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

Baroness O'Neill of Bexley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this very helpful debate and to the Built Environment Committee for its extensive work behind this second report on new towns. I thank my noble friend Lord Gascoigne for his chairmanship of the committee and the insights he has provided, and all the speakers in the debate.

His Majesty’s loyal Opposition of course support the delivery of new homes, especially for young people, and we recognise the Government’s manifesto commitment to build new towns. In 2019, we promised to build 1 million new homes, and we did, on time and as promised by 2024, and there was a little thing called a pandemic in the middle. However, we want to ensure new homes are built in the right places and that housing delivery is, first and foremost, driven by a genuine “brownfield first” approach, as we have emphasised time and time again in your Lordships’ House.

The second and latest report highlights the need for long-term, compelling vision from central government both to inspire the design and place-making of these new towns and to manage their operational delivery, which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, referred to when he said that we needed drive, leadership and inspiration. However, “vision” is not a word that is frequently associated with the current, caretaker Prime Minister, let alone “long-term”—I think the noble Baroness should perhaps have a word with him and pass on some of her enthusiasm and energy. Indeed, the Government have already cut five of their 12 proposed new towns, with just seven remaining, and with the withdrawal of proposals for Adlington in Cheshire, all the proposed new towns are really urban extensions rather than stand-alone towns.

We cannot think about new towns in the abstract. Our islands have a long history and every corner has its own local identity, heritage and traditions that should not be steamrollered over by Whitehall. People do not want greenwashed housing estates concreting over their countryside, as my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs articulated clearly earlier.

The second report recommends that these new towns should not repeat past mistakes. We particularly welcome the recommendation for design standards to be supplemented by locally sensitive design standards for each individual new town. We must follow the evidence collected by those such as Create Streets of what ordinary passers-by and residents like to see, and to empower small and medium-sized builders.

As the Government’s former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, said during the last general election:

“We’re always hearing that people want tree-lined streets of townhouses, so that’s what we’ll build”.


I think the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, could give some advice there around the trees. What has changed? The previous Government started this work to overcome the design disconnect, yet the Labour Government began by deleting references to aesthetics and beauty in the National Planning Policy Framework, despite the hard work undertaken by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.

We began the work for Greater Cambridge, too, which my noble friend Lord Lansley referenced, as a potential urban extension. I remember some of the early work through Homes England. The current Conservative Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is committed to growth and to tackling long-standing infrastructure challenges, yet Greater Cambridge seems absent from the Government’s latest plans. Local planning authorities and developers benefit from certainty and long-term consistency from central government. Can the Minister update the House on what plans the Government now have for Greater Cambridge specifically?

The committee’s latest report recommends that the Government move beyond short-term metrics to measure the cost-effectiveness of individual new towns, and the second report makes clear the need for government to bring in private investors from the start. Good design with inclusive infrastructure built in from the start saves money in the long term, and this needs to be measured effectively, as my noble friend Lord Jamieson reminded us. What steps are the Government taking to cut the public costs of design and delivery phases?

Making the design and delivery more straightforward for planning authorities and developers requires leadership from the Government, rather than letting public money be used to pay for external consultants with no clear outcome or action in sight, or for endless public consultations, which, in reality, do not take people’s views on design seriously.

As the Social Housing Bill makes its way through your Lordships’ House, I would be interested to hear from the Minister how social housing will form part of their seven remaining new towns. How will new social homes be allocated and how will new tenants be prioritised?

We are seeing the consequences of a Government who came to power without a plan and a party which campaigned on the promise of attractive homes only to backtrack a few weeks in, which pledged 1.5 million new homes that may take more than five and a half more years to deliver, and which promised a new generation of new towns only to cut five of the 12 proposed, with Tempsford being the only genuinely new town. The Government did not, and still do not, have a long-term vision, let alone one backed by a thought-through plan for delivery.

I look forward to hearing answers from the Minister and, looking ahead—if indeed housing delivery remains a priority for this Government—when this House can expect the Government’s full response to the committee’s latest report on creating communities.