New Towns

Chris Curtis Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.