A £9 million cash
injection to speed up the locally-led building of new garden towns and villages
across the country has been announced.
The Garden
Communities project is expected to deliver 200,000 properties on large sites by
2050, and the latest funding will help get 21 sites ready for development.
The government
project is helping ambitious councils get well-designed homes built on large
sites, and the money will help pay for master-planning and technical studies.
Work is already
underway on 10,000 properties across the country in garden towns and villages,
with 36,000 expected to be underway or completed by 2022.
Housing Minister Kit
Malthouse MP said: "We have not built enough homes in this country for the
last three decades, and we are turning that around as we work towards our
target to build 300,000 properties a year by the mid-2020s.
"This £9
million funding boost is giving councils the support and cash injection they
need so they can finish planning new developments and get diggers on
site."
The developments
being funded include a 2,000 home site for custom and self-builders in
Bicester, on land purchased by the council from the Ministry of Defence.
It also includes
developments in Basingstoke, Didcot, Taunton, Harlow-Gilston and across
Northamptonshire where work is already underway on the first phase of
developments.
The funding will be
administered by Homes England.
