In a move to address the country’s housing crisis, the government has announced plans to build 12 new towns and 1.5 million homes across England. However, the proposal has drawn criticism from key figures involved in the creation of Milton Keynes, one of the most successful post-war new towns.
Lee Shostak, the former director of planning at the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) in the 1970s and later chair of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), has raised concerns about the government’s new towns programme. Shostak argues that while Milton Keynes was designed specifically to ease the housing burden in London with a large stock of council housing, there is a real risk that these new towns will do little to alleviate council house waiting lists in big cities.
“There’s talk about 40% of the homes as affordable housing, most of which will not be social housing and there’s no indication whatsoever those homes will be available for people moving from London or other urban areas,” Shostak said. “So the very basic, simple premise that kick-started the original new towns programme isn’t being followed through today.”
John Walker, who became planning director of MKDC in 1980 and went on to become chief executive of the Commission for the New Towns, echoed Shostak’s concerns, stating that while the new towns are an exciting prospect, there are worries about how the programme is being executed.
“I am concerned that it’s not ambitious enough. There’s nowhere that would compare with the later-stage new towns,” Walker said. “I don’t think it is going to be enough, and I’m ambivalent about whether it’s going to produce the sort of results that people want to see.”
Both Shostak and Walker emphasised the importance of government-backed new town corporations with land ownership and planning powers that could deliver homes and infrastructure at scale. Without that, they fear the project may lack momentum, and the private sector may be unwilling to take on the risk.
“Milton Keynes didn’t just happen because it was a good location. We made it happen because we were given the powers and the resources to make it happen. That’s the opportunity England has today, to do it again,” Shostak said.
The government’s new towns programme has also faced backlash from local communities, such as in the village of Adlington in Cheshire, where residents are opposing plans to build 20,000 new homes in a standalone development on their doorstep.
Aysha Hawcutt, an Adlington resident campaigning to stop the new town, said, “If we could see in our local area there was a need for the sort of housing that’s going to be built, then I think we would accept it more. But we know these plans don’t fix any problem, they just make money for a private company.”
Katy Lock, the director of communities at the TCPA, criticised the lack of a strategic approach to identifying locations for the new towns and the insufficient public engagement in the process.
“There is such mistrust in planning in the public’s mind and there is an opportunity with this new towns programme to be more transparent and bring people along in the process – and I feel that opportunity has been missed,” she said.
The government has defended its new towns programme, stating that it welcomes the Task Force’s recommendation that 40% of the homes should be affordable housing and that the programme will help “fix the housing crisis we inherited.”
However, the concerns raised by the pioneering planners of Milton Keynes suggest that the government’s ambitious plans may face significant challenges in delivering the kind of transformative change that was achieved with the post-war new towns.
