The largest housebuilding programme since the post-war period will begin through a new generation of new towns, as part of the government’s work to kickstart economic growth and get Britain building again.
The programme of new towns will create largescale communities of at least 10,000 new homes each, with many significantly larger.
The appropriate locations for new towns will be recommended within the next 12 months.
These places could deliver hundreds of thousands of much-needed affordable and high-quality homes in the decades to come, tackling the barriers to growth and helping more working people across the country own their own home.
The new towns will help unlock the economic potential of existing towns and cities across the country, and the government will continue to drive growth and regenerate areas that have been held back by constraints on their expansion for far too long.
While the programme will include large-scale new communities that are separate from existing settlements, a far larger number of new towns will be urban extensions and regeneration schemes that will work with the grain of development in any given area.
These new communities will be governed by a ‘New Towns Code’ – a set of rules that developers will have to meet to make sure new towns are well-connected, well-designed, sustainable and attractive places where people want to live. They will have all the infrastructure and public services necessary to support thriving communities. The towns will also help meet housing need by targeting rates of 40% affordable housing with a focus on genuinely affordable social rented homes.
The Deputy Prime Minister has asked regeneration expert Sir Michael Lyons to spearhead a new independent New Towns Taskforce as its Chair. The group will work to make this vision a reality and present a final shortlist of recommendations on appropriate locations to ministers within 12 months, supported by top housing economist Dame Kate Barker as Deputy Chair.