Francis Truss, partner at Carter Jonas, looks at the importance of creating the right strategic framework for the government’s New Towns.
In March, ministers opened consultation on a New Towns Draft Programme and a Strategic Environmental Assessment. Seven locations are now proposed, each expected to deliver at least 10,000 homes and several capable of reaching around 40,000.
For housebuilders, investors and planning authorities, the important question is not only where the homes will go, but under what rules they will be delivered: the governance, funding, land assembly and planning framework that will make the new towns a success.
Looking to the past
The post-war new towns programme is often invoked as a blueprint for a new towns strategy. These 32 designated new towns are now home to about 2.8 million people. Their implementation and end results are far from perfect, and they do not provide a template that can simply be lifted into the 21st century, but they very clearly demonstrate the benefits of a nationally driven strategic growth and development strategy.
At the heart of that programme were development corporations. They had responsibilities relating to land assembly, planned at scale, coordinated infrastructure and took decisions over a timescale longer than a local electoral cycle. The lesson from Milton Keynes, Stevenage or Harlow is that large settlements need institutions with the authority to think as whole places.
Recent programmes have struggled partly for that reason. Eco towns and garden villages had ambitious aims but often lacked sufficient delivery capacity. The developments that did emerge did not always achieve the scale or associated infrastructure originally envisaged
Attracting funding
The current programme recognises that, with the government’s New Towns Draft Programme including ample reference to funding, support for town-wide masterplans and design codes, land acquisition, enabling infrastructure and advice on the right delivery vehicle (including development corporations where appropriate). It also proposes a New Towns Unit to provide gravitas.
In terms of funding, the ultimate prerequisite is certainty: the private sector can deal with complexity if it can price it, but drift cannot be easily priced. On this basis, a site that depends on three departments, two transport bodies, one water company, a local plan review and uncertain political consent is not a bankable proposition unless the framework is strong enough to hold those parts together.
The New Towns Draft Programme is significant because it would give substantial weight to the social and economic benefits of new towns; seek to stop piecemeal development, and make clear that where a proposal involves inappropriate development in the Green Belt, its strategic importance is likely to amount to very special circumstances.
Land as infrastructure
No part of the programme will be more important than land. New towns will be required to fund schools, health facilities, transport, utilities, green infrastructure and no less than 40% affordable housing, with at least half of that for social rent. That ambition has to be reflected in land values from the start.
If land is bought or promoted on the assumption of ordinary residential land values secured on a phased basis, the scheme may struggle to fund the provision of sufficient infrastructure to address the needs arising from the new community. The draft policy’s emphasis on early land assembly, voluntary negotiation and, where necessary, compulsory purchase is expected to be central to delivery. It is important that all parties recognise the roles and limitations of these mechanisms and the need to balance infrastructure delivery with a return.
Variation within the new town model
The minimum threshold of 10,000 homes is not the definition of a new town. At one end of the programme are stand-alone propositions such as Tempsford (anticipated to deliver 40,000 homes), which would rely on a major transport investment in the form of East West Rail and long-term masterplanning. At the other end of the spectrum are more modest urban regeneration opportunities including Leeds South Bank and Manchester Victoria North. Milton Keynes is different again: a renewed town, building on one of the best-known examples of the post-war programme.
New settlements, city-centre quarters and settlement expansions need different delivery tools, and so the model must be flexible to accommodate suitable powers, sequencing, infrastructure planning and funding.
Strategic planning must be at the heart of planning for new towns
The new towns programme recognises the limitations of planning only on a local level. Housing markets, commuting patterns, water networks, grid constraints and labour supply do not stop at the edge of a district. Strategic authorities and spatial development strategies should help, provided they have the capacity and authority to make the choices that individual local planning authorities often cannot.
The government now proposes that homes delivered through the new towns programme should count towards the housing targets of relevant strategic and local planning authorities. This is important, strategically, if the programme is to command local support. It also means that affected authorities will benefit from the confidence that they will not be left managing the costs and challenges while the wider region enjoys the benefits.
Timing
The final test is time. Understandably, the government wants to see the benefits of the new towns programme, and some first phases may progress quickly. But in the past the most successful new towns have been generational projects. Their success should be judged not only by starts on-site before the next election, but by whether the structure put in place can survive market cycles, spending reviews and changes of government.
Early delivery of homes matters, but so does land control, infrastructure funding, planning status, governance, stewardship and the phasing of employment space and community facilities. If those elements are treated as later details, the programme will inherit the very problems it is intended to solve.
We should learn from the old new towns without sentimentalising them. Their strongest legacy is not in their architectural styles or road layouts, but in seriousness of purpose. If this new programme is to work, it needs strategic planning, strong delivery bodies, realistic land economics and sustained commitment measured in decades.
