Like many residents in our Glinton and Castor rural ward I too have long taken a keen interest in all things planning and any area of government policy which might affect what we hold dear in our communities, our rural villages and beautiful open countryside around where we live.
Some will be aware the new Government has made a commitment to build a generation of new towns as part of their mission to deliver 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament. The new towns would include new, large-scale, standalone communities built on greenfield land, urban extensions and urban regeneration schemes, each containing at least 10,000 homes.
An apparently independent New Towns Taskforce has been created and convened during September in Milton Keynes. Their mission I’m told is to report back to ministers on high potential locations, principles and standards, investment options and solutions to barriers to delivery, within 12 months – certainly an ambitious timeframe if genuinely new, new town opportunities are to be identified.
The government’s top-down approach and timetable signals an urgency in tackling the housing crisis, but as I’ve written here before, delivering new homes within five years on proposals of this scale will be hugely challenging and laden with potential pitfalls. Success will require strong, decisive leadership not just at the national level, but also during consultation with and acceptance from local authorities and our local communities. Without this, it will be difficult to secure the support needed to ensure the appropriateness and long-term success of new developments. Additionally, and again I’ve said it before, the relationship between this New Towns initiative and the existing (ever evolving) changes to the national planning system must be considered. These new towns are intended to provide additionality, meaning they will be over and above the 370,000-home target already identified through the proposed revised standard method.
This could act as a significant deterrent to local authority backing of a new town proposal where, in many instances, administrations are already grappling with strategies to meet increased housing needs. However, it is correct that new towns should not be viewed as a silver bullet for meeting imposed housing targets at the expense of other more modest scale, sustainable sites. All that said, it is essential that existing infrastructure is not overloaded, our communities aren’t swamped and the historic open countryside protecting our wards’ villages lost forever.
Cllr Peter Hiller – Glinton and Castor ward
