The New Towns programme remains the most ambitious urbanism initiative ever undertaken in the UK. The programme sought to provide jobs and affordable homes in healthy, balanced, and thriving communities. The 32 New Towns delivered through the New Towns Act today provide homes for over 2.8 million people.
There are many lessons to be learnt from the successes and failures of the New Towns programme. This incudes the key issues of housing, green infrastructure, stewardship, culture, finance, land ownership and delivery. Learning the transferable lessons of the New Towns programme is essential to inform the creation of a new generation of ambitious new places today.
This briefing and debate draws on the TCPA’s extensive work on the subject, including our 2024 publication “Our shared future: A TCPA White Paper for Homes and Communities” and RIBA Publication ‘New Towns: Rise, Fall, Rebirth’.
am I okay to go live yeah g for good afternoon everyone we’re just letting people in so we will start in just a second uh just bear with us good afternoon everybody and welcome to this event building the future lessons from the New Towns I’m Fiona Hoy I’m the chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association and I’m delighted to be chairing our webinar today so as I’m sure people are aware and hopefully as the healthy number of attendees at our webinar today uh show there’s definitely a lot of interest in how we might address the housing crisis and of course it remains high on the political agenda this year uh people will again be very conscious that we’re waiting for the publication of uh party manifestos this week um but actually even without those we know there’s cross-party consensus on the need for more homes and I think although it’s not always talked of as much certainly there is some emphasis on the fact that those homes uh need to be of a high quality people might well have had a look at the liberal Democrats Manifesto which was published today I have to confess haven’t managed to read all of it but I did have a quick look at the Housing section earlier today and the lib Dems Manifesto on page 71 if you want to have a look talks about tackling housing failures by increasing the building of new homes to 380,000 a year including 150,000 social homes a year through New Garden cities and community-led development of cities and towns and then slightly later on they specify that they would be looking to support the building of 10 New Garden cities we know the leader of the labor party announced last year at through his speech at Party Conference uh that if successful at the next election a labor government would deliver a new generation of New Towns they’ve also talked about building 1.5 million new homes over five years uh we’ll be interested to see what the conservatives put in their uh Manifesto but uh the conservative government of course was supporting a garden communities program uh which was giving funding and support to 47 locally LED communities with the aim of delivering over 320,000 homes by 2050 and no doubt we will see lots of debate about housing numbers and how many we need uh and we know it’s easy for politicians to say they’ll build more homes but the challenge really is how do we get those homes and new communities delivered and as you all have gathered from the focus of our event today the tcpa is clear that there’s the lessons from the Garden City experiment and the postwar New Towns program are as relevant today as they ever were and there’s certainly a lot to learn before I go any further I just wanted to confirm we will circulate the slides after the event and I must also thank the lady Margaret Patterson Osborne trust and pinent Masons for for supporting our event today next slide please Charlotte hopefully the slides will move on there we go there we go uh so I know many of the audience already uh will be tcpa members or you might well have been to some of our webinars before so I won’t spend too long introducing us but I did want to take a moment to highlight that we’re a charity and we’re committed to securing um our vision is for homes places and communities in which everyone can Thrive and our priorities very much draw on our heritage um as people may well be aware the tcpa was founded in 1899 by The Originators of the Garden City movement and that desire to enable the Practical achievement of well-designed and sustainable places for every one continues to drive the work we do and I did also want to highlight that actually today is our 125th uh birthday so it’s actually 125 years ago today was the first meeting of the then Garden City Association so what better way to Mark our anniversary uh than a webinar that draws on those really important lessons from our past and highlights their relevance to today and to the Future next slide please Charlotte so just to remind people of the format for our webinar we’ve only got an hour so we will have to Rattle through things uh there will be a chance hopefully as long as our speakers don’t uh go well over their time uh there will be a chance to put questions to our speakers uh please use the Q&A function which should be at the bottom of your screen I know lots of people are very used to zoom now but please do use the Q&A function and I’ll put those to our panel members after we’ve had our contributions so without any further Ado I’m delighted to hand over to my colleagues Katie lock who’s the tcpa’s director of communities and the oorn fellow and to Hugh Ellis our director of policy over to you Katie thanks very much via um and good afternoon everyone um it’s really great to be here to talk to you about what we think is the most extraordinary and misunderstood program of Urban Development that’s ever been undertaken in the UK one that transformed the lives of millions of people providing genuinely affordable homes in places which encouraged Healthy Lifestyles now myself and Hugh are going to do a bit of a double act with the presentation just now um I should also add I was born uh and raised in Milton kean’s New Town so perhaps a bit bias in that respect and Hugh you had a reflection too on your new Town’s experience before we start yeah Katie I need to say to everyone that um when I was educated in planning I was educated to be a deep skeptic about New Towns New Towns I think are often perceived to be a failure Katie and and that’s what actually I was taught and all I would say is it’s been a revelation over the last sort of 15 years actually understanding the detail and the scale of the success as well as the challenges they face so I think we’re just asking people to have open minds at the beginning of this session I wish my mind had been a bit more open 30 years ago but it’s kind of open now great thanks you we’re also um aware there’s a real boad spectrum of expertise and knowledge on Garden cities on this on this call so for those of you that require more detail we’ve got a huge amount of resource available for free on the tcpa website with all of the detail of the things that we’re going to talk about uh and for those of you that are newer to the subject I really hope we’re not talking too fast uh to uh not enable you to follow um but we’ll get cracking now so next slide please now our work on um New Towns uh and garden cities has been part of the last 10 12 years renewed campaign for a new generation of garden cities based uh on Modern Garden City principles next s and in the process of doing that we have looked in detail at lessons from the delivery of the garden cities of delivery of the postwar New Towns um and also the delivery of the attempts by the public and private sector since the postwar New Towns program uh at delivering new communities as well as the experience uh of the new communities Group which is a tcpa network um of now 29 local authorities that are delivering large scale new communities next slide please now is our 125th anniversary so just to put into context the postor New Towns program uh followed directly from the tcpa’s uh the garden cities association’s development of the first two Garden cities at leworth and Wellen and it was already by 1918 that the associations Frederick Osborne uh was agitating for um a government enabled program of new settlements uh in the form of New Towns to to deal with housing needs following the first world war and that work continued in the inter War years um and throughout the second world war so by the time uh peace time had arrived in 1945 uh then housing Minister Lewis silin appointed a new towns committee to look in detail um at how a new program of New Towns could be delivered next slide please and the ink was barely wet on the final report of that new towns committee when the new towns Act was passed in 1946 and that’s really set the vision for creating a new future for the country following uh the ravages of war and it was part of a post-war settlement that also included the 1947 uh Town and Country uh planning act now the new Town’s act uh set this really powerful combination of the designation of land for a new town with the creation of a new town Development Corporation which had all of the powers and remit uh to do everything necessary to deliver the town and the New Towns were funded by a combination of long-term lowcost loans from government from the diversion of um resources for things like transport and health from existing uh public um uh funds uh and also from some local Authority funding to go towards uh paying for things like schools and the uh New Town program which lasted from 1946 to 1970 led to the delivery of 32 New Towns across the UK uh which were able to deliver new homes uh jobs and communities at speed next slide please but really importantly this was about a new future for the nation and it wasn’t just about building homes uh it was about creating genuinely affordable homes uh combined with jobs in Healthy Communities but also about creating balanced communities ensuring there was real investment uh in the lives that people would be living in community development in things like public art uh really learning from the Garden City experience about the types of places the New Towns might be next slide now there’s a lot more detail obviously about the lived uh experience of those 32 living and breathing places uh but because time is short we’ll cut to actually the end of the new Town’s program because that provides also some really important lessons for the future now some of the early New Town development corporations uh by the 1960s had already started to transfer their assets to something called the commission for New Towns transferring some of those assets back to government um and throughout the 1970s that changes that civil unrest in our urban areas um combined with huge um increase in interest rates um meant that by the time we get to 1980s um a Margaret AR’s government comes into Power um and there’s huge civil unrest also in our urban areas again uh margarth acta’s government decided to put uh quite a dramatic and fast end to the post-war New Towns program there was uh the corporations were um ordered to wind up no matter where they were in their delivery process um and this is the point at which there was a huge betrayal of that original vision of lisis silkin to create a new generation of places for people to live there was a fire sale of the Development Corporation assets to the public sector and some of those assets and by assets I mean everything from Land uh to buildings to other Financial assets were given um in balancing agreements to local authorities and a combination of liabilities um and benefits and uh with the exception of two places uh Milton keing and peterb where members of the development corporations in those places had the foresight to set up organizations to manage some of these Community assets green infrastructure in these two examples all of the um other New Towns economies became essentially like any other town so the authorities um that had to manage them had to manage all of these fantastic green infrastructure uh and public realm assets without the resources to do so adequately next slide please and the way the New Towns were developed and managed um has led to some real common challenges and opportunities in those places um each Place each new town is a living breathing uh place with its own distinct uh identity but these are some of the common common challenges that can be identified those relate to things like uh the renewal of the Town centers um most of which were sold off to the private sector making renewal really difficult and in a complex um Mosaic of land ownership which also resulted from the way the corporations were wound up many of the new towns have found that they have experienced congestion later um than other towns um of a similar age um fantastic um access for um cycling for example but also for for car-based travel and some real obvious challenges around that the built Heritage um of the new town some fantastic innovation in architecture and public realm which in some places being is being used as a real Catalyst for renewal in the New Towns is really beneficial but a lack of recognition of that special experience is also meaning that much of that is being lost in the process of renewal of some of the new towns in relation to housing was a huge amount of emphasis on the provision of social housing uh But Not only was that built all at once um particularly in the early New Town Sometimes using cheap materials uh meaning that local authorities are having to do whole estate regeneration uh all at once which is obviously expensive um policies that have happened since such as the right to buy have made some of that uh management even more challenging and finally that issue of long-term stewardship these fantastic green infrastructure and public real ascents which are present in all of the New Towns um it’s only the exception of a couple which have enabled to manage that long-term stewardship opportunity next slide please so from all of this work and you can read it in detail on our website we’ve drawn some key lessons uh from the new Town’s experience which are really important we think for the future I’m just going to go through those briefly next slide please the first is about the role of national government in identifying location this image you may recognize on the right is a total myth the locations of New Towns and their designations were not imposed by central government government offered a clear offer and National policy which Dr risked um at the local level um people coming forward um having done local Authority Le studies um that many of which have been promoted for several years um but providing the confidence to be able to say we would like a Development Corporation to be delivered in this area in others it that it um prompted a negotiation with government about precisely where new development would take place but it’s really important that national government has that enabling role next slide please we’ve looked in detail at the new town Development Corporation experience and some of the other models as well and we remain convinced that the basic architecture of the de New Town development and New Town development models uh specifically there are a number of different um development corporations models Remains the most effective way to deliver large scale new communities the new town act 1981 is still on the statute books could be used tomorrow if necessary um but having looked at it in detail there are some minor alterations that we think need to be made to make it fit for purpose today in relation to climate resilience in in relation to uh things like healthy placemaking uh but really importantly in relation to long-term stewardship and Community participation as well next slide please thirdly is about the money and our work looking at the New Towns has proved that a new Town’s program can pay for itself um the key was that governments saw it as a national investment priority and despite challenges including a huge hike in interest rates said in the 1970s those um six year 60-year fixed rate loans from central government was repaid with interest by 199 6 um and government still owns some residual Assets in the New Towns um via homes England which actually still provide an income for treasury through various uh covenants we know that New Towns can be highly profitable for government uh but it relies on the right um Financial uh Land Management tools um to make that a possibility next slide please we’ve already talked a lot about stewardship uh we’ve been doing a huge amount of program of work separately on stewardship in new communities pleas please do uh check that out in fact we’ve got a new resource we’ve been working on with pinsent Masons that’s been published uh just this morning um but we are clear that stewardship of those fantastic assets created through the New Towns is vital for sustainable outcome in new places next slide please 50 about people we know that people need to be empowered to be at the heart of decision- making in the early New Towns um when Louis silin went to stevenage uh famously people changed the uh sign on the railway station called silen grad there’s a huge local opposition we’ve also learned more recently haven’t we about challenges around local opposition if things are dealt with in the wrong way as happened with the New Towns um but that emphasis that the new town development corporations put on public participation post designation and Community Development is a really important um thing to remember when we’re thinking about the future and it’s something we will’ll come back to shortly and finally next slide please G cities new towns are all about innovation in design in materials in tenure and thinking about how we’re going to live but it was really interesting uh looking at the experience of the 32 New Towns and those that lived in them but um although at the time working for New Town Development Corporation was one of the most exciting jobs in urbanism attracting young Architects and urbanists from across the world there are some examples in residential areas in some of the New Towns where it appears the ego the architect uh overtook the lived experience and needs of people that were living in these homes um for example the some of the housing in Peter Lee and Comm looked amazing in the rebirth black and white photos of the design but actually weren’t suited to the climate of Scotland or Durham and flat Roes leaked and were really hard the homes were really hard to in uh insulate so it’s really important if we’re thinking about a new generation of places we innovate but we don’t experiment directly on people that are living in those homes next slide so we’ve taken all of that experience together to think about the future I’m going to pass on to Hugh for the next few minutes thanks Katie so trying to reveal I think and unlock the the opportunity um that New Towns provide to meeting the housing crisis and also at the same time I think building on what you were just talking about design provide an opportunity for this country to restore itself at The Cutting Edge of how we might live what really good healthy design looks like a lot of those ideas were wrapped up in the white paper we published just earlier this year year which was really trying to set out how we could locate a new towns program in a wider policy of how we might meet the housing crisis and just to bear in mind it’s been a sort of quarter of a century since this country had any form of urban policy um and so actually there is a big question mark about you know how we’re going to live so one of these just to highlight time is short just two or three key issues that came from that the big one of course it’s very difficult at the moment is that although there’s some very positive stuff being published I think about about strategic growth there is still an entrenched mythology that planning is a problem the reality is that if you want to build homes high quality homes at a price people can afford in sustainable locations planning is a solution to this problem and I if only we could persuade public policy makers at the highest level to understand that if you really want to address these problems to really take responsibility for them you have to start the conversation by thinking of planning as a solution rather than constantly thinking it as a barrier which gets us nowhere next slide please so we set out um a number of things that needed to happen um in relation to making a new towns program uh work in the white paper um but it’s important to say just quickly that we’re not suggesting that new towns are the only thing that needs to happen to solve the housing crisis they are part of a a wider picture which has sort of three components and just very quickly here you can see what might be described as the really big stuff the 35 to 100 ,000 homes uh encompassing the kind of scale of you know the Mark Mark 1 to Mark II New Towns ending in Melton ke um and the preconditions are come back to what makes them happen they are very significant extremely long-term um uh projects which require a national commitment for 40 to 50 years at least in order to make them happen but they provide the greatest opportunity for economies of scale and are therefore by far if you like the most costeffective way of achieving growth underneath that is local strategic growth 1500 to 10,000 which is where the tcpa’s new communities group members are largely building under the current framework um they need more they need all sorts of things to happen for that to really take off to be honest um coherent policy from government would be one thing coherent funding regime would be another and then finally there’s a continued contribution from the local plan process but do want to stress here very importantly that we have the New Towns Act was passed a year before um the Town and Country planning act in this country for a really really good reason um Town and Country planning Act is not designed to deal with serious demographic change it’s designed to deal with the normal day-to-day stuff if you want to seriously deal with demographic change in this country and meet growth strategically the New Towns Act is written for that purpose so discuss why haven’t we used it for n on 50 years and and what’s the relationship between that with the housing crisis so it’s very important that these tools are different you know deliver different functions next slide please so um the national strategic plan uh for homes clear and share Vision long-term political commitment these are all self-evident ideas that you’ll all be familiar with one element of this though I think is very important and that’s about building public consent um and that really is going to be important this balance between the mechanisms and the vision and the conversation which isn’t happening in this country at all and needs to we we have to have a strong vision for how we’re going to live it can’t just be about the mechanics and people have to be involved in that conversation and I think a national strategy would have to address other issues I’ll come back to but particularly skills and supply chain um there is a lot of talk about you know what we could do on day one well you can’t build anywhere on day one if you don’t have any plasterers Brick Layers and where you’re about to close your last modern methods of construction Factory which is a nation we’re about to do so there’s a whole series of really important foundational issues to get to get right um ambition for Net Zero housing is absolutely non-negotiable this is this is the place where at scale where you can deliver these kind of Technologies build Supply chains and therefore transform in a more General sense the sorts of homes we build next slide please so this is a quick list of making it happen but given the I’m I’m I’m out of time I think I’m not going to talk about them in any detail talked about a national plan talked about the supply chain and training issues I think deciding scale number and locations of new Can it can it please be evidence Le and the drivers for the need for housing are complex not just about demographics it’s also about quality and health and equality and it’s increasingly going to be about moving places for climate change so it’s not a simple argument there are complex arguments about why we need new places um and we’ve talked a little bit about modernizing delivery bodies which we must do and particularly supporting local government um I think development corporations I think Milton ke and there are people on on this call who who were there had a Development Corporation staff of certainly more than 100 150 maybe um and you know those sorts of skill sets need to be put back into the system we have to focus on there financing of new settlements that that it’s not just going to be public money I think it is going to be long-term private money if we can drisk that proposition properly for them which I’m convinced we can and do bear in mind I think there have been incremental changes to compulsory purchase which the last one in the leveling up generation act has dealt with aspects of Hope value quite radically in a way actually so a lot of that work has been done which clears the way for delivering these ideas and then defining the operations of Development Corporation and embedding the legacy of stewardship which is already being to Happ in law next slide please just to draw this to a close I think the question in front of all of us is is not can we do this technically of course we can it will take time but it’s an incredibly exciting proposition we can do it question is is there a political will to do it and that will is generated partly from Westminster but partly also from this idea of a political a conversation with all of us about how we are going to live and the question to leave you all with and particularly to communities is it’s not that we’re not going to build right we are going to build the question is are we going to build well or not and the question between New Towns and their place in meeting that challenge is whether you want a lot of a lot of very poor quality badly located poorly built Estates bolted on often in ways which are not well connected in public transport terms or whether you want to seize the opportunity to do something really well and that’s the question that lies on the table the answer for that question for the tcpa F owner I guess is is pretty obvious but I’m aware I’m out of time so I’ll stop there thank you so much Hugh um I am really and to Katie sorry I’m conscious that you’ve both covered covered a huge amount of ground and we have as you can imagine we’ve got lots of questions coming in about that uh so we will pick up some of that I’m sure in the Q&A um but first of all we will have a response from Jamie lockerby who is a partner at pins and Masons um Jamie’s in the planning team and advises a mixture of public and private sector clients on the full remit of planning law matters so thank you so much Jamie and over to you thanks very much vaa um thanks to Katie to Hugh as well um for their contributions um yeah I’ve just got um 10 minutes to to talk in response to what Hugh and Katie have said um and when I was thinking about this I was thinking you know people people like threes and I thought there were three you could sum up really um what KT and Hugh have said and what the um tcpo have said in their various papers on this topic I think with three M’s and I would call that number one motivation um which I I think comes nicely off the back of what Hugh was just saying number two is money and number three is management um so just to quickly take those in turn number one motivation it really I do think is is very much what he was saying is we have to grasp the nettle on this and I think when you look back and you read the tcpa’s papers on this I don’t think it’s any um coincidence that the success of the New Towns um scheme came off the back of the postwar settlement and a shift in mindset in the country as to what needed to happen um to give something back to the populace who you know who’d suffered so greatly in the second world war and I find it astonishing that if you think back that the country in 1945 67 had just come out of six year an economy six years of Total War so an economy built entirely to service and win the war and all the debt um that was incurred in doing that and yet we still managed to successfully deliver over the next couple of decades and Beyond um a tremendously unbalance successful new homes program um and I find it difficult to believe in this day and age despite the challenges challenges we’ve had from things like um the global financial crisis and and covid and the rest of it that we still can’t say honestly say that we’re in a worse position now than they were in 1945 and yet look what they managed to achieve um so I think that on that note I did think that when we started seeing the manifesto for the upcoming election that housing would be a top three issue certainly for labor if not for the other parties as well and I I’m quite surprised I think that I know the Manifest is not out but you’re you’re actually not really seeing housing being talked of as a top three issue it tends to be uh NHS the economy and it seems to be things like um defense that are coming in as as the the third big issue or national security as the third big issue so housing seems to be being pushed out which I do surprising given you know the being universally recognized that we are in a housing crisis um you know we we as a firm um you know have put out various ideas on how we can get the motivation and I think it does need to be a change in the way things are done so I think it was she that was saying tcpa is built for the day-to-day of planning and I think that’s absolutely right so you need to to do to use a regime shift to end up being in a world where you can deliver um these kind of settlements at the scale and Pace that you want to um using the new towns Act is a way and can be a way um it’s quite old legislation um as tcpa has acknowledged it’s been bolted onto and amended over time so it’s actually quite difficult to navigate um so you know in a perfect world my suggestion would be to get that motivation we should bring in new legislation to deal you know modern upto-date fit forp purpose legislation to deliver this new homes program um one thing I would add is um it you know to my mind it would make a lot of sense to make housing uh bring housing of of a scale to be decided within the nationally significant infrastructure regime um I appreciate that comes with tensions in terms of um local engagement and and participation and buy into the process because the nsip regime is is a centralized regime so I do appreciate there’s an issue there with um perceptions of imposition of these new settlements but I do feel like the NP regime provides the kind of toolkit does allow for successful deliveries successful delivery of these types of community because um it provides a regimented time scale process it allows um additional powers for the consenting Authority so things like compulsory purchase or gets wrapped up in one um consenting um uh statutary instrument effectively and I think that would be a good option um my number two on the M’s the two two of the three m is money um again as you said private sector’s got a lot a big role to play in this but um I think you know it does need to be able to make to work for them otherwise they just won’t do it you know I understand viability is a touchy subject um but ultimately it is true that if the numbers don’t stack up the private sector just won’t deliver things um and in the project we’ve been involved as a firm where you’ve seen success in areas things like the leg the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park e Fleet places like that you’ve had significant upfront state interven Menon so in the Olympics you had the delivery of the games being the Catalyst for that Legacy Community Development in absite you had the hs1 line that provided that fast link into London um and then a project can be built around that so you do need the state to intervene upfront and carry the cost I think for The Upfront infrastructure that doesn’t then mean that they can’t recup it because there are legal mechanisms there are things that state can do at a central and local level to recover that significant upfront investment so things like strategic infrastructure Levy so look at what we did what the mayor did in Cross rail using cross Mill to fund cross rail retrospective pulled section 106 contributions so putting in place a policy to recover from developers who come after and benefit from The Upfront infrastructure a share of the recuperated cost of building that um and the state taking um land Holdings um key land strategic land Holdings that then will increase in value as the um as the placemaking takes place and the and the area um regenerates the value of that land will increase and if that’s held by the government then obviously that has an asset value to it um lastly then my number three in my M was management um in the tcpa documents it um acknowledges that some of the you where there have been failures some of those biggest failures have come from a lack of proper stewardship of these communities um and that’s something that you know I think everybody recognizes now and certainly we at pins Masons have got a big Drive in advising both public and private sector is on stewardship strategies for successful delivery of new communities um you know a lot we’re finding on the schemes we’re advising on the where it’s advising the developer and the local planning authorities are asking for a stewardship strategy to be put in with the planning application um that then can set out uh stewardship for the scheme or at very least a framework if it’s a very large multi face scheme you got a stewardship framework about how things will be done and then that can be delivered on a phase basis uh and ultimately we’re looking for setting out what are the stewardship aims what are the aims how will this community be measured as a success um how will those um principles be actually enacted um on a sitewide and a phase basis and crucially where’s the funding going to come from to um deliver and maintain um the items that the community the community items that um will make a successful place in terms of stewardship um and I think that takes me to my 10 minutes um so I hope that was helpful and uh yeah to the extent there’s any questions from me very happy to deal with them yeah so much Jamie um please can I invite uh Katie and Hugh back thank you so much while I now try and grapple with my screens which I know all over the place so yes we’ve had lots of questions ktie I could see you were typing to try and reply so I will try I’m G to have to group some together and there’s are some themes that are coming out of them so I’ll do my best um but first of all I think this one’s for the tcpa more than Jamie and someone has rightly pointed out that the green party have also said that they want 150,000 new affordable social homes and you’re right I didn’t give an overview of all of the manifestos and commitments um so apologies for that but we will await them all with interest throughout this week uh but they’ve noted that the green party has also talked about wanting extra Green Belt protections and so if they were to form a coalition with labor would that threaten the delivery of New Towns SL Urban extensions in areas where they are needed so perhaps Hugh if you could pick up that one to start with please yeah because it’s always my joy to talk about green belt in these issues for me it’s very important to understand that new towns and green belt policy were once hand in hand and two sides of the same coin they were part of if you like a social contract that rather than seeing the ever expansion of existing urban areas which basically deprive people of access to Nature what you would have is a process of designating green belt and an equally heavy process of designating new communities beyond that green belt um so the two things should be seen as complimentary policies and I think culturally we need to see that again um that if we preserve Green Belt which I’m sure we should then we also need to complement that with answering the question where are we going to build so I don’t think there’s an essential contradiction or at least there wasn’t and indeed I think Katie in the story of the designation of Milton kees you can see how that contract fulfilled itself very practically in a local Authority leading a designation process for Milton ke and essentially doing a deal about preserving enhanced protections for some parts of their area and the deal was and a new city in another part of the area that seems to be when it’s locally led a very sensible idea so that there is no intrinsic conflict it all depends on it all depends on where where and I hope we don’t get bogged down after July the 5ifth in too many arguments about Green Belt there’s huge opportunities outside of green belt to meet the housing crisis hey thank you and then Katie if I put this one to you I’m trying to group them together in multitask I’m doing really badly uh but um so someone has has suggested and I think rightly has been slightly challenging about whether it’s very easy G for political parties to commit to New Towns and of course there are lots of lessons to learn but actually delivering them will be challenging for multiple reasons somebody has asked is there really that recognition from political parties of the need for long term commitment to that but also someone has asked if labor and the Liv DMS are promoting an impossible ideal so of course because they haven’t gone into detail certainly to date so they’re not promising the necessary government loans or infrastructure budgets and funding that that as you’ve highlighted were a key part of the program in the past so should we uh either the tcbaa or the planning profession be actually saying uh calling them out on this being impossible um or is there a way that we can make sure that it is possible uh for a new program of New Towns oh thank you I think it’s a really useful question and it’s something that’s at the Forefront of our minds as well I think all of the work that we have been doing has proved that you do need to take that long-term approach there needs to be significant upfront investment for that long-term gain and it requires all of those preconditions that Hugh set out um in his section regarding the white paper as well and we are trying our best to um persuade all political parties of of the importance of those those lessons and really embedding that ambition uh we have been promoting New Towns and garden cities for 125 years now uh and we recognize them as an essential part of the solution going forward but not at any cost and um that’s why we will continue to reiterate the needs to be this investment and ambition um to do things a different way we have we’re not starting from scratch with New Towns we’ve we’ve been through the postwar New Towns experiences also our experience with the ECOT towns with the various attempts by the private sector since show that if you’re going to be ambitious you need to think differently about the way these things are approached so we will continue to make that case and we really hope these resources will help others to join us in making that case because there is a huge risk um that any new government could take forward a program of new settlements without about um having that ambition and um conditions around um standards and investment um which would really undermine um the ambition of what we’re trying to achieve you KT um I think back to you Hugh although Jamie if you want to come and do wave as well but Katie as equally do you come in as well uh we have again I think understandably had a question about whether specifically labor in the party but actually any um political party that um is arguing for new large SC large scale settlements do they really understand the need for development corporations to buy all of the all the development land in the designated area close to existing use value um without which the delivery process won’t work and the person asking the question has expressed concern uh that there’s a lack of political courage to push that through uh so Hugh thoughts on that and then there have been a couple of other questions on hope value which perhaps I’ll pick up if you don’t cover that anyway well I think the heart of it is Hope value because I think that you know the Milton keing and the Meyers case there slowly from the mid1 1950s moved us into a form of a compensation code which was essentially extremely generous for for land owners and created what the courts have seen as this Fantasy Land of trying to understand hope value essentially what what that is is to be compensated for future value of permissions which haven’t yet been um uh uh secured on your land but speculatively might exist I think the difference so as there’s two parts to the question as to whether or not as to whether or not everyone in whiteall and Westminster understands the detail I don’t know if people want me to smile a lot at this point but you know but I feel like saying well probably not is the answer to that question but as to whether or not significant progress has been made on the Hope value question my reading of and I think others reading of what the the current government did in a sense slightly surprisingly in the uh leveling up regeneration Act was to Bear down very hard on and limit the scope of Hope value and now of course um Jamie that all has to be tested in the courts so ultimately your profession has the final say about whether this is effective or not um but I do think it’s significant progress along with other quite fragmented and incremental changes to compulsory purchase law that have taken place over the last five years um but all I can do is to agree that that is the fundamental heart and it speaks just quickly to the answer to many other questions about how how you know development corporations were able to pay back their loans well they were able to pay back their loans because they quite rightly were able to acquire land at the right price which is Central to absolutely everything and then they use the uplifting those values generated through the development process in essentially a mutualized way and I think the point that ktie made that’s so powerful is if those assets had been left in the hands of the community sort of leworth model rather than being essentially robbed in 1981 then towns could have reinvested and that financial model remains sound the difference now is the private sector could play a role in financing if we get the model as Jamie said right in terms of drisking for them that’s their incentive if the public sector is Master developer and Dr risks and the payback for the public sector is is growth is development is investment thank you um we’ve also inevitably had questions about locations but also I think related to that questions about whether this will be possible without Regional or strategic planning so staying with you perhaps for a second Hugh I know you talked about the need for a national strategy but do we need subnational slash Regional planning as well that’s easy isn’t it yes um I I think that there are and I’m sure that will come back in some form it’s very difficult to manage a place without having a greater than local Authority boundary you know view of how places operate that’s not how geography works so of course the location process I think should be about National plans broadly understanding where infrastructure and opportunity and constraints play out um and then sub Regional planning playing a role in more detailed identification of where that might take place um if we can get as obsessed as we like with locations but to be really clear locations have to follow evidence so just as a piece of heresy one of the nuts parts of the development process for the UK is to focus all housing growth in areas at the moment that basically don’t have any water and that’s an issue so that’s what sub Regional planning is meant to do it’s meant to square those circles or push development into different uh places and I think KT that Innovation you saw with some of the northern New Towns we shouldn’t forget that this isn’t just a southeas agender and it never was a Southeast agenda it was it was about a program of national renewal as Jamie was saying postwar and that’s something that I’m watching very carefully to see if any new government is wise enough to be able to use these mechanisms actually to renew economies in the north thank you and Katie just coming back to you I know you talked about the existing legislation that needs some tweaks but could be fit for purpose wondered if you might say a bit more about that there there have inevitably been questions about Community participation and I know both you and Hugh talked about that in your presentations but how do we really make sure that that runs through any future development corporations well there’s different aspects to that um process wise some of that is is the role of people in the process of of designation and um things like the right to be heard at different points in the process some of that is about the uh powers and remit of the development corporations themselves and the principles they have to abide by on delivery and um the role of public participation in those processes but more broadly um we’ve also been advocating at a more strategic level for a national conversation about how we’re going to deal with the housing crisis and our housing needs uh we need as you said this whole portfolio of solutions and then we’ve developed such a lack of trust in the planning and housing and delivery process that has developed over the last few decades that any new program uh positive new program of new development is going to be received with skepticism so we we’re really clear that any new government needs to also along with other program of new settlements needs to launch um a national conversation with people about the fact that we’re going to need to think differently about how we provide homes and let’s have an honest conversation about where those can be located and the types of homes and places that we need and we think if there is that’s accompanied by a national spatial plan those things that you mentioned the spatial planning you mentioned but a transparent and honest process about the decisions that are taken about where we locate homes um and growth and why that’s happening we think it will really transform that conversation and how people feel about new development and K just stay with you for a second because I know I know you might have typed the answer to this one but I think it’s worth talking about briefly on here anyway um obviously we’ we’ve been focused today on the lessons from the New Towns program but we do of course work with local authorities and others at the moment involved in large scale development including through our new communities group and we are very conscious there are lessons to learn through those processes as well so I wondered if you could just touch on that sort of what what are some of the more recent lessons that that we think that any future government need need to be picking up as well well um frankly the heroic local authorities that have been trying to deliver at scale despite uh the complex and Confused policy environment is really to be applauded in particular those uh officers who are working on on these projects tiny little teams we’re talking about 150 people working for M King’s Development Corporation we have members of our new communities group that are delivering uh tens of thousands of homes with just you know five people um in charge of it and so um that skills uh lesson uh capacity is a really really important one from that but I think the other thing to mention in relation to that is that a lot of those sites have come forward within our planning system and approach which hasn’t taken a strategic approach to thinking um about locations which hasn’t had that high level um commitment um to standards and so it’s been really relying on the resource capacity um and campaigning of of local leaders um so that strong local leadership is really important and also the work of of officers making it happen at the local level um but frankly some of those larger schemes have been trying to come forward within a system that isn’t set up to deal with the long-term nature of large scale development new communities are a unique and complex type of development that are different to to other types of development and the way that some of the projects are um assessed um through um by pin for example are they not set up to to deal with the the different sequencing of uh information in relation to new communities or some of the different opportunities and challenges in relation to different development coroporation models let alone that strategic approach to identifying um locations so there’s real lessons from those experiences to learn in terms of that strong local leadership in terms of that consistent commitment from government um about a commitment to new communities because there has been such policy uh and political change um in relation to the commitment to new communities over the last 10 years it’s been really difficult to um for the public sector at the local level and also the private sector to invest because there’s real uncertainty about it so providing that certainty um and we had a question as well about some of those existing sites that are coming forward and and also the role of um Urban extensions as well as whole new settlements and we’ve been really clear in our work and our advocacy that we do need that whole range of solutions and in some places Urban extensions will be the right solution and in some plac it’s larger settlements but there is a huge amount of work that’s already gone on by many local authorities to deliver high quality places and we hope um that government will continue to support the best practice examples of those as well as thinking about new places thank you KY that’s really helpful excellently picked up lots of points from many questions there that’s incredibly helpful for me as well um Hugh I’m G to come to you and Jamie I’m going to bring you in as well in just a second um we again uh Hugh in your contribution you talked about the intrenched mythology that planning is a problem and of course the tcpa and I know others on this webinar are very clear planning is very much part of the solution and can be transformational if it’s given the right uh policy Hooks and legislative framework and resorting uh so somebody has asked what are we going to do how do we change the narrative around that so Hugh if you go first and then Jamie I might bring you in for a perspective please from the private sector as well I think I think well first of all it is when I say entrenched I think it is everywhere and and it’s really difficult because it’s become a very easy and very lazy default response um I think particularly inside Westminster and and whiteall because planning is a very interesting thing to blame for why lots of other players in in this process are not necessarily doing their their job so let me be a little bit challenging about that I mean first of all you know what the white paper focused a lot on trying to on delivery rather than consent um the government’s default response to not building enough homes is to deregulate the planning process we’ve been involved in versions of that for 15 years and it it doesn’t work it doesn’t work because it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the complexity of the development process which requires actually the interaction and sequencing of a whole series of quite complex factors in a democratic context that doesn’t happen by chance and it’s not something the private sector is going to do without taking enormous risks so there has to be a new partnership which you have to be able to forge a more grownup partnership I think between private and public sector um about that as to whether it will change though if you want my honest answer it will only change through crisis Jamie mentioned the second war kicking this off but let’s be clear about it within five years that that the impact of climate change on land values which is already having a transformational impact and on the way we live is going to raise big questions and the answer to those questions is get organized and it’s a simple choice for us all it’s not about planners and planning it’s a simple choice between being organized for the future which sensible Society are or having a chaotic hey let’s make it up as we go along which might be a lovely British tradition but has always ended pretty badly I think so the case for planning will be made by not by me or tcpa but by the external challenges that we have to Grapple inside the next five to 10 years thank you Jamie can if I can bring you in yeah sure so I mean in my in in my experience and I think pin Mason’s experiences when people are anti development you know large scale Housing Development you know a lot of the time in fact in my experience most of the time it’s down to the same things you hear which is but the school’s already full but I can’t get a GP appointment but the road is already clogged and therefore all they see is those houses just exacerbating problems that already exist for them and I think if you so so there’s a there’s a wider piece there about um if you can improve the infrastructure environment for people then I think um they will be much more accommodating to change in their area and then you’ve got the other things about them being involved in the process um so you know all the the stakeholder engagement stuff um make sure you do that genuinely and and not as a box scking exercise um and then I think so in terms of how do you do that well actually um most developers do do some form of and most of them are pretty good some you know stakeholder engagement stuff but you can actually write into law like we do for wif farms at the moment so there’s actually legislative provision that for wind farms onshore wind they have to consult is a legal requirement to consult with the local community before they go ahead with the development you know whilst most developers do do some form of consultation there at the moment there’s no legal requirement to do it it’s just a best practice thing and if you don’t want to face you know un unexpected issues later on it’s best to talk to people so that’s why they do it but there’s no legal requirement um and then I think secondly it’s about um making sure that that the infrastructure provision is set out very clearly for people to understand what are they going to get um and making sure those things are followed through so that um there aren’t Cascades out for developers to not provide things you know in certain circumstances or if there are it’s made very clear to everybody the circumstances within which things will and won’t be delivered um because you know I think that’s again where people get upset where they’re led to believe that something will happen and and then it doesn’t um so you know I think if you if you make those changes I think in some cases or a lot of cases you’ll find people are more accepting of development in their area um obviously there’ll be some people who just don’t want change and that will always be the case but I think the vast majority of people it’s other issues rather than the principle of development itself okay thank you very much um final question I’m just going to POS it to you Katie um I think um is there a tension between leveling up which seeks to stimulate decentralized investment into existing towns with high levels of deprivation and a program of New Towns which might effectively outcompete uh existing towns needing investment thanks Vera I mean the simple answer to that is no we need both um it’s not one or the other in our perspective and that’s why we need this National strategic approach to really understand where New Growth needs to happen where renewal needs to happen and that includes as as someone has asked a question about that includes looking at our existing New Towns which in many places are an unfinished project they were in strategically beneficial um locations the development corporations were wound up prematurely and and some of those locations particularly in the north of England uh might be really suitable places for uh regeneration and also provision of new growth and development as well so no the answer is we need we need both and we need a strategic approach to understand where should be prioritized thank you so much Katie uh but a couple of minutes left so I just want to to wrap up I do really want to thank Jamie and Hugh and Katie for their contributions um oh do you want to come back in Katy no sorry acent hand up okay good um I really want to thank all of the three of you for your time today I as we’re really mindful that we covered a huge amount of gr ground uh Hugh and ktie have written a book about this so this isn’t the hard sale but it is available on our website so please do if you want to find out more get it from a good library or indeed from our uh the shop section of our website um but I think some of the key takeaways and and I think from the questions I think people are rightly right to ask lots of these questions about how we get public support for these whether the political parties really understand what they’re committing to when they are saying they’ll build 10 New Garden cities or they’ll build a new generation of New Towns this is a really huge commitment that we would need a new government to to really understand the lot the long-term uh commitment that need that would be needed to drive those forward uh so I think for me that was a really key takeaway from Katie’s that of course we need national government and that to to really take lead on this and and drive this forward but that’s not to impose it at the local level but that is to drisk it and to give those reassurances that actually we won’t start building a new generation of New Towns or garden cities uh that will never quite come to fruition or will be a sort of poor reflection of actually that original Garden City Vision that Katie touched on I think Hugh’s Point around actually this is very much one of a part a portfolio of solutions it’s not the only thing that would tackle uh the the housing crisis but we believe it is part of uh the the range of solutions that are necessary uh is is also a really key one and then the final thing I would highlight uh is that of course thinking about long-term stewardship of any new place is really key and that needs to happen right from the word go it can’t be an afterthought because as we’ve learned the lessons from the New Towns they do uh you know they need regeneration they need that long-term commitment and the long-term stewardship models uh are really Central to that so I had asked a colleague if they would post the link in the chat but I don’t think they have uh but Katie has put the link in one of the answers so I don’t know if we can but maybe we will follow up with an email with some links uh to those resources because again we have published plenty about this but we still find that people aren’t clear about uh What uh some of those really important messages on long-term studentship yes right it’s in the chat very quickly uh there’s a link to lots of resources there around long-term stewardship it really is a crucial part of those Lessons Learned right it’s 2:30 so I’m really conscious that people will need to get on with their days but thank you again thank you to the lady Margaret patteron Osborne trust and to Vincent Masons for supporting us and many thanks again to all of our audience for your enthusiasm and interest in this really important topic thank you thanks