Site for Labour’s first New Town revealed by think-tank

Much of Labour’s promise to build 1.5 million homes during the next five years, or some 1,000 properties a day, is based on a plan to create three new towns – and one thinktank reckons it knows where the first is likely to be.

UK Day One says three cities are likely to see new towns built outside them – Oxford, Bristol and York – but the most suitable site for a standalone ‘new town’ on rural land is between Cambridge and Oxford at the intersection of the East Coast Main Line and planned East-West Rail, and the East Coast Main Line and planned East-West Rail.

To be called Tempsford New Town, it would join its existing counterparts including Stevenage, Milton Keynes and Crawley, and would have a population of between 250,000 and 300,000.

The town would also be a major employment centre, especially in life sciences, helping to relieve the acute shortages of laboratory space in Oxford, Cambridge and London.

And a a hybrid parliamentary bill could be introduced by Labour passed within 12 months and the first residents would move in during 2029, the report says.

Jobs and housing

But Labour has been warned that wherever it decides to place the UK’s next new towns, location will be the deciding factor in their viability, saying the best areas are where homes to buy or rent are scarce but jobs plentiful.

Money also plays a part – the report’s authors Kane Emerson and Dr Samuel Hughes says Tempsford New Town would cost £25 billion but home sales alone would generate £35 billion in revenue assuming a town size of 125,000 houses.

They also highlight one major obstacle – fixing the ‘Welwyn bottleneck’ which is a piece of narrow track created by a viaduct that limits train traffic on the East Coast Mainline, a major engineering project that would have to be completed to make Tempsford workable.

“Many parts of Britain suffer from acute housing shortages. These shortages are a major driver of homelessness, poverty and deprivation, as well as a major cause of Britain’s economic underperformance since 2007,” their report says.

“No task is more important for the new government than tackling them.

“We can meet housing shortages through piecemeal additions to existing settlements, or through building new ones.

“Both of these are important, and there is no reason to choose one exclusively. But new towns have some special advantages that can often make them particularly attractive.”

Read New Towns for a New Britain.