England needs roadmap to accelerate delivery of new towns

Rebecca Warren of Pinsent Masons was commenting following the publication of a report that sets out a series of recommendations to help the UK government deliver on its ambitious goal to create tens of thousands of homes in new towns across England in the coming decades.

The report, published by Pinsent Masons, draws on a series of roundtable discussions held between senior leaders across the public, private and third sectors and warns that short-term funding cycles, fragmented planning processes and unclear delivery structures are slowing progress on large-scale community development. 

Last week, the government announced it was consulting on seven potential sites to build new towns in England. This was almost half the number earmarked for development last year by the New Towns Taskforce appointed to help to support the government assess the next generation of new towns and identify recommendations to support their delivery.

Warren, a town and communities expert at Pinsent Masons, said the government’s latest plans signalled its enduring “commitment to long-term delivery of housing and addressing the housing crisis”.

However, as the Pinsent Masons report lays bare, the government still urgently needs a roadmap to support its overarching goal of building more than one million new homes by 2029, said Warren. “The opportunity before us is still enormous and new towns must be treated by the government as a strategic priority as part of a coordinated cross-Whitehall approach.”

In particular, Warren said there’s growing recognition across the industry that a more coordinated approach will be vital to helping the government realise its aspirations. She and others are advocating for a central government team, consisting of representatives from all Whitehall departments, to be given directional and dispute resolution powers to intervene and help prevent and ultimately overcome delivery roadblocks. “This would also ensure that there is consistency of departmental priorities as regards the delivery of the new towns and communities and collaboration between governmental departments,” said Warren. “This is something that is not always the case at present which can cause delays or for priorities to fail.”

She said that having civil servants and ministers engaged in this way would also help facilitate continuation in event of political change during election cycles.

The Pinsent Masons report outlines 39 recommendations from industry experts to help the government deliver on its goals for new towns’ development in England. 

From an infrastructure perspective, the Pinsent Masons report says utilities, health and transport agencies are planning on cycles that are far too short to support new towns, often causing multi-year delays. Instead, it recommends that they develop mandatory 15-year aligned infrastructure plans, with rolling five-year updates, to match local plan horizons. 

As for funding, the report notes that experts recommend a minimum 10-year funding settlement will be required for Homes England, mayors and development corporations engaged in new towns and communities to unlock institutional investment and give both public and private sectors the certainty required to deliver these homes at scale. 

It says there is also a need for clearer guidance on government borrowing and investment to ensure greater flexibility and longevity of grant funding and investment. The schemes must also be attractive for private investors. In this regard, it will be critical to introduce new tax incentives and market-demand stimulus measures, including the potential for a new form of “help to buy” scheme, stamp duty land tax SDLT reliefs and allowances to extend mortgage terms beyond 25 years.

The Pinsent Masons report also urges the government to enable development consent orders (DCOs) for large‑scale housing and new towns. This would require making amendments to the Planning Act 2008 to enable major new settlements – identified as those with more than 10,000 homes – to opt into the DCO regime, which is currently only used for ‘nationally significant’ infrastructure. Such a move, the report says, would allow projects to secure multiple consents at once, including compulsory purchase order powers, and would operate independently of local political cycles. 

Finally, the report stresses that there is growing recognition of the need for greater flexibility during the multi-decade design, construction and occupational stages of these new communities. Toolkits and guidance for digital delivery, stewardship models and viability will be critical to ensuring these projects are completed and meet the government’s ambitious housebuilding targets.

Many of these recommendations were reiterated in a recent letter to the government. In the letter, new towns and communities experts from Pinsent Masons emphasised that cross-departmental consensus in Whitehall would be a critical driver to achieving these goals and advocated for the creation of a representative central government team to drive forward coordinated change and step in when required to unblock delivery roadblocks.

Commenting on the report, Warren said new towns and large-scale new communities present a significant opportunity to address the housing crisis in England, but that there was still a distinct need for clear leadership and modern policy tools to drive these projects forward. “With the right funding frameworks, modern delivery models and more flexibility, we can build places that are not only high-quality and future-proofed, but genuinely transformative for the people who will live and work in them."