Final list of new towns due by end of year, says Pennycook
Victoria North in Manchester and Leeds South Bank will have to wait a few more months to find out if they have made the cut for the programme, which aims to deliver a series of new settlements and urban extensions, each with between 15,000 and 40,000 homes.
The final selection of new towns had been expected by the end of this summer, however housing minister Matthew Pennycook told the House of Lords’ Built Environment Committee on Tuesday that the announcement had been delayed allowing for a thorough examination of the programme.
“We’ll take the time to go through things belt and braces,” Pennycook told the committee. “This is too important to get wrong.”
Government had published its shortlist of seven top contenders for the programme in March, with a promise that the final selection of projects would receive significant government support to deliver communities of exemplary placemaking and design.
Among the shortlisted seven were Leeds South Bank and Victoria North, as well as Tempsford, Crews Hill and Chase Park, Thamesmead, Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc, and an extension of Milton Keynes.
At that time, the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government launched a consultation on its new towns programme. Strategic environmental assessments also began for the seven shortlisted sites, as well as other potential contenders. The results of the SEAs will help determine the final new towns selection.
Since the consultation ended in May, MHCLG has had to shift through nearly 3,000 responses to the consultation and analyse the results of the SEAs. Government will publish its own response to the consultation in due course. A planning policy framework that is specific to new towns will also be published. This planning policy framework will sit under the National Planning Policy Framework, an updated version of which was published last month.
Pennycook highlighted the strategic environmental assessments as particularly important, given the scale of the new towns programme and the impact it will naturally have on the surroundings of each of the proposed communities. This needs to be mitigated, he said, and the government needs to be transparent in showing this.
“We need to show how through good planning, upfront investment, high-quality design and placemaking, how we are achieving that mitigation,” Pennycook said. “So the process is important.”
He maintained the government’s promise that work would start on at least there of the new towns by the end of this parliament – adding that there could be more that start on site by then.
Pennycook also stressed that new towns are to be examples for future developments.
“The new towns programme, in a sense, is a chance for us to boost innovation, quality, competition in housebuilding – but also to show, in terms of design and placemaking, what can be exemplary and how other large sites across the country, outside of the programme, can adopt the approach we’re taking and deliver really high outcomes,” he said.
“We want these, at the end of the day, to be great places for people to live as well as make a contribution to housing need, economic growth, and the other objectives we set out.”
