New Towns

Andrew Lewin Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on her powerful and deeply personal speech. The theme of the debate has been the stories of sons and daughters of new towns, and of people who have gone to new towns to make their lives there. Each new town has its charms, its own history and its unique identity. They are home to 2.8 million people today. Just as the new towns programme was integral to rebuilding the country after the war, this Government’s ambition for 12 new communities is one of the most important of this Parliament.

In my maiden speech, I celebrated the history of Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, but emphasised the importance of regeneration and investment. If places are to thrive, they cannot be static. Every town needs to evolve and renew for the future. In that speech, I referenced the iconic Shredded Wheat silos that have sadly lain dormant next to Welwyn Garden City station for years. I am pleased to report to the House and to my community that since I made that speech, planning permission has been granted for a 578-home development. Crucially, the silos and their history will be maintained, and the developer, Treble Eight Group, proposes transforming them, and creating a sky bar and restaurant at the summit. That is precisely the type of imagination and investment that we need in our towns. Lots of people in the town are excited about the project. The sooner the building work begins, the better.

In Hatfield, a new public play area has opening in the market place in the town centre, and I continue to have conversations with the borough council about a much more ambitious regeneration programme for White Lion Square, which is at the heart of the town centre. That conversation cannot just be between politicians. As soon as I can, I will share more information with Hatfield residents and ask for their input, imagination and ideas.

Our next generation of new towns should take inspiration from the last, but should learn lessons as well. Many hon. Members have talked about those in depth. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on his excellent and insightful speech. We want to design places that thrive in the 2040s, which is a very different challenge to building in the late 1940s. That said, there are some examples of best practice and timeless principles. I congratulate Sir Michael Lyons and his team on the new towns taskforce. They delivered a serious piece of work at pace, and were clear that there must be a long-term vision for each new place that we build, but there can be common elements to all. The Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), talked about some of those common elements earlier, but it is worth returning to those points. There must be higher density in centres, so that residents can walk to local amenities, and so that the footfall created brings about the demand to support viable and vibrant high streets. We need dedicated space for business and commercial activity, so that the new communities sustain jobs and attract ongoing investment. There must be easy access to parks, green spaces and nature. Social infra- structure, including good schools, cultural and sporting facilities, healthcare and hospitals, must be in place from the outset, along with balanced communities, with a range of housing tenures.

The need for social and affordable housing has always been important to me and integral to the new towns project. Outside our largest cities, our existing new towns have the highest concentration of social homes in the country. We need to build social homes at scale again to meet the urgency of the housing crisis, but we must plan with consideration as well. In our existing towns, there is too often a visible divide between estates on the one hand, and roads full of private homes for the more affluent on the other. In our next generation of new towns, let us build tenure-blind communities. Our ambition should be to walk down a street and not be able to tell the difference between a private home, one for private rent, one in shared ownership, and one for social rent. As we walk down those streets of tomorrow, let us ensure that they are lined with electric car charging points, and that the homes have solar panels and heat pumps, and that they are never too far away from a green space and a community centre—and in my case, a cricket club.

I was born in Welwyn Garden City, and it is my privilege to represent two brilliant and unique places and new towns in Parliament; I will always be a champion for them. If we are to meet the moment and address the housing crisis, we need advocates for the next generation of these communities on both sides of the Chamber. Let us invest in renewing the new towns that have been with us since the 1940s; let us be bold in planning the communities of the future; and let us get building.