The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) on securing this important debate on new towns in Essex. He is a particularly effective campaigner for his constituency and very persuasive and passionate in championing those he represents. We are fortunate also to have you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, as you are also an exemplary representative for that particularly beautiful part of the world, blessed or otherwise from the heavens—in my view, the whole country is so blessed.
As my hon. Friend and many others have highlighted in the House, we have not built enough homes over the last few decades, and we certainly do not build them quickly enough. It is our intention to fix that. As he rightly highlighted, there is much we can learn from the post-war new town programme about the importance of place-making, jobs and skills, infrastructure and the need for the long-term stewardship of place. The design of many of those new towns is often criticised—as he said, it was hit and miss—but it was largely successful, though challenges arose from the rapid development and centralised planning that underpinned them.
New towns were also hugely successful in providing homes and thriving communities for lots of people. Over 2.5 million people now live in a new town, including in lovely Basildon and Harlow. As my hon. Friend recommended, we want to learn those lessons from the past but apply them in a modem context. That is why we believe well-planned, well-designed and locally led garden communities should play a vital role in helping to meet this country’s housing need well into the future by providing a stable pipeline of homes.
This is not just about getting the numbers up; it is about building places that people are happy to call home and that have the potential to become vibrant, thriving communities where people can live and work for generations to come, as my hon. Friend pointed out. We are currently supporting 23 locally led garden communities across the country, from Cornwall to Cumbria, including North Essex Garden Communities, an ambitious proposal for three communities across north Essex with the potential to deliver up to 43,000 new homes.
In March, we announced a further five garden towns, including one in Essex. They include Easton Park garden community, North Uttlesford garden community and West of Braintree garden community. It is an opportunity to deliver up to 18,500 homes. We will make further announcements on more successful places in due course. Each place in the current programme is unique, but the expectations on quality and innovation are high. The council-owned Graven Hill site in Bicester garden town is providing the biggest opportunity for self and custom built homes in the country. Didcot garden town is promoting the innovative use of technology and partnership working between the public and private sector, to underpin a quality agenda.
Garden towns and villages are a key part of the solution to our housing crisis, and we want them to have every lever at their disposal. Last summer, building on the success of post-war new towns, we passed regulations that enabled the establishment of new town development corporations, to be overseen not by the Secretary of State as was previously the case, but by the local authorities that cover the area designated for the new town. Where there are complex delivery and co-ordination challenges, we consider that new town development corporations may be the right vehicle for driving forward high-quality new communities at scale. With a statutory objective to secure the laying out and development of the new town, and with their own suite of powers, those corporations should have the focus and heft to get things done.
Our Housing White Paper “Fixing our broken housing market” was published in February 2017 and committed the Government to allowing locally led new town development corporations to be set up. Section 16 of the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 enabled that to happen, and regulations passed in July last year brought those new powers into force—that was one of my first acts as Housing Minister. Some functions, such as the confirmation of compulsory purchase orders, remain with the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State will continue to lay any regulations that designate new towns, or that establish and dissolve new town development corporations. Those regulations do not change the powers of new town development corporations; they simply localise their oversight.
The regulations provide the mechanism to set up a locally led new town development corporation, but they do not enable the Government to do so simply at the behest of a local authority or group of local authorities. If—as we hope and expect—local authorities consider that a locally led new town development corporation is the right vehicle, we will need to undertake a public consultation. Only if we consider that designating a particular new town would be expedient and in the national interest will we lay the relevant statutory instrument. Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise each proposal for the designation of a new town, and a statutory instrument designating a new town must be debated in both Houses.
I emphasise that locally led new towns must be just that—locally led—and it will be for those local authorities interested in setting up such a body to make the case to the Government for why that would be expedient and in the national interest. That is a complicated way of saying that local and national bodies need to work together to produce the sort of communities that my hon. Friend refers to. We firmly believe that the success of those communities in future will be founded on local acceptability and control.
My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of delivering not just homes but the infrastructure to support them, and we wholeheartedly agree. That is why we have more than doubled the housing infrastructure fund, dedicating an additional £2.7 billion of funding, and bringing the total fund to £5.5 billion. We have given final approval to 94 marginal viability funding projects that will help to unlock a potential 104,000 new homes, bringing forward a pipeline of homes at pace and scale, and helping to solve the problems facing local communities today. That includes more than £11 million of funding to unlock up to 1,500 homes in Colchester and Chelmsford—not far from the area represented by my hon. Friend.
Following expressions of interest to the forward funding stream of the housing infrastructure fund, we have worked with Essex County Council to develop its bids. We have so far announced seven successful forward funding projects, totalling £1.2 billion of grant funding for infrastructure that will unlock up to 68,000 homes across the country.
As my hon. Friend said, housing and infrastructure are only part of the puzzle, and nowhere is that truer than in the Thames estuary, which encompasses the area from lovely Southend to Canary Wharf, as well as north Kent. Comparable in scale to the midlands engine, the northern powerhouse and Oxford-Cambridge arc, the Thames estuary has tremendous potential to power growth for the benefit of local communities, including those represented by my hon. Friend in Southend, and throughout our country.
In the autumn Budget 2016, we asked the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission to come up with an ambitious vision and delivery plan for north Kent, south Essex and east London. In June last year, the commission, which was led originally by Lord Heseltine and concluded by Sir John Armitt, announced its vision for the estuary. In March this year, the Secretary of State welcomed the commission’s vision and backed its ambitious plans to create 1.3 million new jobs and generate an extra £190 billion for the local economy.
In the context of achieving that economic growth, we want more homes in the estuary, and the Government have announced further commitments to support the delivery of the commission’s vision for inclusive and well- balanced growth. Those commitments include £1 million to support a new Thames estuary growth board; launching a strategic communications campaign to promote the estuary as a great place to live, work and do business; funding for the creation of masterplans and feasibility studies on key sites in the estuary’s creative production corridor; exploring the potential for two locally led development corporations; and bringing together relevant authorities to collaborate on the Thames Estuary 2100 plan, to ensure that growth is sustainable and resilient.
Moreover, a Cabinet-level ministerial champion will be appointed to act as an advocate and critical friend for the region within the Government—it is not as if the area needs any additional advocacy, but this will be at ministerial level. Our response marks this Government’s commitment to the estuary, and we have a long-standing commitment to local growth in that area of the country. Indeed, the Government have invested a total of £590 million through growth deal funding since 2014 in the South East local enterprise partnership, which covers the constituency of Southend West. Some £22 million has been spent on 29 skills capital projects, designed to equip the resident workforce with the right skills to meet emerging employment opportunities. By 2021, that investment will deliver 15,000 additional qualifications and over 7,300 apprenticeship places.
In fact, within or close to the Southend West area, the South East local enterprise partnership’s investments include funding to develop the Southend and Rochford Growth Hub; help to develop the area around the Victoria Avenue gateway to Southend; and a package of transport projects comprising capacity enhancements to the A127, as well as a Thames Gateway South Essex local sustainable transport programme—snappily named. They also cover £6.4 million to improve broadband infrastructure in Essex, and a Southend and Rochford joint area action plan towards a new business park adjacent to Southend Airport.
I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the tireless work, on top of all that activity and investment, that my hon. Friend is doing on his long-standing campaign to turn Southend into a city, a campaign of legendary status now in this House. Although we are debating new towns, we should reflect that the Government are very much committed to supporting existing towns across England to harness their unique strengths to grow and prosper. That is why we have established a stronger towns fund, from which £37 million will be going to the south-east area. The funding will enable town deals across England, and the money will be used to deliver locally led projects creating new jobs, providing further training and boosting local growth.
In conclusion, we have covered a lot of ground in this short debate. I once again thank my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to do so, and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for supervising a debate about the area you represent so royally. We want to ensure that everybody who wants a home of their own can have access to one at a reasonable price in a place they want to live. Well planned, well designed, locally led garden communities have a crucial role in helping us to fix our broken housing market by providing the long-term pipeline of homes this country badly needs. But this must be about more than just numbers. We need to learn the lessons from the past—as my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out—and make sure that we build places that people are happy to call home; places that can support vibrant, thriving communities where people can live and work for generations to come, and that may in the future be candidates to be conservation areas, as I hope Basildon will, in time, become.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Thank you. What an excellent short debate.
Question put and agreed to.