tanks and employing over 1,500 people, but there are also major centres for Kraft Heinz, Besblock, Bridge Cheese and more.
Telford, though a new town, also has a history. It has a claim, with Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, to be the birthplace of the industrial revolution. I pay tribute to Marcus Keane of Telford Memories and Steve Bowers of Telford Ultimate Guide for the work they do in promoting Telford’s proud history and rich diversity. I also pay tribute to people like Dennis Athersmith of Dawley Memories, who celebrate what came before Telford’s designation.
But we do need more. We need the M54-M6 link road, which was proposed at the same time as Telford’s designation but has never come to fruition. It has thankfully been promised by this Government. The direct train link from Telford to London was scrapped under the last Conservative Government, but there are plans to reinstate it under this one. We need better buses. The town being designed for cars means that our bus transport system is limited, and perhaps we could dream of one day having a metro system.
For decades, Governments have failed to keep up with and support new towns. New towns have grown significantly above the regional and national averages. Particularly at times when the rest of the national economy has stalled, new towns have continued to power on, but that has resulted in new towns not getting their fair share of enablement funding.
I refer to what other hon. Members have said about housing. Houses, in particular those around south Telford, were built with a life expectancy of 30 or 40 years. Now, 60 years later, they need regeneration, but for the past 14 years we have not had an ambitious programme of estate renewal. I ask the Minister to consider what this Government can do on that. We have an ageing population, with those people who came to Telford 60 years ago now in their 70s, 80s and 90s. We have the fourth highest growth in the elderly population in England.
Today I welcome the renewed interest in new towns thanks to this Government’s agenda to build three new towns. I hope that the Minister and those new new towns will look to places such as Telford and other new towns for inspiration. But as Captain Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the English channel, said, “Nothing great is easy”. We must measure the new new towns not in 10 years, but in 50, 60 and 100 years, so that they can realise their potential. As the new towns are built, the Government should also turn to the former new towns, experienced towns and, in some cases, the new cities to understand how the mistakes that were made, frankly, around town centre positioning can be avoided, and to invest and back them.
I have three specific asks of my hon. Friend the Minister. First, the Government should ask each existing new town with a record of delivery what it needs to do to break through the Whitehall machine to reach its next phase of opportunity. If the Government have an ambition to get the economy growing and to build those houses—and I genuinely believe they do—why not look to those areas that have already been doing it for decades and give them the opportunity to contribute to that national mission?
Secondly, as I have already mentioned, the Government should learn from those new towns. In Telford, it was the council, not Homes England, that delivered new homes. It remodelled town centres and converted a shopping centre into a place where universities were springing up and people are now living, and that new town centre identity will be so important to Telford’s next story.
Thirdly, as the 1980s advert said, come to Telford. I would love to take the Minister on a tour of communities such as Lightmoor Bournville village, show him the history and beauty of the Ironbridge gorge, show him the future of Telford—whether that is the new theatre backed by Government funding or the new swimming pool in Dawley, home of the first person to swim the English channel—or take him to Southwater, our new town centre, where people like Dan Blasczyk have continued to campaign to turn that place from a shopping centre into a town centre. The Minister could see the amazing Anstice hall in Madeley, a former working men’s club that has now been regenerated with a fantastic all-female leadership team, as well as so much more.
If the Government back these new towns in the same way that Attlee and previous Labour Governments did, there is a moment in history for this Government and this Housing Minister, so that in 50, 60 and 70 years’ time, they can look back and see the legacy of this Government.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
With a speaking limit of seven minutes, I call Chris Curtis.
Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) not just for securing this debate, but for her passionate and moving speech.
I will start by building on some of the comments made by the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) about his constituents’ experiences of what is potentially the beginning of a new town process. It reminded me of a conversation I had after returning from the Labour party conference two and a half years ago, when we were in opposition. We had announced that if we won the election, we would move forward with the new towns programme. I got back to Milton Keynes—maybe slightly worse for wear—and popped into the family home to see my then 92-year-old grandmother with her friend Georgie in the living room.
My grandmother had grown up in a small farmhouse in Wollaston, a village of about 300 people. It has since been consumed into what is now Milton Keynes. They were talking, as they often did, about how things used to be: the roads they knew by name, the rivalry between the cricket teams, and the local pubs in that small village. They also spoke of their fears at the time—I am sure that similar conversations are happening now in Tempsford—about how the new towns programme would change the tight-knit community they had grown up in and were used to, and their many concerns about what it would mean for local culture and infrastructure. It is easy for us, as politicians, just to stop there in our conversations with local constituents, but this conversation went further. My grandmother talked about how she lived long enough to see what a difference the community built in Milton Keynes—my home town—made to the lives of her daughter and her grandchildren.
I am the first MP to have been born and to have grown up in the new town of Milton Keynes, and I owe almost everything to the fantastic start in life that Milton Keynes gave me. It meant that my parents could afford decent and affordable housing. It meant that there were good and decent jobs available because of what the development corporation did. It meant that public services were there when we needed them.
Just like Tempsford, Milton Keynes was built on a floodplain—the River Ouzel floodplain—which I know is often a concern for people. The development corporation solution for that was to build balancing lakes. My grandmother and Georgie were pretty opposed to the balancing lake at the time. It was fields next to the farm she grew up on. There were massive diggers and slurry everywhere coming in. She used to call it “that daft puddle”. Today, because of what the development corporation was able to achieve—it was a pretty significant infrastructure project—not only does the balancing lake provide flood protection and alleviation to tens of thousands of homes, which allowed the city I call home to be built; it also means that my city has 5,000 acres of beautiful blue and green spaces that are enjoyed by thousands of people.
The lake is also where my parents met, when my dad was teaching my mum—not particularly well—to sail. The city was determined to ensure that recreational activities were available to people whatever their background. I lost my grandmother just before Labour party conference last year, and the hospice that looked after her in the last weeks of her life looked out over that very same lake.
I mention that because I owe so much to the vision, confidence and level of ambition that was shown to build somewhere truly special—Milton Keynes—in the 1960s and 1970s. It is the story of my life; it is the reason I am here. It is only with that same level of confidence and ambition that we can hope that people talk as positively about the work we are doing now as I can talk about the work that was done by the Milton Keynes development corporation in the 1960s and 1970s.
I will mention a few points with the potential to make me nervous about whether we will fulfil that ambition, some of which were mentioned by the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. These projects will not come cheap to the Government. We obviously need to maximise the financing options that we can use. We also need to look at maximising the amount of land value capture. Milton Keynes was given 700 million quid in the 1960s—about £14 billion in today’s money—which came back to the Government multiple times over because of the economic value generated by building the city. I do not think anybody has that level of ambition for a new town project, but we are going to have to see money—not just capital money and direction to the pots of money available for capital, but revenue spending in order to set up the development corporation. We have not seen enough from the Department about that approach yet.
I also have a fear about death by consultation. The process to come up with a list of new towns was a very good piece of work by Sir Michael Lyons, and we should all pay tribute to him for it. However, the Government response is taking further months, and there will be a consultation on that. If development corporations are set up, there will be further consultation on that. We need to look at how we can streamline the process and get these projects going as quickly as possible.
I will raise one final concern now. Following conversations with local councils, it seems to me that the approach from the team working on this is to go back to that kind of begging-bowl culture: to go back to the sites that have been selected, of which Milton Keynes is one, and to convince them—even though Sir Michael Lyons did the work on why these 12 sites were the correct ones—that they should get the resources required to deliver what the Government are saying needs to be delivered. That will not lead to success.
A big part of the report talked about the importance of building communities that are not dependent on the car and that have good public transport options. My area is very car dependent, but if we are going to continue to grow, we cannot be; we will need support from the Department for Transport in order to do so. DFT’s approach has been, “Why do you need this money? Your roads aren’t congested yet.” That is completely out of line with the Government’s ambition and the new towns approach. We need to change the culture of how the Government is approaching the new town programme so that, in decades to come, somebody can stand in this Chamber talking about being the first MP for the new town of Tempsford and about how much of a success this programme has been.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
Let me begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on securing this debate and on her tireless advocacy for her community.
Sixty-two years ago, Redditch was selected as the west midlands’ second mark two new town after somewhere called Telford—a deliberate policy decision to relieve the post-war housing crisis gripping Birmingham and the wider conurbation. Unlike the first generation of new towns, Redditch was not built on empty land. It had over 800 years of history and an existing population of around 32,000. Planners therefore faced a unique challenge: how to expand a living town, not replace it. That is why Redditch matters so much to this debate. It is a story of ambition, achievement and unfinished business that offers powerful lessons about what worked, what was not sustained and what we must do differently today.
Redditch was not simply given a population target and left to chance. The Redditch development corporation, led by chief architect Brian Bunch and his team, delivered an innovative masterplan, published in 1967, that was built around bead-like districts along key transport routes. Each neighbourhood was designed to be largely self-contained, with schools, shops, churches and green space, with the preservation of green corridors between communities and a plethora of roundabouts. The aim was to integrate old and new and bring together town and country. MPs in this place later praised the generous landscaping and planting of open areas—amenities far beyond what normal local authority budgets could have delivered.
Redditch also pioneered something radical for its time: a new town designed around public transport rather than the private car. Three million trees were planted, roads were banked to reduce noise and pedestrians were separated from fast-moving traffic. Those were not luxuries; they were choices about quality of life.
Within two decades, a town of 32,000 had grown into a community of more than 70,000, eventually reaching around 90,000 by the end of the century, with many families escaping overcrowded terraces and slums in Birmingham. The estates that emerged—Church Hill, Matchborough, Winyates, Greenlands and Woodrow—were planned communities where working families could own their own homes and raise children with access to schools, parks and services within walking distance. Arrow Valley country park remains one of the great successes of new town planning: 900 acres of protected green space at the heart of Redditch. Historic sites were preserved, too: the Forge Mill needle museum and Bordesley abbey anchor centuries of history within a modern town.
In 1983, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Kingfisher shopping centre and Forge Mill national needle museum. Thousands lined the streets in Milward Square as she unveiled Eduardo Paolozzi’s mosaics celebrating Redditch’s needle-making heritage. They show astronauts and needles side by side, symbolising past and future. The chair of the development corporation, Professor Denys Hinton, said at the time that it marked
“the completion of an enterprise of which everyone can be proud”.
Redditch was not just a new town; it had manufacturing at the heart of its DNA. In the early 20th century, it produced 19% of the world’s needles—not cottage craft, but precision metalworking at scale. Those skills fed into bicycle, motorcycle, spring and defence manufacturing. Royal Enfield, BSA, aerospace components—Redditch had industrial DNA. During the second world war, High Duty Alloys employed 13,000 people, producing aircraft for Rolls-Royce and others. Post war, those same skills flew in Concorde and British defence systems.
The development corporation understood that. The new town was deliberately planned around a manufacturing-led economy. It was not a dormitory suburb, but a place with skilled local employment. For a time, that promise was kept. The landscaping and design principles established by Hugh Wilson, Lewis Womersley and their teams proved durable, but something fundamental changed when the housing corporation was wound up in 1985. Housing targets were met, but the commitment to self-sustaining local economy faded. Cheap imports hollowed out traditional industries. Over time, Redditch increasingly became a commuter town for Birmingham.
Between 2007 and 2017, the UK lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs. Redditch, with twice the national average employment in manufacturing, was hit harder than most. Today, manufacturing output has declined even more where employment remains. Skill pathways have narrowed. The defence and aerospace sector survived, but at a fraction of its former scale. Even core services have faced sustained pressure. The Alexandra hospital has lost services, including paediatric and maternity services, undermining public confidence and reminding us that infrastructure, once built, still requires long-term support.
Underpinning all that are social pressures: drugs, crime and child poverty. Over half of Redditch households experience at least one form of deprivation. Neighbourhoods built as modern housing for working families, like Greenlands and Woodrow, are now designated as areas of such concentrated deprivation that they qualify for £20 million of targeted regeneration funding. I welcome that investment, but it should give us pause. This was not the future the planners envisaged.
Redditch teaches us that new towns worked when they combined five key things: a clear social purpose, long-term institutions, integrated employment, infra- structure built up front, and community cohesion by design. Redditch achieved all those things between the 1960s and 1980s. We lost momentum when that comprehensive approach was abandoned. The lesson is not that new towns failed; it is that when we stopped thinking long term, stopped planning for jobs and stopped backing places with sustained investment, we broke that model.
As we debate new towns, we must ask: are we prepared to commit to the same level of ambition that created Redditch, or will we settle for piecemeal fixes to the decline that has already set in? My constituents are proud of Redditch’s new town heritage, but pride alone will not secure its future. To honour that legacy, we must renew it with long-term investment, integrated planning and the political will to see that through. That is not nostalgia; it is hard-headed realism about what works and what my constituents deserve.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for securing the debate—I am hugely passionate about this topic—and for giving me the opportunity to speak for seven minutes about Harlow.
How do we begin to describe a new town like Harlow? Do we talk about the houses—the bricks and the mortar, the gardens and the trees? Or do we talk about the people—the young and the old, and everyone in between? I think we start with the people, but I am also going to start with the history. Harlow was designated a new town in 1947, as part of the post-war reconstruction Many people moved to Harlow from London to start a family, giving Harlow its first nickname: Pram Town. The masterplan for Harlow was drawn up by Sir Frederick Gibberd, with the help of Dame Sylvia Crowe and others. It was designed to have a sense of community, with every neighbourhood having its own shopping “hatch”, play park and green spaces, and even its own public art. I do not think there are many places where you can walk down the street on yours daily rounds, go into an estate and come across a Rodin, a Barbara Hepworth—or, in fact, the odd concrete donkey!
The sense of community still shines through today—every time I go and watch Harlow Town football club, pop in for a pint at the Hare, or visit the Parndon Mill art studios, the Gibberd garden, or our beautiful town park for the parkrun, which I am now doing slightly more often than usual. We see that sense of community in Harlow’s many incredible charities and community organisations, many of which I have had the pleasure of visiting during my 18 months as Harlow’s MP and two of which—the Youth Concern Trust and Razed Roof— I have the honour of being a trustee of. We also see that sense of community in the way our Harlow residents supported one another during the terrible pandemic—and, yes, in how people often support me too.
As to Gibberd’s design for the estate, I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said about housing numbers. I defy anyone to walk around Longbanks and explain the logic of that sort of numbering system. Harlow was designed to be a place in which managers and workers lived side by side, as part of the same community and with the same ambition to achieve. I think we have lost sight of that a little. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) mentioned the decline in manufacturing, which has had a huge impact on places like Harlow.
As I have said a number of times, Harlow might not be the oldest new town—
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
Can my hon. Friend confirm which is the oldest new town?
Chris Vince
I think my hon. Friend knows fairly well! But Harlow is nearly the oldest new town.
Harlow might not be the best new town—well, I think it is, although probably not if you are a fan of being able to park your car anywhere near your house—but it absolutely is the new town with the biggest heart. I hope when the Government consider the creation of a new generation of new towns, they will look at the things that did work in Harlow. Creating a new town is not just about bricks and mortar, about trees and gardens; it is about people and communities too. I am proud to represent Harlow and its history, but I am determined for it to have a strong future.
The Government’s commitment last year to ensuring that Harlow is the permanent home of the UK Health Security Agency is huge. As I mentioned earlier, the decline of the manufacturing industry has had an impact on Harlow. We still have some fantastic industry, including Raytheon and other important businesses, but the decline has affected us. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friends about the need for continual investment in our new towns, so that they survive and thrive, and for their long-term stewardship.
Let me give the House one interesting fact about Harlow before I wind up my remarks. Harlow has a fantastic cycle network—of course, it needs more investment, and I will always push Essex county council to continue investing in it—and thanks to that network, as well as to our green wedges and green fingers areas, which are hugely important to the sense of community, it is possible to get from one side of Harlow to the other without ever going on a main road.
Everybody deserves a place in the history of Harlow—even those who, like me, came to Harlow from afar. Together, we are the perfect blend.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
That sounded more like a maiden speech.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to come second—on this occasion—to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). Stevenage may not have a concrete donkey, but we have Donkey park, as well as a concrete polar bear in Chells, of which we are very proud. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on securing this important debate on the 70th anniversary of her new town.
My new town of Stevenage celebrates its 80th anniversary as the UK’s first new town this year. It shares its birth year with my mum, whose 80th birthday is today. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!] After celebrating my new town, I will celebrate with her later. My mum was born and grew up in Glasgow. Like many people who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, she sought a new life. She did not end up in Cumbernauld; she took a bit of a circuitous route to London, via Malta. She had ambitions for her family—as did my dad John and my brother Gary. I ended up in Stevenage, and the town has really welcomed me, as somebody who wanted to start a new life there. That is the story of new towns. There are the people lucky enough to be born and to grow up there, but there are also those who choose to start a new life there. Their aspiration becomes the community’s aspiration.
As I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister is finding out, creating and developing new towns is not easy. One of his predecessors, Lewis Silkin—then the Minister of Town and Country Planning—came to the large village of Stevenage in the 1940s. He found that the sign at Stevenage station been replaced with one that said “Silkingrad”—he was not assured of a warm welcome. However, he showed determination and said, “We are going to build this town.” So we did, and it was a huge achievement. It showed the benefit of planning and thinking ahead—not just about the homes that people needed, but about the schools, jobs, parks and so on. To this day, people’s first impression of Stevenage is just how green it is.
If someone is lucky enough to work in Stevenage—whether they live there or come just for work—they will find how easy it is to get there. We have great companies, developed over generations, such as MBDA and Airbus, in the defence and aerospace sectors. More than a quarter of the satellites in space were made in Stevenage. The Storm Shadow missiles that we send to Ukraine, to help in the defence against the horrific invasion by Putin’s Russia, are made in Stevenage. New towns like Stevenage play their part.
This debate is important because, as Members have said, there are lessons to learn about what we can do to rejuvenate new towns.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning came to Stevenage weeks after the general election with Sir Michael Lyons. He was there with a fellow Minister, Baroness Sharon Taylor, who is Stevenage-grown; she has helped to shape Stevenage and is doing a great job of shaping homes across the country. They saw a new development in the town centre, with new affordable homes to deal with today’s housing crisis. Stevenage was built in response to the housing crisis back then. The challenge now is even more immense. Stevenage once had 38,000 council homes. That is now down to 8,000. I have knocked on the doors of people living in private rented accommodation, and they feel that insecurity. This Government are working to fix that, but we need to get these new homes and rejuvenate our town centres, as Members have said, and that ain’t easy.
The lesson from development corporations relates to what we do once they are up and running and have done their job. In Stevenage, the development corporation was transferred to hedge funds and pension companies in 1980, and it is now much harder to rejuvenate those town centres. One of the biggest concerns I hear on the doorstep is about homes and what is happening in the town centre. We have to not just learn the lessons for new new towns but make sure that we reshape our existing new towns.
Stevenage remains ambitious. We have a council and a council leader in Richard Henry who are leading the push for a £1 billion regeneration project in the town centre, including Stevenage Station Gateway, which will need Government support and will involve a new station, new homes and new education facilities right in the heart of our town. Stevenage is not just a commuter town, although many people do come and go from Stevenage for work; it is also a community with neighbourhoods and amazing individuals who I am very proud to cite time and again in this place. They did not just turn up there by luck; it is because of the foresight of people such as Lewis Silkin, Monica Felton and Eric Claxton, who were the pioneers of Stevenage. We now have the chance to learn from them as we build our new towns for the future.
Richard Baker (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)
The brilliant, transformative Labour Government of 1945 accepted and endorsed the idea of investing in the construction of new towns as a way of providing much improved living conditions for people throughout our nation. I am delighted that this Labour Government are doing that again today, and I am proud to be the MP for Glenrothes, which was the second post-war new town in Scotland following East Kilbride and was born on 13 June 1948, when the development corporation was set up under the New Towns Act 1946. We are proud to be the place where my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) grew up, and I congratulate her on securing this debate, which has been a really good discussion about the past of new towns and their future.
The purpose of the establishment of Glenrothes was to generate economic growth and renewal in central Fife, and the town has achieved that despite great setbacks, even at its foundation. The story of Glenrothes can inspire us to tackle the challenges that new towns face today. The reason Glenrothes was founded was to support the development of a newly established National Coal Board super-pit, the Rothes colliery, in 1958, which hardly ever worked at all because it had a plethora of problems—much like the Conservative party—such as flooding and geological faults. When the pit closed, further development of Glenrothes almost came to a halt, but the people of Glenrothes did not give up, and neither did Fife council. The development corporation targeted the growing electronics industry to attract it to the town, and Glenrothes became an important centre for light industry. The town played a significant role in establishing Scotland’s silicon glen, with many high-tech companies investing in the area.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, this shows how new towns have to reinvent themselves, because they are soon not new and have to look towards the future. That is what we are doing today in Glenrothes, where we are already the administrative centre of Fife, and we maintain a strong presence in the technology and manufacturing sectors. With a population of just under 40,000, Glenrothes is the third largest settlement in Fife after Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy. There will be investment in Methil and Buckhaven near Glenrothes in my constituency through the Pride in Place programme and in our regional growth zone, new funding for which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland last week.
While we cannot boast either concrete polar bears or concrete donkeys, we do have concrete hippos, which are greatly valued in the town and for which we are renowned. In terms of business, the reason that many companies continue to make Glenrothes their base is that the town has a great location in the centre of Scotland. We have much to be thankful for in terms of investment in our infrastructure. It is an attractive destination to invest, but the town does face significant challenges.
We have heard today about the challenges faced by many new towns. The Communities and Local Government Committee report of 2008 identified three particular infrastructure problems facing new towns throughout the UK: transport, town centre investment, and housing design and public space. We have heard throughout the debate that those issues still affect our new towns. Certainly in Glenrothes, the idea of a 20-minute neighbourhood is a distant prospect, and rail connectivity in particular is poor.
Chris Vince
I thank my hon. Friend for taking an intervention, particularly as I have already spoken. One of the issues in Harlow is that the M11 was built on the wrong side, so we have big lorries going all the way through Harlow to get to the industrial sites on the other side of the town. Does he agree that it is really important that we make sure we get transport infrastructure right when designing new towns?
Richard Baker
I could not agree more. In Scotland’s new towns, railway stations are either not there at all or are a great distance away from the town centre. We have to learn those lessons for the future.
On issues in town centres, the Kingdom shopping centre in Glenrothes is the centre and the high street of the town, but it is ageing. It needs investment in its infrastructure, and it requires a collective approach to offering new retail and entertainment opportunities. We need more community facilities in our housing estates, and we have an ageing housing stock, with homes that are not energy-efficient and are expensive to heat, in a town where 20% of children are living in relative poverty. That is one of many strains on low-income households in the town struggling with the increasing costs of living. That is why it is so important that this Government took action on energy bills. The fact that housing stock in new towns is too often aged and needs to be improved is a key issue in that policy area.
The sad reality is that years of under-investment in local authorities under a Scottish National party Government have resulted in a housing crisis across Scotland. Glenrothes, which was established in the first place to address these challenges, is no exception. Fife council has a housing stock of around 30,000 properties but a waiting list of around 13,000 people, which is badly affecting so many of my constituents in Glenrothes, yet the Scottish Government’s budget, announced on Tuesday, gave a rise of just 2% to local authorities. That is despite record-breaking block grants for the Scottish Government, with Labour delivering an additional £10.3 billion for public services in Scotland since the last election. A 2% increase for councils will not address the challenges faced by new towns in Scotland.
After all, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, these towns are not new any more—they are not preserved in aspic. They need investment. The establishment of new towns shows that change is inevitable but that the principles and values which inspired their creation remain constant. We need to hold on to the ideals that created Glenrothes and other new towns in the first place: we need to continue to strive for progress, growth and modernity in our built infrastructure, as well as in our transport connectivity and our public services—in education and health in our new towns. For that, we need leadership from Government at all levels. In Scotland, that means a Scottish Government with a vision to actively support local authorities that have responsibility for new towns, like Fife council, to achieve the positive change that our new towns are badly in need of. That means investment. That is why we need a Scottish Government capable of making new towns like Glenrothes feel new again.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) mentioned that it is his mother’s birthday. I have been given an update: she is called Yvonne Bonavia. Happy birthday, Yvonne.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
The Government’s determination to deliver a new generation of new towns, with everything residents will need for a thriving and fulfilling life, offers a much more hopeful solution to the housing crisis in this country than the proliferation of overpriced and characterless bolt-on estates thrown up by profiteering developers in recent years. As Ministers press on with those plans, I would like to highlight some of what can be learned from the radical and transformative history of previous such projects.
The development of new towns in this country grew out of the garden city movement. The very first and best garden city in the world is Letchworth Garden City in my constituency—I will not take any interventions on that. The principles on which Letchworth was founded offer several lessons that I believe should inform the plans for future new towns.
First, the land on which those towns will be constructed, and the large rural green belt that the residents will need for healthy recreation and supply of food, should be brought into common ownership. That was always central to securing Ebenezer Howard’s vision of the best of countryside and city life, and it means encouraging industry to access cheap sites, keeping housing affordable by capturing rising land values, and using ground rents to fund community assets. To this day, the fact that Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation continues to have a substantial property portfolio allows it to invest in and subsidise many facilities that enrich life in the town, including the Garden City Greenway, the Broadway cinema, and Standalone farm. So lesson No. 1 is that the development corporations for the next generation of new towns must be empowered to purchase all the land that they need at current use value, through compulsory purchase orders if necessary.
Secondly, we must always remember that garden cities were never just about the supply of housing. From the outset, Letchworth was always envisioned as a way of bringing employment and industry to a depressed rural economy. In short, new towns need a purpose, not just a housing target to hit. Communities thrive and grow around the industries that define them, and without that, new towns will never escape the dismal fate of becoming little more than a commuter dormitory. As we build the new towns of the future, we must be clear from the outset about what the economic anchor institutions of those communities will be. Whether they are new university towns, born, as Cambridge was, of the desire of scholars to set up a fresh seat of learning to rival those of the past, or new industrial sites for green technology, we must ensure that there is a clear economic identity defining future new towns.
Thirdly, in an era in which a tiny proportion of our homes are designed by architects—the Royal Institute of British Architects has estimated that just 6% of homes are—we should strive to match the optimism of the garden city movement, which sought to prove that beautiful, bright and well-built homes could be made affordable for ordinary people. To this day, the arts and crafts-inspired architecture of Letchworth makes it an incredibly special place. As we build the next new towns, we should suffuse them with the same values, and the same determination to provide genuinely affordable homes, alongside constant proof that life is beautiful. That means commissioning architects to shape unique and inspiring local vernaculars that create a special identity for each town. It means embracing aesthetics and ornamentation, as well as functionality, and it means patient public capital investment over the long term, above all in a high proportion of desperately needed council homes for social rent.
In the context of the Office for Environmental Protection’s warning that we are largely off target for the UK’s environmental commitments, it is absolutely crucial that future new towns follow the garden city model of development in harmony with nature. Letchworth was built without cutting down a single mature tree, and there is no reason why we cannot do the same now. Similarly, we must match the importance given, in garden city principles, to a well-protected green belt. Green belt secures permanent and easy access for the inhabitants of new towns to the peace and joy of the countryside next door that is teeming with wildlife.
Finally, while not all of Ebenezer Howard’s vision ultimately came to fruition—like all towns, Letchworth faces its own challenges today—the strength of community that Letchworth continues to foster, nearly 125 years after it was founded, should shape the policies that we pursue as we support the new towns to come. From Decarbonise Letchworth to the Wilbury community café and the Friends of Norton Common, the ordinary residents of Letchworth are a constant source of energy, passion and determination to tackle the challenges that we face as a society, from environmental collapse to loneliness and the cost of living. The Labour Government should foster and embrace these grassroots movements by combining new towns with a new drive to put power back in the hands of ordinary people.
To give new communities the ability to shape their lives and their area in a way that meets their hopes for the future, we need a new charter of community rights. Fortunately, the amendment that I tabled to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to do just that has recently been re-tabled in the other place, providing the Government with an excellent opportunity to rectify their oversight in failing to adopt the charter when I first brought the proposal to this House.
Designed to put power back in the hands of ordinary people, the charter for community rights offers a starting point for restoring popular agency in our democracy, which I believe is an essential ingredient to getting new towns right. We are talking about the right to a clean and healthy environment, to a healthy home, to play, to grow food on public sector land, to roam and swim, to participate in decisions shaping communities, and to challenge local decisions. Adopting the charter for community rights is the final ingredient in ensuring that this Government’s new towns are genuine communities, capable of nurturing social life and cohesion from the outset. That should be an objective that we can all share.
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on her powerful and deeply personal speech. The theme of the debate has been the stories of sons and daughters of new towns, and of people who have gone to new towns to make their lives there. Each new town has its charms, its own history and its unique identity. They are home to 2.8 million people today. Just as the new towns programme was integral to rebuilding the country after the war, this Government’s ambition for 12 new communities is one of the most important of this Parliament.
In my maiden speech, I celebrated the history of Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, but emphasised the importance of regeneration and investment. If places are to thrive, they cannot be static. Every town needs to evolve and renew for the future. In that speech, I referenced the iconic Shredded Wheat silos that have sadly lain dormant next to Welwyn Garden City station for years. I am pleased to report to the House and to my community that since I made that speech, planning permission has been granted for a 578-home development. Crucially, the silos and their history will be maintained, and the developer, Treble Eight Group, proposes transforming them, and creating a sky bar and restaurant at the summit. That is precisely the type of imagination and investment that we need in our towns. Lots of people in the town are excited about the project. The sooner the building work begins, the better.
In Hatfield, a new public play area has opening in the market place in the town centre, and I continue to have conversations with the borough council about a much more ambitious regeneration programme for White Lion Square, which is at the heart of the town centre. That conversation cannot just be between politicians. As soon as I can, I will share more information with Hatfield residents and ask for their input, imagination and ideas.
Our next generation of new towns should take inspiration from the last, but should learn lessons as well. Many hon. Members have talked about those in depth. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on his excellent and insightful speech. We want to design places that thrive in the 2040s, which is a very different challenge to building in the late 1940s. That said, there are some examples of best practice and timeless principles. I congratulate Sir Michael Lyons and his team on the new towns taskforce. They delivered a serious piece of work at pace, and were clear that there must be a long-term vision for each new place that we build, but there can be common elements to all. The Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), talked about some of those common elements earlier, but it is worth returning to those points. There must be higher density in centres, so that residents can walk to local amenities, and so that the footfall created brings about the demand to support viable and vibrant high streets. We need dedicated space for business and commercial activity, so that the new communities sustain jobs and attract ongoing investment. There must be easy access to parks, green spaces and nature. Social infra- structure, including good schools, cultural and sporting facilities, healthcare and hospitals, must be in place from the outset, along with balanced communities, with a range of housing tenures.
The need for social and affordable housing has always been important to me and integral to the new towns project. Outside our largest cities, our existing new towns have the highest concentration of social homes in the country. We need to build social homes at scale again to meet the urgency of the housing crisis, but we must plan with consideration as well. In our existing towns, there is too often a visible divide between estates on the one hand, and roads full of private homes for the more affluent on the other. In our next generation of new towns, let us build tenure-blind communities. Our ambition should be to walk down a street and not be able to tell the difference between a private home, one for private rent, one in shared ownership, and one for social rent. As we walk down those streets of tomorrow, let us ensure that they are lined with electric car charging points, and that the homes have solar panels and heat pumps, and that they are never too far away from a green space and a community centre—and in my case, a cricket club.
I was born in Welwyn Garden City, and it is my privilege to represent two brilliant and unique places and new towns in Parliament; I will always be a champion for them. If we are to meet the moment and address the housing crisis, we need advocates for the next generation of these communities on both sides of the Chamber. Let us invest in renewing the new towns that have been with us since the 1940s; let us be bold in planning the communities of the future; and let us get building.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray), in particular for her moving comments about community. While obviously community starts with the people, it does need a bit of a boost from the planners and developers from time to time.
Seeing is believing when it comes to delivering the homes that the country urgently needs, and I have seen and been inspired by things in Rugby. Just as we have heard from hon. Members about how the old new towns inform the new new towns, the urban extensions to old old towns such as Rugby can provide some guidance and inspiration. We have a fantastic Housing Minister who is totally committed—as are the Government—to delivering on the 1.5 million houses commitment. That is vital, and will avoid a return to an era in which successive Governments failed to build enough homes for our growing population.
Whether in old or new towns, what our constituents want are first-class links to essential facilities such as GP surgeries, schools, green spaces, libraries and transport. In October 2024, I spoke about what I called the moon landing paradox—about how human beings can land a man on the moon and create artificial intelligence, nuclear power stations and the rest, but seem incapable of providing sufficient homes of sufficient quality at an affordable price for sufficient numbers of our citizens.
A regular refrain in my inbox is concern about Rugby’s expansion as a conurbation, which I appreciate stems from the fear that infrastructure and services have not kept pace with development. Like all MPs, I meet developers to ensure that the appropriate section 106 funding is used to alleviate these problems. In Rugby, we have a place called Houlton, an urban extension, and Urban&Civic is the master developer. In my view, it is a model of some success that deserves close attention because of key ways in which it has sought to overcome the stumbling blocks that often lead to public scepticism or opposition to new housing developments. That is clearly vital as the Government proceed with their plans.
Key to Houlton’s success was early investment in amenities, working with local and national stakeholders, providing confidence and reassurance, and demonstrating the tangible benefits of large-scale developments. For example, the early delivery of a 5 km link road to Rugby immediately mitigated residents’ concerns about congestion that could have occurred. It also enabled the accelerated development of St Gabriel’s primary school ahead of the first residents even moving in, and accelerated the development of Houlton school by seven years. I recently visited the primary school extension to that school.
Let us take that link road and imagine if instead it had been delivered in 2026, when the planning obligation required it. My inbox would quite rightly have been filled to the brim with complaints about lorries, road traffic, road safety and so on. Developers thought carefully about the amenities to put in place, which include a supermarket, cafés, restaurants, the Dollman Farm community hub, great pedestrian routes and more. I am assured that a parkway train station will also arrive, but like trains these days, it may take some time.
To replicate such developments and achieve this Government’s goals, we must be clear-eyed in our focus, maintain our vision and invest significantly—something I know the Government are doing with their £39 billion affordable homes plan, which is a priority for my constituents. What is clearly needed now is a resolute focus by the Government, which I believe they have, on working in partnership with developers and investors, and on making sure that the master developers or corporations have the resources and backing needed to deliver on the promises they make to our communities.
Housing and planning are a terrain littered with broken promises and unintended consequences. We have constructed an edifice of often well-intentioned constraints on Government, which on the surface exist to protect the environment, archaeological sites, local political opinion, wildlife and so on, but which in reality make it harder for developments to be brought forward quickly. Although I did not coin the phrase, I was the first MP to say in the House—it was last January—that we should “build, baby, build.” I stand by that statement. I commend the Government for moving quickly and boldly in reforming our planning system, having an ambitious home building target and insisting—often against the will of some house builders—on affordability and the provision of social housing. What I would like to see is even more of an “action this day” approach, which I am confident Labour Members will support, using every power available to us as a Government to overcome any and all impediments to the delivery of these new towns across the country and to get them started pronto.
I will suggest some ideas to the Minister. For example, we could stipulate five areas across the country where there are large populations of young people and pass legislation to allow modular housing developments. We could ensure that they are of high quality by running a competition globally and nationally for the best architects and engineers in the world to design small modular homes with up to two bedrooms for substantially less than the cheapest site-built home. I spoke about the moon landing paradox, and this could be something of a moonshot: an effort to show those of lower incomes and people starting their careers or families that we have their backs. We could further use the “prisoners building homes” model to innovate, reduce costs and simultaneously reduce reoffending. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on those moonshot-type suggestions.
Bold action is needed—it is essential if we are to truly make a difference for our communities—and that is exactly what we are seeing from the Government. More power to their elbow.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I am often last with my contributions, but hopefully not least. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for an excellent opening speech, as well as other colleagues—in particular those from new towns—who have spoken. I represent a town that was founded in the seventh century, and I am really proud of our history and heritage, but something that has really struck me as many of my colleagues have spoken is the importance of neighbourhood and community in what makes a great town.
This Government’s plan to build 12 new towns is a positive change from the short-termism, lack of ambition and decline that we have experienced over the past decade and a half. For too long, Britain’s lack of affordable housing has been put in the “too difficult” box, where challenges are tinkered with but the big, difficult decisions are perpetually delayed and politicians do what is easy for now, rather than what is right for the future. I welcome this Government’s decision to restore the dream of home ownership for the rising generation. We will have new towns, new transport infrastructure in the north, which was announced yesterday, and new, home-grown clean energy that will, over time, mean that energy bills make up a smaller share of household incomes—a new Britain.
Although we will get new homes, there will not be a new town in County Durham, as other areas need them more. However, the whole country will benefit from not just the economic growth, but their potential to modernise our country. As others have said, when these towns are built, I hope that they are truly 21st-century towns for a new era—beautiful, green and harnessing the best of British ingenuity. I was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), who spoke eloquently about what those towns should look like.
I have come here today with one simple ask: that every new town be sustainably built, with a modern district heating network. That is not radical or a new or untested approach to providing cheaper and lower-carbon power. The Government announced last year six areas that will be put on to heating networks, but I have not heard them mentioned in conjunction with the new towns.
In Denmark, 70% of houses are already connected to district heating networks. Some 75% of those are already using fully renewable green energy sources, and they have a goal of increasing that to 100% by 2030. The average Danish home on a district heating network has an average energy bill of £835 a year, which is around £1,000 less than the energy bill of the average home in the UK. In Germany, about 15% of homes are on district heating networks, but in cities such as Munich, Hamburg and Berlin the figure is closer to a third, with an ambitious goal to bring it up to a half. The very fact is that being part of a heating network is more energy-efficient, but energy efficiency grows when the most sustainable energy sources are used for the network.
I encourage the Government to look seriously at the opportunities presented by geothermal energy so that we do not risk being left behind. Germany has a goal to increase its geothermal energy tenfold by 2030. That can mean deep geothermal, where deep wells bring water to the surface at a very high temperature, such as at the Eden Project or United Downs in Cornwall. That is also used in Stoke-on-Trent’s heating system and in Southampton, where a city heating network draws from deep geothermal wells—I believe that project was set up by the Minister for Energy Security when he led Southampton city council. We can also use shallow geothermal, where water is passed through a heat exchanger. That includes places using mine water, such as in Gateshead or Lanchester Wines in Durham.
Geothermal can be done anywhere, but three of the new towns—Victoria North in Manchester, Leeds South Bank and Adlington—lend themselves particularly well to it because of their geology. Having listened to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), though, I can suggest other alternatives where the geography is even more advantageous.
The use of geothermal and heating networks would be beneficial to the UK’s just transition from oil and gas, since we have skilled workers in drilling and pipelines. The National Geothermal Centre and the Durham Energy Institute are world-leading in this area and on hand to work with the Government to develop the right solutions. Imagine moving into a new home in a new town, knowing that it has 100 years of free heating flowing through the pipes from under the ground.
I gently ask that the Government seriously consider looking at how these new towns and their infrastructure draw their energy. Doing so will benefit the efforts that we are making in other parts of the country, including in Durham, to be part of this national story of renewal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I express my gratitude to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for a really engaging speech about how it is the people who invest their lives in the community who make it what it is—a sentiment that I am sure we all share. I have learnt a great deal more about new towns from hon. Members across the House, and it has been a privilege to listen to the debate.
In our manifesto, the Liberal Democrats committed to 10 new garden cities, so we welcome this debate and the Government’s ambitions for new towns—depending on how they are implemented, of course. It is vital to have a new generation of major communities, given the terrible state of affordability that the housing sector got into under the Conservative Government. That is why we have a big ambition of 150,000 social homes per year, which is above the Government’s current target. However, new towns must not come at the expense of existing communities and towns. My hon. Friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches are engaging in a positive and constructive spirit with a range of new towns on their boundaries, alongside the Government and local communities.
New towns must deliver in social terms—the homes provided—but also environmentally and economically, as the mark 1, 2 and 3 new towns did so successfully. In our view, three critical principles need to be met: new towns must be environmentally ambitious, they must be successful in social terms—that means infrastructure— and there must be long-term financial investment. That investment must be sufficient to ensure that housing is genuinely affordable and will offer a decent home in a good environment, in all senses of that word, as hon. Members have expressed it in many different ways throughout the debate.
On environmental ambition, I regret to say that garden cities seem to have been airbrushed out of this programme —unintentionally, I hope—in ways that are out of keeping with the post-war new towns programme. What was originally called the town garden in Stevenage was a great reflection of how the garden city principle informed and provided the basis for the new towns. The Garden City Association campaigned for a new towns programme before the war. Now it is the Town and Country Planning Association—I should probably declare an interest as an honorary, voluntary vice-president of that organisation.
Garden cities are not just words; as we have heard, they were the basis of the new towns of Letchworth and Welwyn, and of many others. “Let the countryside invade the town” was one of Ebenezer Howard’s cries. I often wonder whether he wrote those words at the very desk that is in front of me, because his day job was as a parliamentary Clerk. In his spare time, he wrote a radical piece called “To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform”. It did not sell very well, so a year later he renamed it “Garden Cities of To-morrow”, and that book laid the foundation for the garden cities and new towns that were to be built throughout the country. He was surely right to espouse a vision of how people and nature, town and country, and society and the environment can thrive together. He was right then, and surely that vision is right now.
These new towns must set the highest standards for nature protection. They need well-insulated homes that are cheap to run, with solar panels on the roof, as promoted by the sunshine Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson). They need district heating and cheap heat, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) pointed out—that is good for the planet, as is good public transport that does not pollute and jam up the roads.
Those ideas were pioneered by many of the garden cities. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) explained well, the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation endowed the environment with assets and resources so that it would continue to be protected into the future. For over 100 years, as he said, that trust has been able to fund and care for the environment and put money back into Letchworth as a community. That provided a great model. In another reflection of how garden cities provided the basis for new towns, Milton Keynes’ Parks Trust does exactly the same thing. Where such estates have not been sold off, as has been described in relation to other new towns, that is an incredibly successful model. As Members have said, it is vital to endow the public realm and the environment with the resources and investment needed to sustain them for 100 years.
Turning to social impacts and infrastructure, we Liberal Democrats would like to ask the Minister how councils and communities are going to make decisions about the impacts of the new towns. Any spatial development strategy is going to come after the event, as the new towns have already been designated. Parish councils such as Somerton in Oxfordshire, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is working hard to advocate for, have pointed out a range of simultaneous proposals in Oxfordshire, including the Oxfordshire strategic rail freight interchange, 280,000 square metres of warehousing at Baynards Green—which, coincidentally, is being considered today by Cherwell district council—the Puy du Fou leisure park, and many other developments that will collectively generate 47 million additional trips per year. The Government are engaged in the ongoing strategic environmental assessment, which I welcome, and it may assess some of the impacts, but there is no plan that involves local authorities in resolving these decisions, in taking decisions about how the new towns, such as Heyford Park in Oxfordshire, will land in their midst, and in considering how such developments will affect the existing network and hierarchy of towns and communities. There is a missing link with strategic planning, and it needs to be put back. That would allow the community-led approach to these developments that we want to see and allow affected local authorities to have their say. After all, the location for Milton Keynes was negotiated between central and local government.
As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, it is vital to respect the identities of the places in which these new towns are located. Will the Minister commission a rapid sub-regional plan process for the councils in each of these locations so that they can resolve the issues? He has already indicated that he may, but will he visit in due course all these locations, so that he can engage with the local communities concerned? As other Members have asked, will he confirm—I think he said he said that he was thinking about it—that the planned housing numbers will indeed count towards local plan targets imposed by the Government’s standard method? It will be impossible for local leaders and local councils to develop these new towns at the same time as trying to deliver the impossible housing targets that many of them are facing. There is a 41% increase in local plan numbers in my Somerset council area alone, for example.
On social impacts within towns, the pre-war garden cities and post-war new towns were 90% social housing. In the Select Committee, the Minister indicated that the Government may be walking back from the 40% affordable housing target. What is the minimum that they will accept?
Infrastructure is needed by new and existing towns, particularly those affected by these plans. For example, Ardley station is needed to serve the Heyford Park new town and the existing community. Other forms of infrastructure also too often go missing, and that is true not just of new towns. For urban extensions, promised and needed GP surgeries have never come forward, including in Orchard Grove in my Taunton and Wellington constituency and in Bicester in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bicester and Woodstock. Will the Government ensure that existing communities will not lose out on GP surgeries as a result of new towns being given those facilities? These vital relationships with existing communities need to be resolved. Infrastructure for transport, water, energy, health and active travel must come first, and before the housing.
Let me turn to the financial support that these developments will need if they are to be successful. All these things cost money—we recognise that. We are therefore disappointed that the Minister, I think, said to the Select Committee that there is no pot for new town funding, and that poses a real risk that the £3.9 billion a year funding for the affordable housing programme will be used to fund the new towns programme, inevitably taking money away from other areas. Although the land value capture model that the Government are promoting is welcome and we support it, it will not be enough.
As many Government Members will know, the original post-war new towns had significant, 60-year Treasury loans. They were worth about £4.7 billion; that is about £140 billion today. Those loans were repaid—not just in full, but with a surplus coming back to the Treasury. The bulk of it was repaid in 1999. Since then, almost another £1 billion has been repaid from further land sales and receipts from that investment. It is a sound investment. No doubt the Treasury will say, “Don’t worry, the market can deal with this. We don’t need any public money.” But markets do not look 50, 60 or 100 years ahead. Markets do not know how to build communities with facilities for real people—the kind of people that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch spoke about. We need long-term financial investment from the Government so that these schemes will be successful. Without it, we risk repeating some of the failures of the past.
We stand ready to work with this Government in a constructive way on their new towns programme, but only if it provides the financial investment that is needed so that it is a success and, crucially, so that existing towns do not lose out. It must commit to long-term investment over and above land value capture, so that local councillors and mayors are not left out in the cold, trying to promote these projects with one arm tied behind their back. Finally, the programme must recognise that, in a society under threat from climate change, environmental ambition needs to be at the forefront, learning from the very best of the garden city ideals.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for bringing it forward. I have been rehearsing the name of her constituency in my head for quite some time, and I have made a mess of pronouncing it right from the outset, so I apologise to her. I also thank the 16 hon. Members who have spoken in the debate.
It seems that every time I return to this place, the Government have fallen further and further away from justifying their increasingly mistaken belief that they can deliver on their 1.5 million homes target. No one believes they are going to reach such a lofty, albeit much- needed, figure. We have pointed out that the Government’s efforts to reach that unrealistic target appear geared towards removing as much local input into decision making as possible, and towards shifting development from brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, where demand and infrastructure exists, to rural areas, where demand is often lower and infrastructure is far less well provided or even non-existent.
That brings me to the Government’s new towns policy, about which, as it is currently framed, we have significant concerns, which I will touch on shortly. At the Labour party conference at the end of September last year, the Secretary of State pledged that the Government would go ahead with work on new towns in at least 12 locations. Since then, it has emerged that only three of those new towns will begin before the end of this Parliament, with the rest to be built after 2029.
The three new towns that we will supposedly see begun before 2029 are Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds South Bank, and Crews Hill and Chase Park in the London borough of Enfield. While His Majesty’s Opposition recognise the need to build new homes, we hope that the Government will work harder to listen to and address the concerns of local people living near these three sites than they have done with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), whose constituency includes one of the other nine lower-priority new town sites. He highlighted some of the Opposition’s key concerns when he presented a petition to the House on 17 December last year about plans for the Adlington new town, and he did so again in his excellent speech earlier today. The concerns he outlined were about the adverse impact on the green belt and on agricultural land, strains on local infrastructure and services, and the adverse impact on local communities. We are sympathetic to those concerns, which are not restricted to Adlington.
One of the first new towns earmarked for building is in the London borough of Enfield, which has 37.3% green belt and 47.6% open space. According to the CPRE, the green space of Enfield, much of which is based on the borders of the Enfield Chase heritage area of special character, gives large parts of Enfield a rural character that is comparable to Richmond park or Hampstead heath, which are areas of significant local and historical value. The site of the proposed new town currently comprises commercial horticultural nurseries, garden centres, a golf course, working farms and greenfield land. The local businesses employ around 1,000 people, and all of this is threatened by the proposal. These are not vast swathes of undeveloped potential, but important green spaces that help as much as urban centres to define an area’s character and community.
Tempsford in Bedfordshire is much the same, and has been chosen as an area for a whole new stand-alone town. My hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) highlighted, on behalf of his constituents, some of his concerns as the local Member of Parliament. It is vital that the Government work to fully and properly consult a local community like Tempsford—an area currently made up of small villages—rather than continue their top-down crusade against the countryside. That is why we Conservatives have repeatedly sought assurances from the Government about their plans for full and proper consultation with local people and communities. I hope the Minister will commit to that today.
The impact of new towns does not stop at the boundaries of the local authority area in which they are developed. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) has highlighted that the proposed Crews Hill development in the London borough of Enfield will be closer to the village of Goffs Oak in his constituency than to Enfield town hall. The imposition of a new town of 21,000 properties on the border of his constituency cannot avoid having a direct impact on his constituents. Will the Minister therefore commit to proper consultation of communities and councils adjacent to the local authority in which the proposed new town may be built? He is a decent man, and I hope that he will.
The Opposition recognise that the country is in desperate need of not just more housing, but more housing in the right places with the right infrastructure to support it. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) made precisely that point in her speech. Identifying where places have the right infrastructure, brownfield or urban capacity, and where new homes are most wanted, is a key factor. The Government must get serious about their failure to improve house building during their first 18 months in power. They must stop making excuses and blaming everybody else, and instead look at how to get the country building in the right places.
That is why the Opposition have called for a brownfield-first approach to be properly actioned, not just paid lip service to, as it is by the Government. According to the CPRE, in a large number of local authorities there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years. The same report shows that England’s brownfield sites increased in number, land area and minimum net dwellings by up to 54%, 6% and 34%, respectively, between 2018 and 2024. The Government will no doubt point to their brownfield passport policy in response to that criticism, but it should be noted that this policy, if actioned, is not without risk. It could result in bypassing crucial local input, minimising local community power in their own local neighbourhoods and rushing through developments despite legitimate local objections, which will do nothing for people’s faith in democracy.
Even if that proves to be a misplaced concern, brownfield passports do not deal with some of the deep-seated causes of brownfield delays. After all, we know that there are already hundreds of thousands of planning permissions on sites that have not yet been built, and it is a lazy generalisation and an inadequate explanation simply to blame all of that on the land banking of greedy developers, because the causes are more complex. Funding, complexity, increasing regulatory burdens, delays and other factors all play their part. If the Government do nothing to address those factors, all they will succeed in is achieving more undeveloped planning permissions. As we all know, people need real buildings to live in, not unexecuted planning permissions.
Richard Fuller
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making the point about making brownfield sites a priority, and I think he is giving the Minister some very good advice. The first question that will be asked by people in Tempsford and the villages, who may see so much more housing come upon them, is, “Well, why haven’t you built in areas that are already developed? Have you maximised the potential in those areas?” It will be to the Government’s benefit if they can demonstrate, as I am sure the Minister will from the Dispatch Box shortly, that they will push existing urban areas as hard as they can to maximise housing potential and avoid some of the artificial blockages to which my hon. Friend is referring.
Gareth Bacon
I agree. It would be a great tragedy if the Government push on with their new towns policy and simply think that their brownfield passport will solve everything, because by having fewer developments on brownfield sites and some developments on greenfield sites, we will end up losing the precious green belt and still not delivering the amount of housing we need. That would be an own goal from the Government, so I hope they will take this point away and do something about it.
The Government need to look further and faster at the proper development of brownfield land, rather than ripping up the green belt and steamrolling over local democracy, local voices and local communities. Recent history shows that this approach works. If the Government want to see urban regeneration or densification done right, they can follow Conservative examples and pursue brownfield first, not greenfield first, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), highlighted at the Conservative party conference. The Government need look no further than the Olympic Park in east London—a brownfield site transformed into a superbly connected hub of housing, business, retail and leisure that was completed under Boris Johnson as the Conservative Mayor of London. It was the same with Canary Wharf under Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, when the old, dilapidated docks were completely regenerated, revitalised and reborn.
Finally, as the Opposition mentioned in the final stages of the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, the Government should add to their growing pile of U-turns and reverse the damaging blows the Chancellor and the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), dealt to the housing market and the construction market through their unholy trinity of economic decline, tax hikes and cuts to demand-side housing policies. Only through a genuine brownfield-first approach and a reversal of the damage inflicted by No. 11 and the former Secretary of State will the Government succeed in protecting our countryside and get on to building real homes properly connected with the right facilities that people actually want.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to close this debate for the Government. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) and thank her for securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the House an opportunity to debate this incredibly important matter. I was struck, in what was a strong opening speech by my hon. Friend, by her emphasis on people and the ability of “planning done properly” to change lives. That is a hugely important statement and a principle that guides the Government in all areas. I thank all hon. Members for contributing to the debate. We had a series of thoughtful, passionate and in many cases personal contributions, and I think the most references to concrete animals of any debate in my nearly 11 years in this place. It has been a thoughtful and important debate, rich with history.
The post-war new towns programme was the most ambitious town building effort ever undertaken in the UK. It transformed the lives of millions of working people by giving them affordable and well-designed homes in well-planned and beautiful surroundings. The 32 communities it created are now home to millions of people, including a number of hon. Members who made contributions this afternoon. I stress that the Government will continue to invest in the regeneration of our existing new towns. My hon. Friend made reference to some of the investment currently being made in hers. My hon. Friends the Members for Telford (Shaun Davies), for Rugby (John Slinger), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) and for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) all made the case for what is happening, and what they want to see happen in the years ahead, to further revitalise the places they represent.
Alongside those efforts, we are determined to bring forward the next generation of new towns, as per our manifesto commitment. In so doing, we have taken inspiration from the proud legacy of the 1945 Labour Government who, through the New Towns Act 1946, initiated the first post-war wave of new town building, as well as the subsequent waves in the 1960s. But we have also sought to learn crucial lessons from those previous efforts, for example—this was a point made by several hon. Members—the fact that previous new town initiatives did not always embed long-term stewardship into their development and the detrimental consequences that has had for those locations.
As the House will know, to progress the next generation of new towns, the Government established an independent new towns taskforce within months of taking office. That taskforce, chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, with Dame Kate Barker as his deputy and eight other highly regarded expert members drawn from across the built environment sector—I pay huge tribute to all their work in producing their final report—was given a clear mandate: to make recommendations to Ministers on the location and delivery of new towns, with the objective of supporting and unlocking economic growth, as well as making a significant contribution to meeting housing demand in England.
The Government made it clear that the taskforce should consider not only large-scale stand-alone new communities of the type Tempsford might be, but urban extensions and urban regeneration schemes that would work with the grain of development in a given area. We specified that each of the new settlements should contain at least 10,000 homes, but made clear that we expected a number to be far larger in size. We also commissioned the taskforce to ensure that any proposals would deliver
“well-connected, well-designed, sustainable and attractive places where people want to live and have all the infrastructure, amenities and services necessary to sustain thriving communities.”
Let me be clear, and hon. Members are right to have raised this: success on those criteria will be integral to the success of the programme as a whole.
Last September, the Government published the final report of the taskforce, as well as their initial response to that report and immediate next steps. In that initial response, the Government warmly welcomed all 12 of the locations recommended by the taskforce on the basis that, prima facie, each has the clear potential to deliver on the Government’s objectives. We also made it clear that Tempsford, Crews Hill in Enfield and Leeds South Bank look particularly promising to us as sites that might make significant contributions to unlocking economic growth and accelerating housing delivery. We are determined to get spades in the ground on at least three new towns in this Parliament—I stress the words “at least three”, because three is not the limit of our ambition. I think the shadow Minister incorrectly assumed that it will be just the three locations we have cited as promising. We are determined to deliver at least three, but we are prepared to progress work on a far larger range of locations if that proves possible.
As the House will be aware, we are now in the process of conducting a strategic environmental assessment to better understand the environmental impacts of new town developments in the locations recommended by the taskforce, as well as refining the scope of the programme more generally. Again, I want to stress that no final decisions on locations will be made until the SEA concludes and that the prioritised locations could change as a result of that process.
To respond directly to the shadow Minister’s point, we intend to consult on the programme alongside the completed SEA report in the coming weeks. The feedback to that consultation will inform final decisions on the locations we intend to adopt, as well as other matters such as how we allocate funding between sites and how we define and support new town locations in planning policy. When we are at the point of making decisions, we will publish a comprehensive response to the taskforce’s final report.
Hon. Members have raised a number of specific points in today’s debate, which I will respond to as fully as I can within the constraints of the ongoing SEA and programme scoping process. The hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), raised the matter of local housing need and how housing targets interact with our new towns programme. We have been clear that our starting assumption was that new towns should deliver over and above the targets produced by the standard method, not least because we expect construction of the new towns that move forward as a result of this programme to begin in earnest only towards the end of the Parliament. However, I have been reflecting on this matter—not least in response to representations made by hon. Members—and I want to ensure that when we come forward with our final position on LHN, it is fair and consistent across the country and provides the necessary incentives for communities to want to see new towns come forward.
The Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), and other hon. Members raised the issue of affordable housing. I assure the House that we are not walking back or watering down our commitments on affordable housing. We have been very clear that new towns should have a range of housing types available, including adequate proportions of genuinely affordable homes.
It is worth stressing that the taskforce endorsed the Government’s commitment on affordable homes in its final report—it was a Government gold standard to aim for a target of 40% affordable housing. The taskforce was very clear in its final report that it endorsed that target and that it wanted to see 40% as a minimum, with half of those being social rented homes. We desperately need social rented homes, which is why that is such a priority for the Government.
The taskforce clearly said that where viability makes achieving that 40% target challenging, the Government should look to meet the requirement through grant funding, which is something the Government have to consider as we scope the programme, in particular in locations with low land values, where meeting that affordable number will be more challenging. Again, we will bring forward further detail on that and the other place-making principles in the taskforce’s final report after the environmental assessment and consultation, when we can provide hon. Members and the public more widely with more detail.
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green also referred to delivery models. The Government agree with the taskforce that the preferred model for new towns should be the development corporation model. I think the House well understands the benefits that come with that. There are, of course, a range of development corporation types, including centrally led, mayoral and even locally led development corporations —it all depends on the location of the town, its devolution settlement and the capacity and capability of the delivering authorities. Again, we are assessing which delivery vehicle options are most appropriate to individual locations and will come forward with further information on that point in due course.
Several hon. Members raised the issue of funding, challenging me to make it clear why there has not been more detail on funding and why there is not a dedicated pot of funding for new towns. It is because the funding required for new towns in this spending review period will vary according to the needs of the places that the taskforce has recommended and that we ultimately adopt through the scoping process.
I want to make it clear to hon. Members, however, that the delivery of new towns will be backed by funding across the Government’s landmark housing programmes, such as the £39 billion social and affordable housing programme and the hundreds of millions of pounds of grants that are available through our national housing delivery fund for land and infrastructure investment; there is also the additional capital funding that will be managed by the new national housing bank, which will invest in house building across the country. Even though there was no specific new towns fund announced in the Budget, there are funding sources to draw upon.
Gideon Amos
The Minister is always very generous with his time. Can I press him a bit further on whether the Treasury has ruled out the long-term loans that were there for the post-war new towns programme?
Matthew Pennycook
I will come on to talk about financing in more detail, in particular the options that we are considering, but I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will, again, have to wait for the publication of the SEA report and the programme that will go out to consultation. He and other hon. Members, as well as their communities and the neighbouring communities to the sites proposed for adoption, will then be able to feed into that process more widely. Long-term funding is available in this spending review period and going forward, because many of these propositions are for new, large-scale communities that will have to be built out over decades, in some cases.
I will touch on two or three other issues. Most importantly, several hon. Members raised the theme of public engagement. What the taskforce heard through its call for evidence and engagement with local leaders and local areas—the Government were kept up to date with that, as Sir Michael Lyons reported to me regularly on the taskforce’s work, as the House would expect—was that there is a huge appetite for new new towns to come forward. There are lots of parts of the country that would desperately welcome a new town.
I recognise, however, that in other areas, particularly in small villages such as Tempsford, there is trepidation about what may come and there are questions that residents want answered. In some cases—my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) has been forthright and honest about this—there is outright hostility and objection to the proposed locations. We have met and had several conversations about his particular case, and I assure him that I recognise the strength of feeling in his community. His residents can be in no doubt that he has conveyed the strength of feeling about that location very forcefully to me.
The taskforce’s report is clear that existing communities should be a key part of any new town development; community engagement is one of its core recommended place-making principles. The Government are working closely with local leaders as part of the scoping process of the programme and building our evidence base to understand the impacts of potential new town locations. As I have said, we will carry out the appropriate assessments and public consultations before any final decisions are made about locations. I must stress—we have been candid about this fact from the outset—that ultimately, decisions on new town locations will be made in the national interest.
Chris Curtis
I thank the Minister for being generous with his time and for reinforcing the Government’s strategic direction, which I think most of us agree with. As we move on to the next stage, many of the local council leaders who he has spoken about feel like there is friction and frustration in the communication between them and the Department, with the Department making it feel like they are bidding for the money. Will he meet local council leaders to reset that relationship so that it can be more constructive in the next stage of the process?
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend made the same points when I appeared before the Select Committee earlier this week. I have taken them on board and I am happy to look at what the Department can do to ensure that there is a constructive relationship in each instance where the Government are seeking to build the evidence base. I certainly do not recognise, however, that it is the Government’s intention to go out to local areas and ask them to bid in to the programme. We want to work with local communities and local leaders to better understand and assess the proposition in each case.
I want to address two further issues. First, on financing, all the lessons suggest that once development is under way on new town sites, the long-term increase in the value of land can be captured and reinvested. Several hon. Members made that point forcefully, and the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is correct that the three waves of new towns programmes each repaid the investment that was ploughed into them up front. We know that, and the taskforce recommended that we should explore a range of options, including taxation, in the financing model—for example, we are exploring the role that tax increment financing might play in the new towns programme, as was mentioned by the Select Committee Chair.
Lastly, I want to address the important theme of stewardship, which several hon. Members raised. We welcome all the taskforce’s recommendations on place-making and other issues that will be pertinent in the years ahead as we take the programme forward. On stewardship, the taskforce recommended, rightly in my view, that a long-term stewardship model should be in place from the outset and that it should include clear governance and funding structures to manage and maintain communal assets. In that way, we can learn the lessons from the earlier waves of new towns and get things right for this new programme.
To conclude, the Government’s new town programme, in the Government’s view, provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally reshape the delivery of large-scale new communities and, by delivering them, to boost economic growth and productivity, and make a significant contribution to meeting housing need in England over the coming decades. The Government remain resolute in their determination to bring forward the next generation of new towns. We will work tirelessly across Government and with delivery partners and local communities to ensure that they are, in the words of the taskforce, not just places to live, but places to live well, and places for people.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch for securing and opening the debate, and to other hon. Members for taking part. I know that hon. Members will take me at my word when I say that I look forward to further engagement with Members across the House as we advance the programme in the months and years ahead.
Katrina Murray
When I applied to the Backbench Business Committee for this debate, I said, with bravado, that there was a lot of interest, even though I had some concerns that the subject might be a little bit niche. I am therefore very glad to have seen the debate this afternoon. It has been a debate of the mothers and the grandmothers, and I wish Yvonne Bonavia a very happy birthday. It has been a wonderful opportunity to do what has been described to me as writing love letters to our towns, our garden cities and our villages, as they currently are—places that we love.
This has also been a debate about real concerns, and I hope that the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) have heard the experiences of my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) and for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia). If those are not enough, I will introduce them to my mother, whose village was subsumed into the Glenrothes new town, but she recognised that that was the only way she could stay in her area and raise a family; the jobs and her life were there.
I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Chris Vince) and for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker) for their references to town art. It does not matter if it is concrete cows, polar bears, hippos or elephants. In my case, it is totems. They were a strong part of the development corporations making ready use of the concrete at their disposal, and town artists provided beauty in the built environment. I encourage the next generation of development corporations to include town artists in the workforce. I thank everyone who took part in the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of new towns.