Will new towns fix the UK's housing crisis?
The government plans to create communities of at least 10,000 homes to tackle the chronic shortage of houses
With an estimated shortfall of 4.3 million homes in the UK, the Labour government has said "new towns" are a key part of its plan to build 1.5 million houses over the next five years. But are the plans enough to solve the crisis?
Angela Rayner last month signalled the "largest housebuilding programme since the postwar period", inspired by the post-Second World War creation of towns such as Stevenage, Warrington and Milton Keynes.
Under the proposals, designed to address the growing demand for affordable housing, the government plans to create large communities of at least 10,000 homes each, of which 40% will be affordable.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
But the proposals have prompted scepticism in some quarters. The Centre for Cities, an urban policy think tank, warned in an analysis for The Guardian "that the government would need to build significantly more new towns and urban extensions than England has ever achieved to even make a dent in its 1.5m target".
What did the commentators say?
Raising doubts over the viability of Labour plans to use new towns to address the housing crisis, the Centre for Cities' research found that the postwar new towns programme, which inspired Labour's proposal, contributed only 3.3% of all housebuilding in the 40 years after the 1946 New Towns Act.
Between 1947 and 1991, development corporations in England built 307,000 homes – "the same number the government will need to build on average every year up to 2029", said The Guardian. Maurice Lange, an analyst at the Centre for Cities, said that while "past experience suggests that the policy can accelerate development in certain areas", its role in increasing total housebuilding "is likely to be relatively small".
"Recent British history is littered with grand plans for thriving and bucolic new towns built from scratch," said City A.M. But the developments "rarely live up to their claims". If Labour wants to deliver its planned 1.5 million homes by the next parliament "experience shows us that they should focus on their urban extension plans, instead of relying on new towns, which often under-deliver".
The town of Northstowe serves as a recent cautionary tale. Planning for a 10,000-home town near Cambridge began in 2007, but progress has been slow, with only 1,200 homes completed. Residents, who moved in a decade later, face inadequate amenities, no shops and long commutes to Cambridge. Over three-quarters (76%) of residents said they were dissatisfied with local services in a recent survey.
But if you are going to build new towns then "location matters", said Big Issue. "To fill an estimated shortfall of 4.3 million homes, we'd need to build 36 new Milton Keyneses. But where to put them?" The UK's housing crisis is most acute in the Southeast, said Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the Centre for Cities, speaking to the magazine. "If you were going to build more new towns, the data would suggest you do it as close to London as possible," he said.
There are alternative solutions to the housing crisis besides new towns, said Jonn Elledge in the Financial Times. A 2015 report from the Adam Smith Institute estimated that 1 million new homes could be built within walking distance of a railway station on London's 'green belt' – "a form of British transit-oriented development that would take up just 3.7% of London's greenbelt, leaving 96.3% of it, an area many times the size of the city itself, untouched", said Elledge.
Another option "for expanding built-up land within cities" may prove rather "less popular", however. It involves focusing on "quite how much land Britain gives over to a little-played sport involving hitting balls with metal sticks".
A 2021 report by architect Russell Curtis found that London's 94 golf courses occupy more space than the entire borough of Brent, home to more than 330,000 people.
"Given that golf courses are bad for biodiversity and walkers alike, this feels like a curious choice at a time of housing crisis," said Elledge. "Rethinking it could provide homes for as many people as Milton Keynes, and still leave the capital's golfers with a couple of dozen courses to choose from."
What next?
Speaking to The Guardian, a government spokesperson said that new towns were "just one part of our plan to get Britain building again and create the homes this country needs. They are expected to deliver hundreds of thousands of much needed affordable homes in decades to come.
"We have been clear from the start this is a long-term project, but 1.5m homes will be delivered in this parliament thanks to our overhaul of the planning system."
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.
-
How might the GOP's Afghanistan report impact the presidential race?
Today's Big Question House Republicans are blaming the Biden administration, but the White House is pushing back
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Keir Starmer defends winter fuel cut
Speed Read PM says government must 'fix the foundations' despite criticism
By Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, The Week UK Published
-
Can Germany's far-right win across the country?
Today's Big Question A startling AfD triumph in eastern Germany's regional elections lays bare the fragility of the country's mismatched coalition goverment
By The Week UK Published
-
Will Kamala Harris give YIMBYs a voice in the White House?
Today's Big Question And can federal officials do anything about local housing rules?
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Will Grenfell Inquiry report provide justice?
Today's Big Question Final report blames central and local government for 'decades of failure' as well as 'dishonest' manufacturers for the spread of the combustible cladding
By Richard Windsor, The Week UK Published
-
Is post-election violence inevitable, win or lose?
Today's Big Question As Election Day draws near so does the prospect of a violent response, no matter the eventual outcome
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Why are Democrats suing the Georgia election board?
Today's Big Question Worries about 'chaos on Election Day'
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Is taunting Trump the key to Harris' campaign?
Today's Big Question Democrats embrace mockery instead of menace
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published