New Towns: Laying the Foundations (Built Environment Committee Report)

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very welcome debate not only because it is the opportunity to discuss our first report of the Built Environment Committee, but also because it is turning into a very interesting debate in all manner of ways. I pay tribute to our excellent chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who is extremely enthusiastic, focused and gets the best out of witnesses. He said, quite rightly, that from the start the committee recognised that we were dealing with a very big idea when we addressed new towns: an idea that needed big presence and big energy but required more than a single report and a deep dive. I will focus on a few key issues that illuminate why we have come to our conclusions. The report was innovative, but it also had quite an unusual context. It was modular but it was also very dynamic, because policy was being made by the taskforce while we were doing our work. When the list of sites was revealed, it was good to see that the committee and the taskforce shared so many assumptions about the power of place-making.

A second characteristic was that new towns are sui generis. They take decades to deliver. Ministers are very lucky to see spades in the ground, but they depend on the keenest foresight, whether about energy or food or nature security or extreme weather. The watchword that runs through this is “stewardship”, and therefore development corporations are the right vehicles. Mayoral development corporations will be tremendously useful and have great potential, and they have the capacity to be responsive and flexible and far-sighted as the realities change.

Finally, it was good to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, said: this is indeed policy embedded in living history, because the reality of the post-war vision is ever before us. People are still living in those settings. There was a certain wistfulness in our committee that we did not have the heroic vision and the post-war imperatives of rehousing, which were profoundly necessary but also popular. They came with the patient capital investment that paid off, and we make the same case under different conditions, because our housing emergency cannot be encapsulated easily in a single vision, although that is what we called for. It has a dual purpose: addressing our structural housing shortage and unlocking growth. Both are essential, but how do they relate to each other? Where is the novelty? Where is the innovation going to come from?

The challenge is even greater because we are in the foothills of our own industrial revolution, more unpredictable than those that have shaped our world. The uncertainty is compounded by very different financial conditions, labour markets, skill needs and changes in demography. All of that affects housing aspiration and provision. The new towns sit alongside massive new investment in social housing and are faced with all the familiar problems that frustrate every development in the country.

I have two questions for the Minister. Can she say something this evening on the contribution that new towns will make to the overall housing targets? There is still a bit of confusion about that. Can she bring us up to speed with the work of Homes England and the National Housing Bank, because they are so critical to getting things done?

On changes about national mood, people rightly expect to be involved in decisions about their future; they were not in that frame of mind in 1947. It makes a single conversation about new towns and their purpose more difficult and more contentious. Seeing is believing, but the work of the taskforce has been under the radar, and it means the field is wide open to vocal opposition—hence our insistence that there must be a bigger voice and greater visibility to bring the credibility and energy that they demand.

We can do it, because there are new tools and new opportunities. Place-making can bring consciously together landscape, character, sustainability, infrastructure and quality of life. Many of our recommendations audit the unique opportunities that new towns present to think creatively, with private and communal space, conservation, connectivity, integrated services, community ownership, design codes and innovative funding. Those factors will create the new models for the future.

In evidence to the committee, the Minister was a formidable advocate for new towns, and every Minister who came before us was very focused—and the taskforce is extremely impressive. But our final, substantive conclusion is that something above and beyond is needed if the programme is to achieve momentum and public confidence. In short, we think there needs to be a bigger, bolder, simpler story told about the new towns. I am afraid that I am going to use the word “vision”. It is easy to be sceptical, but we need something that captures desire as well as imagination. It does nothing less than shine a clear light on the nation’s hopes for the next generation, giving security and opportunity in housing and jobs. It requires commanding leadership, which is why we suggest a single, powerful voice, a Cabinet Minister with this as their sole priority, and not an internal unit but a cross-government agency with power to advise and pull heads together and deliver. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.