The Built Environment Committee has published its report, ‘New Towns: Laying the Foundations’, following its inquiry into new towns.
Strong and dedicated central government leadership is essential if the next generation of new towns is to succeed.
This will not be possible without the Government being able to communicate its overall vision for the new towns programme in terms that resonate with the public, parliamentarians, local authorities, and the built environment sector. And for this, the Government needs to be clear about what it is aiming to achieve through the programme.
So says the cross-party House of Lords Built Environment Committee in its report, New Towns: Laying the Foundations.
The key findings from the report are:
- The necessary leadership and long-term stewardship of the programme and of each individual new town will not be achieved through existing structures. While the presence of a dedicated, cabinet-level figurehead at the heart of Government will be essential, the Committee also argues for the creation of a new agency to run and oversee the delivery programme. The Committee was hugely impressed by the genuine energy and enthusiasm of the Minister for Housing and Planning, but his portfolio is too broad and his authority too limited to provide the cross-government coordination necessary to overcome the inevitable hurdles to delivery – not least unlocking the necessary funding from the Treasury.
- And funding is one of the most critical issues facing the programme. The original post-war new towns programme received very significant public funding in the shape of long-term loans, with the Treasury acting as a patient investor, underwriting the programme for decades, from planning, through construction, and on until maturity. In the current fiscal context, the ability of the Government to provide funding at this level is significantly reduced, meaning that alternative funding models will be needed to plug the gap.
- One clear route to encouraging and supporting the provision of this kind of funding from the private and alternative sectors is by delivering the infrastructure first – for example, building the public transport links, schools, and hospitals – before breaking ground on new housing. In the course of the inquiry, the Committee saw clear examples of how this approach was able to support the delivery of thriving and innovative communities and could, in time, provide a source of ongoing funding for development. The Government will also need to take real steps to ensure that it is able to capture as much of the land value for the selected sites as possible, including through reform of the compulsory purchase regime – not least by ensuring that hope value is excluded from land valuations.
- Delivery of the new towns should, in almost all cases, be through development corporations. A number of possible models are available, but the Committee recommends that democratic accountability should be ensured through local authority representation within those delivery and governance structures. Whatever model is used, it must be clear that it is there for the long term, with a clear responsibility for stewarding the project through delivery and community building, and for managing community assets for the long term.
Lord Gascoigne, Chairman of the Committee, said: “The Government’s new towns programme is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build genuinely affordable, high-quality homes and to create communities where people want to live.
“Public support is fundamental to the success of the programme. The Government needs to work hard, day in and day out, to articulate a clear and ambitious vision for its programme. A key element of this must be to inspire developers and planning authorities to use the new towns as a model for future development.
“But a vision alone will not be enough to get these new towns built: the Government needs to show that it has the grip necessary to drive the programme forward and make it happen.
“Now that the New Towns Taskforce has published its shortlist of locations for 12 new towns the Government needs to set out, in explicit terms, how it is planning to fund and deliver them.”
Other findings and conclusions from the report include:
- The Government should establish a clear legal framework for patient investment by the private and public sectors from the start of the new towns programme.
- Returns on loans and investment will only accrue in the long term, and patient investment by both the private and public sectors will therefore be the primary source of finance for the programme. This will require a different approach to the phasing of investment.
- The Government should retain a small, but effective ownership stake in each development corporation in order to encourage investor confidence and demonstrate accountability at a national level.
- There are significant skills shortages in a range of key sectors, particularly in the planning profession, which pose fundamental challenges to the entire programme and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
- The inclusion of plots of differing sizes in masterplans offers opportunities for SME developers to participate effectively in the delivery of new towns. It also encourages human-scale development, avoiding homogeneity.
- The Government should set high-level design standards for the entire programme, to be overseen by a centralised planning agency for new and expanded towns. These should be supplemented by locally sensitive design standards for each individual new town.
