‘Very brave, Minister' as Sir Humphrey Appleby might have responded when presented with the notion of setting up a New Towns Task Force just a few weeks after the 2024 election. That was certainly the response of people old enough to remember the eco-town fiasco of the mid noughties. Those who bear the scars will tell you: Whitehall loftily puts pins in maps at its peril. British folk don't like being done-unto. Smacks of centrism. The Daily Telegraph will shout ‘hands off our land'. So have a care. NIMBY politics is a funny business. The land market can be a sinister business. You stand to trigger unintended consequences.
Not to say we don't need brave. We have a housing crisis. And we've had a housing crisis since the late 1970s (put to the one side that the very definition of ‘crisis' is a short-lived state of affairs). Never mind the Government target of one and a half million new homes by the next election; according to Centre for Cities we need four and a half million over the next 10 years. The Centre for Policy Studies says six and a half million. Whichever numbers you believe, two things are for sure: first, it is an eye watering number. And secondly, we are nowhere near.
So brave is good. Brave is needed. Some of us are continually saying we need to be on nothing short of a war footing to build the houses we need to rebuild our economy. But brave needs also to be prudent. And - hallelujah! - the New Towns Task Force has been savvy enough to not fall into any traps. The NTTF report is not brave. And is far from explosive. It is more of a damp but sensible squib.
On a more immediate and granular scale: local leaders must demand that these new town homes count decisively within local authority housing targets
Smart has trumped brave. Well done, Sir Michael Lyons and team. This is a plan that might actually work. The sites for the 12 new towns announced by Housing Secretary Steve Reed on Sunday are either laid on the foundations of existing plans, (most of them) snuggled next to existing towns (40,000 potential homes north of Bristol) or placed close to existing motorways (21,000 at Crews Hill and Chase Park in Enfield) or planned stations (40,000 at Tempsford in Bedfordshire.) The ‘potential' numbers for all 12 do add up to more than the 300,000-headline figure. But best take the low range estimates which add up to 175,000. If 25,000 are built before the next election, then that will be quite an achievement (and it is openly conceded that only three of these new towns are expected to be underway by then). The other 150,000 will provide additionality of 10,000 to 15,000 homes a year for 10 to 15 years to the normal baseload provided builders can sell them.
What of the host local authorities? Well, they must be front and centre. Local communities need to be incentivised to absorb these levels of housing. Local leaders need to demand clean, green, inclusive growth, with infrastructure - such as GPs surgeries - delivered up front. Local leaders must demand that - with their guidance and input - Development Corporations are immediately established, to assemble land (including rigorous use of CPO powers), undertake widespread community consultation, do the grunt work of the necessary planning applications, coordinate investment, and ensure long term stewardship.
That's the big picture. On a more immediate and granular scale: local leaders must demand that these new town homes count decisively within local authority housing targets. This has currently been left ambiguous with the wording in the NTTF Report worthy of Sir Humphrey himself: ‘the Government wants to reassure local leaders that a consistent and fair approach will be taken to how local housing need targets interact with the future delivery of new towns'. Something of an own goal, I think we'd all agree. Where's the incentive? This, and much else besides, needs to be sorted out in short order. The devil is in the detail. Any local leader worth their salt is perpetually going to be asking: what's in it for my people? And quite right too.
But hats off to the New Towns Taskforce for an exercise in pragmatism. Beats Steve Reed's ‘Build Baby Build' babbling hands down. But we're going to need more. We're going to need brave. Brave and prudent.
Jackie Sadek is co author, with Peter Bill, of "Broken Homes, Faults, Factoids and Fixes in Britain's Housing Crisis
