The New Towns ambition: Is it enough?

The renewed emphasis on the delivery of new towns comes at a time where there is common acceptance that to address the national housing shortage, supply needs to come from multiple sources. But is the New Towns Draft Programme ambitious enough to make a meaningful difference? Adding together the Government's published figures, the seven proposed locations have an indicative capacity of around 191,000 homes. Given that the Government has an ambition to deliver 1.5m new homes in the current Parliament, this amount of housing will make a limited contribution especially as housing will not be delivered for some time and will be over a long period. Also the label ‘new town' covers a broad range of proposals. Tempsford is a standalone settlement. Crews Hill and Chase Park would combine major extensions in Enfield (although whether this will happen at all is questionable given the stance of Enfield Council). Leeds South Bank, Manchester Victoria North and Thamesmead are primarily regeneration or densification projects. Milton Keynes is described as a ‘renewed town', while Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc is a corridor of connected development. The Government's Locations Methodology demonstrates how it has assessed locations against scale, economic growth and deliverability, alongside their contribution to housing need. At present, the relatively limited number of locations for new towns means that not only do they represent a drop in the ocean when it comes overall contribution to the Government's national housing targets but it also means that there are parts of the country which are increasingly unaffordable where no new towns are proposed. One example is the Thames Valley. March's ONS House price to residence-based earnings ratio shows that in 2025, a median home in England cost 7.6 times median full-time earnings. The ratio was 11.61 in Windsor and Maidenhead, 10.51 in Buckinghamshire, 10.40 in Oxford and 10.13 in Slough resulting in this area becoming increasingly unaffordable. Clearly, there will be other proposed development in the pipeline that fall below the scale of new towns (fewer than 10,000 homes) but the benefit of new towns is that they provide an opportunity to deliver new development at scale, together with associated infrastructure, that create sustainable new communities. It should be the case that new towns complement rather than compete with existing proposals.This issue is seemingly highlighted by the Government's assessment of Heyford Park in Cherwell (Oxfordshire). The Government assessed Heyford Park as a credible opportunity for more than 13,000 homes north of Oxford, in a highly productive area with low housing affordability and a willing developer. But it was not selected because its scale was relatively modest compared with other Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor proposals. Even with those sites that have been identified as new towns, there are issues around infrastructure delivery and indeed the fractured nature of our politics is a potential barrier to delivery. Crews Hill and Chase Park illustrate that risk. Shortly after the location entered the draft programme, a change in political control led Enfield Council to withdraw, resulting in 21,000 homes being removed from the programme.The current proposed new town programme will inevitably draw comparisons with those first new towns developed between the 1950s-70s and the strong governance structures that were in place and importantly the role of the public sector in the housing delivery.These initial post war new towns were paired with the restraint of the Green Belt with planned growth taking place beyond it. Today, we have largely retained that constraint while weakening the delivery mechanism. If future new towns are to be delivered in increasingly unaffordable areas such as the Thames Valley, government will need to make explicit strategic choices about land, including a further softening of Green Belt release, rather than relying only on sites that are easiest to assemble or already moving through the system.It is clear that new towns should form part of a wider strategy alongside urban regeneration, extensions to existing settlements, brownfield development, smaller sites and carefully planned strategic release. Whilst there is a clear rationale behind the selection of the current round of new towns, it would seem that they would only make a relatively small contribution to meeting the overall housing needs and even then only in small parts of the country. In light of the pressing need for new homes right across the country, particularly in those areas which are becoming increasingly unaffordable, if the Government is serious about solving the decades long housing shortfall then a New Towns programme should be more ambitious in identifying further locations which are backed up by strong governance structures. This way they can play a more substantive role in boosting housing supply and the creation of new sustainable communities. Philip Allin, director, Boyer (London)

Title

HOUSING

The New Towns ambition: Is it enough?

By Philip Allin | 24 July 2026

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