"When Lewis Silkin, planning minister from 1945-1950, visited the small village of Stevenage following its designation as a new town, locals shouted “dictator!” and “Gestapo!” and the train station sign was changed to Silkingrad"
- David Churchill - Carter Jonas
The new towns of the 20th century played an important role in addressing a housing shortage, particularly post war: 1940s new towns Bracknell, Crawley, Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City house 662,000 people today. But despite these successes, more recent attempts to replicate their achievements – notably ‘Eco Towns’ and ‘Garden Communities’ – failed to do so.
Almost a century on, the New Towns Taskforce has embarked on another ambitious programme of new towns and is due to report back to the government with a list of potential locations for ‘exemplary’ large communities (10,000 homes or more) in July. It will put in place the principles and standards to provide good quality places, explore new ways to attract future funding and investment and identify practical solutions to remove barriers that will unlock the delivery of new towns. It has also been tasked with putting in place plans to engage with mayors, local leaders and communities in doing so. This work will form the publication of a report due to land on ministers’ desks later this year.
Since the New Towns Development Corporations (NTDCs) were wound up in the 1980s, attempts at building large-scale settlements have largely floundered.
The post-war New Towns model required that homes and the infrastructure needed to support them were built simultaneously. Initial investment, and later profits made from selling the homes, was used to fund new transport networks, pedestrian and cycling routes, and services such as schools, hospitals and GP surgeries. With this approach, the new town becomes its own economic powerhouse, attracting residents with brand new community facilities and attracting companies with its excellent infrastructure and an available workforce.
The ten proposed Eco Towns, one of the first announcements by Gordon Brown when taking office in 2007, faced controversy from the outset. Inspired by European projects, these 20,000-home conurbations set out to deliver 30 per cent affordable housing and achieve high environmental standards. But, despite a dedicated Planning Policy Statement published in 2009, their site selection process faced controversy from the outset.
The original ten sites were eventually whittled down to four: Whitehill and Bordon (Hampshire), St Austell (Cornwall), Rackheath (Norfolk) and North West Bicester (Oxfordshire). When the Coalition government came into power, the funding was halved and later reduced altogether.
The Garden Communities programme – ‘locally led large settlements’ based on the early 20th century Garden City Movement – was launched in 2014. More than 40 sites were designated, but 33 of these were for fewer than 10,000 homes and only one, Ebbsfleet in Kent, exceeds 15,000 homes. Not only were these schemes much smaller than the original new towns but the programme has struggled to gain site allocations in local plans. A stocktake in 2019 found that just 14,000 homes had been delivered under the programme and a third of homes proposed had no formal planning status at all.”
To succeed in delivering new towns, there are some specific issues that the government must focus on. Viability is crucial, especially concerning affordable housing targets. It is also important that the system builds in protections for landowners and removes potential or perceived deterrents, including new tax burdens. Additionally, to deliver at speed, new towns will need to be identified outside the local planning process and some significant changes must be made in relation to strategic planning – some of those proposed in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and more besides.
As we await the New Towns Taskforce’s location list, it is interesting to consider what sort of sites the Taskforce might choose and why.
Location matters because access to a sustainable public transport network is an important consideration for new communities. Where there is existing high-quality public transport accessible to the site, capital expenditure on public transport can be reduced and used to improve other facilities and services for the settlement. Where there is no existing public transport network, sites can be made sustainable but are likely to require greater capital expenditure.
Size is important as it dictates the level of infrastructure, and planning policy is quite rightly clear on the fact that new housing must be supported by appropriate levels of infrastructure. By this I don’t mean smaller sites can’t come forward, but the greater the scale, the potentially more ambitious proposals can be – for public transport and more.
And while the majority of proposals will provide basic levels of community infrastructure, it would be helpful if policy was clarified through a framework, describing how this should increase as schemes step up in scale. The framework should also clarify the level of public sector support for this element.
Sir Michael Lyons, who chairs of the Taskforce has promised to “work closely with local leaders and their communities, as well as the wider development and investment sectors to make sure these new towns are built in the right places”.
But, just as recent political history has shown the propensity of local objectors to thwart new housing proposals, NIMBYism also plagued the original New Towns movement. When Lewis Silkin, planning minister from 1945-1950, visited the small village of Stevenage following its designation as a new town, locals shouted “dictator!” and “Gestapo!” and the train station sign was changed to Silkingrad. The novelist EM Forster, who lived nearby, declared that the plans would fall like “a meteorite upon the ancient and delicate scenery of Hertfordshire”.
The government’s role won’t be easy, but Rayner, unlike Silkin, has the benefit of past successes to provide some reassurance. Vox pops from the 250,000 residents of Milton Keynes may prove very useful in combatting inevitable local resistance.
