For new towns to contribute significantly to housing supply, design and delivery must both be right
Published: 12 June 2024
Research insight
Dr Rob Richardson, from the Centre for Public Policy, writes about the design and delivery of new towns and what lessons the next government should learn from previous policy decisions when tackling the housing crisis.
This blog is part of the Centre for Public Policy UK General Election Policy Insights series.
Author: Dr Rob Richardson, Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy.
Something old, something new….
New towns were a key feature of the post-war Labour government’s rebuilding programme. They were built to rapidly increase housing and accommodate overspill from major cities including London and Glasgow, without extending them into the ‘green belt’.
Over time, however, many of the new towns suffered from a car-dominated design, including limited facilities and public transport connections. Compounded by inadequate maintenance and stewardship strategies, several ultimately became commuter towns – particularly in south-east England – with limited identity and vitality of their own.
Labour’s plans to build the next generation of ‘new towns’ suggest the party may have learned from this chequered history. Design quality features heavily in the plans, with the promise of “exemplary design with real character” in place of the “identikit homes” which typically fill new-build housing estates. The plans also include prioritising infrastructure and green space, and a 40% affordable housing target, in recognition that creating successful new towns will require people-centred design, with sufficient density and facilities to sustain a strong local economy and community.
Delivering at scale
Building new towns is inherently ambitious, and the devil will be in the detail of delivery. UK Governments have previously revisited new towns with limited success. Gordon Brown’s proposed ‘eco-towns’ never came to fruition, for example, while new ‘garden cities’ (originally a precursor to new towns) promised by David Cameron’s government were scaled down to ‘garden communities’. The 2024 Liberal Democrat manifesto commits to building 10 new garden cities, with limited detail on ‘how’.
Increasing housing delivery is a policy problem with complex roots. Development industry practices, land ownership patterns, planning requirements and capacity, and conflicting political priorities across scales all play their part. While the Conservatives promise 1.6 million homes in England during the next parliament, and Labour 1.5 million, this would require a rapid increase – UK-wide completions were 189,260 in 2023.
Housing targets are of limited value without corresponding government interventions. Given that scaling up public or third sector housebuilding would require economically infeasible and politically unpalatable levels of public investment, we can expect that the private sector will continue to build approximately 80% of new homes across the UK (70% in Scotland’s devolved planning jurisdiction).
Labour’s plans for England hinge on reforming the compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers through which public authorities can buy land for development, including making them available to newly created local development corporations. They also plan to allow CPO land acquisitions at a ‘fair value’, instead of the growing practice of ‘hope value’ linked to the prospect of future planning permission – a policy shared by the Lib Dems. This could reduce speculative behaviour by landowners, and give local public bodies greater coordinating power.
Delivering at scale will also warrant clear plans for financing infrastructure, and long-term stewardship. This may rest on the exact role of the New Towns Commission that Labour has announced, alongside changes to planning policy to release poor quality green belt land for development - dubbed the ‘grey belt’. The Conservative manifesto, meanwhile, commits to preventing green belt development, instead promising fast-track planning for urban redevelopment. Housing is devolved, and so these plans are for England only, but the scale of public investment in England would influence heavily how much funding the devolved governments had available to them to invest in housing.
Something borrowed?
Labour’s proposals directly continue the previous Conservative Government’s growing interest in design. Labour’s call for high quality design and ‘character’, required by a New Towns Code, echoes the 2020 report of the ‘Building Better, Building Beautiful’ commission which advocated for ‘beautiful’ housing design to assuage community opposition to development. The Conservative manifesto makes a strikingly similar commitment to the gentle densification of urban areas, through tree-lined streets built in the local character.
Labour has also promoted indicative design images for its new towns, produced by an urban design consultancy founded by the government advisor who co-chaired the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission. The ‘small-c conservative’ architectural style may attract criticism, but further suggests an emerging consensus over the value of design in supporting new housing development.
This is a starting point, but addressing the UK’s deeply-entrenched housing crisis needs a step-change in how government approaches housebuilding. New towns could provide a significant amount of new housing, but for this to be achieved, experience tells us that design and delivery must both be right.
This blog was originally published on the Centre for Public Policy's news webpage.
Photo by Peter Mason on UnSpash
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First published: 12 June 2024