Delivery and location key to success of government new towns ambitions

Using new towns as a key element of Labour’s plans to deliver the largest housebuilding programme since the post-war period was announced at the end of last month as a bold move to meet the UK’s housing needs. However, the country is no stranger to creating such settlements and there has been mixed success too.

There are lots of lessons – positive and negative – that should be considered by Sir Michael Lyons in his role as leader of the recently formed New Towns Taskforce as he draws up the New Towns Code that will shape how these projects are delivered.

Reflecting on past new town developments, both in the UK and Europe, I think there are four essential factors that need to be considered in combination to create the right foundations for a development to be successful. These are: location; place-led development; joined-up planning; and a genuine partnership between the public and private sectors.

Location

Where these new towns are located is the really critical factor that determines success. The autonomous model, which was used successfully for Milton Keynes, is really hard to get right but the New Towns Taskforce announcement suggest that this model will only be the focus for a few of the next generation of new towns.

Looking at past projects, my feeling is that some of the more successful ones are co-dependent or umbilical developments adjacent to existing communities, rather than completely separate entities. Therefore, I think it is right that the taskforce plans to concentrate most of the planned new homes in urban extensions.

With the ambition to shortlist sites within 12 months, the government is demonstrating the fast pace planned for this initiative. But identifying areas that have a strong need for 10,000+ homes as well as the right location will not be straightforward.

Connectivity will be key and looking at past schemes clearly shows where it has worked, as well as where it hasn’t. For example, Skelmersdale, a new town in Lancashire, has arguably struggled due its distance from the labour markets of both Liverpool and Manchester, whereas the expansion of Peterborough has worked well because it already had good connections to major centres from the East Coast Main Line and A1.

Place-led development

Putting placemaking at the forefront should be, and appears to be, another ambition for the taskforce, which has said that the urban extensions “will work with the grain of development in any given area”. But I also think these new towns will need to look different from past projects in terms of density too. The post-war new towns boom coincided with rapid growth in car ownership and that led to car-oriented, low density developments that separated vehicles and people. In order to secure public support and meet our sustainability objectives, new developments will need to be less car dependent and built around public transport and active travel. Putting architectural style aside, they will ideally look more like urban centres across mainland Europe in terms of scale and density.

Public-private partnerships are likely to be crucial to achieving the 40% affordable housing plans that aim to create “genuinely affordable social rented homes”.

Joined-up planning

I will be interested to see the detail of the New Towns Code that will underpin how these new developments are planned and delivered as there is a real need for multi-agency joined up thinking. This is where more recent ambitions around new towns, garden cities and eco-towns have sometimes faltered. The ambition is there – albeit not always consistently - in central government but the actual delivery has hit issues at the local planning stages.

It must also be recognised that it is now much harder to deliver upfront infrastructure for new settlements than it was in the past when the post-war new towns were built - for example, due to changes in how land is valued for compulsory purchase. Although it’s positive to see willingness from government to tackle these issues.

Public-private sector partnerships

The lack of capacity in local government and experience needed to deliver developments at the 10,000+ homes scale needs to be considered too. Years of austerity means that some planning and development departments at local authority level are just not geared up for working in this way. Establishing how the public sector partners work with the private sector will also be a determining factor in whether this latest initiative is more successful than other recent ones.

Public-private partnerships are likely to be crucial to achieving the 40% affordable housing plans that aim to create “genuinely affordable social rented homes”. Working with registered providers and private developers will be important to meeting this target but how these non-government actors are brought into the partnership and their role in the planning and delivery needs to be defined.

Whatever does go into the New Towns Code, it will need to create a repeatable delivery model that is not overly prescriptive, has reasonable funding behind it and targets locations with a genuine housing need. If Sir Michael can do this, while learning lessons from the past, then I am cautiously optimistic that Labour can deliver on its promises and I’m looking forward to being part of the creation of this new wave of new towns.