Housebuilder hopes raised as government pledges 200k homes in new town scheme
Housebuilders are hoping for a boom in construction after the government pledged nearly 200,000 new homes as part of its new town programme, though it has cut five potential sites from its shortlist.
Labour’s housing and communities department is billing the scheme as the most ambitious housebuilding plan in the last 50 years, with seven new towns of between 15,000 and 40,000 homes planned.
The government has vowed to build 1.5m homes by the next general election but the construction industry has been ramping up claims Labour will miss its target due to the taxes and costs they say are hampering housebuilding productivity.
Labour had been considering a shortlist of 12 sites for new towns but has now revised this list down to seven which will be taken forward for further consultation.
One new town will see up to 40,000 homes built around the existing village of Tempsford in Bedfordshire, with a new major train station set to form part of the planned Cambridge-Oxford link.
Another two sites will get up to 40,000 homes: one an addition to the existing new town of Milton Keynes, the other a new site north of Bristol called Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc.
Two of the sites will be in London, with as many as 21,000 homes planned for Crews Hill and Chase Park in Enfield and 15,000 set to be built in Thamesmead, which will benefit from an extended DLR link in the next decade.
Around 15,000 homes will be built at Victoria North in Manchester, and 20,000 at Leeds South Bank.
Five proposals have been axed from the new towns list but could still get other housebuilding support – these include sites in Cheshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Plymouth and Worcester.
‘New homes must be high quality’
Paul Rickard, chief executive of London-based housing developer Pocket Living, said these new towns are a positive step toward Labour’s housing goals.
“As well as providing short, medium, and long-term opportunities for the delivery of new homes, this is also a generational opportunity to support SME developers, scaling back up our depleted SME housebuilding industry,” he said.
Small and medium (SME) housebuilders have warned they face an “existential crisis” as their contribution to the UK’s construction industry plummets.
Last week, a report by the Home Builder’s Federation found only 28 per cent of small housebuilders had a positive outlook on the country’s housing market, with sentiment even more gloomy in the capital.
Net additions to the UK’s housing stock are set to fall from a 260,000 yearly average to a low point of 220,000 per year in 2026-27, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which said reforms to planning regulations are yet to speed up housebuilding.
Mary-Anne Bowring, managing director at property management firm Ringley Group, said: “Confirmation of the locations for the planned seven new towns is a positive next step but getting the tenure mix right is just as important as actually building new homes.”
Bowring urged the government to focus on the quality, as well as the quantity, of these new homes.
She said: “As part of the delivery of these new settlements we would urge the government to focus as much on housing design as housing delivery and seek to reduce future costs for future occupiers as much as possible given acceleration and modern methods of construction require a degree of standardisation.”