According to research from Centre for Cities, first reported in The Guardian, New Town Development Corporations delivered 307,000 houses between 1947 and 1993. This consisted of 231,000 built by public authorities and 76,000 by private housebuilders.

New Town Development Corporations were created by the various New Towns Acts to manage, design and develop new towns.

The report found that the total number of houses built by these accounts for 3.3% of all housebuilding in the 40 years since the New Towns Act, peaking in the 1970s, when 5% of all housing was delivered by New Town Development Corporations.

The government has said that new towns would be a part of its housebuilding target of one-and-a-half million houses, but the priority initially would be the development of brownfield land and promotion of housebuilding at greater densities in towns and cities.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that planning system reform is crucial, saying that the government will take an interventionist approach.

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The Centre for Cities noted that, during the period, total English housing stock grew from 11.6 million in 1950 to 20 million in 1993, equal to Bristol being built 20 times over.

Of all the houses built by these corporations, around 60% were built in the Greater South East, with corporations in this region building around 5,000 more homes in the first 20 years after designation, compared to the rest of England.

The report added that Milton Keynes was an “outlier” in terms of building more and more quickly than any other New Town Development Corporation.

 

Govt will have to ‘build more new towns than the UK ever has before’

The Centre for Cities said: “The government should follow the example of their post-war forbears and concentrate the new towns and urban extensions where need is highest. These places are most likely to grow quickly and continue growing, even after the main work of the development corporation is done.

“The government has already indicated that they expect most of the ‘new towns’ to actually be urban extensions. The evidence on the success of the expanded towns programme suggests that this is the right path.

“If the government wants to make a dent in its target of 1.5 million new homes, it will have to build more new towns and urban extensions than the UK ever has before.”

The charity added that there were international examples showing that ambitious housebuilding targets could be achieved, but warned that 300 extra planners would not be enough to “build the required capacity and expertise in master planning, land assembly and project management in new development corporations and local authorities”.

“Ultimately, new towns will only be one of the tools the government will need to use to increase housebuilding and improve planning outcomes. Increased housing targets that make it more challenging for local authorities to prevent housebuilding are an important start, but more will be needed.

“Increasing the use of Local Development Orders, and Supplementary Planning Documents, would help push numbers up further by removing uncertainties from the planning process. Eventually, the government should aim to move from using these piecemeal de facto zoning tools to a more comprehensive UK-wide flexible zoning system,” it concluded.