New Towns

Jake Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

It is a pleasure to have my first outing under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey.

I start by saying happy 70th birthday to Harlow and happy birthday to Telford, Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Crawley and all the other new towns that have an approaching big birthday with a zero in it. I have a birthday with a zero approaching in a couple of years.

It is because we are at such an important crossroads for new towns that I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) for this debate today. It gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to new towns and recognise their continuing role in delivering the Government’s house building agenda. It is important to look at the lessons to be learned from the new towns programme so that, as we move forward and build garden towns, villages and cities, we do not make the same mistakes.

I welcome the way in which new towns can now work together, and not just at local authority level. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s idea of an all-party parliamentary group, which will start an important conversation here in Parliament. The Town and Country Planning Association’s new town network is doing great work and I have a copy of its report here.

I will focus initially on the new town in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which in many ways is leading the Government’s thinking on new towns. Like all new towns, Telford is testament to the fact that place making never ends. The town has grown to be a success story as the commercial gateway to Shropshire over many years, but it faces some challenges. Parts of Telford have ageing infrastructure. The problem is not restricted to Telford and today we have heard many colleagues talking about that. The contemporaneous obsolescence test in new towns is that if everything is built at the same time, everything wears out at the same time, which poses real challenges.

In addition, the development style of many new towns, which during the ’60s and ’70s was the height of modernity, especially in our town centres, can look outdated and often does not provide the modern shopping experience that consumers demand today. Telford and other new towns have risen to the challenge and in 2016 the Government signed a unique land deal with Telford in which they committed £44.5 million from land sales to reinvest in Telford’s infrastructure. At the same time, we will deliver 2,800 new homes and create 8,500 jobs. Telford has been successful in several rounds of growth deal funding to improve its infrastructure, to build a new bus station—linking to the comments on buses—and to invest in skills. The growth deal for Telford is precisely the sort of forward-looking approach that we would welcome from all new towns up and down the country and could be progressed through the housing deal flagged in the recent White Paper.

My hon. Friend asked what we will do about the new towns legislation, which is hugely important for all our new towns. We have legislated through the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 to enable the creation of locally accountable new town development corporations to provide powerful and effective delivery options for garden towns, so that updating has already taken place.

Telford, like so many of our new towns, is a dynamic and exciting place to live. We have heard from representatives of all new towns that they all seem to be dynamic and exciting. Telford has halved its unemployment since 2010 and doubled its apprenticeships. Its business start-ups are up, its housing starts are up and even my hon. Friend’s share of the vote at the recent general election was up, which I welcome. It shows, as we have heard today, what a difference a fantastically hard-working MP, on whatever side of House they sit, can make for their town. Telford is one of the most economically successful towns in the midlands and its gross value added and employment are on a par with many areas of the south.

We have also heard from colleagues from across the Chamber. The hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) talked well about Skem. I am from the area and I know that it is not universally known as Skelmersdale; we call it Skem. Lancashire County Council and the local enterprise partnership are working on a plan for Skelmersdale railway station and I hope the hon. Lady will come forward with bids to the housing infrastructure fund. She spoke very well about some of the challenges of the infrastructure in Skelmersdale. I am pleased there is good news locally with major employers such as Flavourfresh and Huntapac reflecting the growing economy around Skelmersdale.

The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) spoke about the challenges, but it is clear she has real pride in her town and I know that she will be a powerhouse on the APPG. The idea of an international trade exhibition promoting a new town is excellent.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) is supporting local proposals for high-quality transformation and growth for Harlow through the Harlow and Gilston garden town proposal that he supports. New new towns, as I think we will now have to call them, must learn lessons from old new towns like Harlow. We welcome bids from Harlow and all the new towns to the infrastructure fund that he spoke so well about.

The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) spoke about his town centre, which faces challenges like many other new towns.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) spoke about smart cities and the Opposition spokesman also spoke about the importance of embedding infrastructure, including digital infrastructure, in our new towns for their plan for the future.

On a recent visit to the new Metro Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, I was particularly interested that he is talking about a digital domesday book held locally to put on record the infrastructure as it is today. By mapping the existing infrastructure it is hoped that we can future-proof the expansion of towns to ensure that we are not repeatedly digging up our roads. I welcome his enthusiasm for the National Infrastructure Commission and agree that this is an exciting opportunity for local growth.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) spoke about her town. I know that she welcomed the North Worcester Engineering Centre, which was opened by the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), showing that Ministers of that Department are constantly in contact with her and her town. I note that the local enterprise partnership has plans to create 2,300 new jobs in the area.

Turning to the Opposition spokesman’s comments, I will not take lectures from anyone in the Labour party about the rate of house building. The lowest house building rate anywhere in the country was in John Prescott’s proposed eco towns. The problem with them, unlike our garden city proposals, was that their direction was top down, forcing housing, often in the wrong place where people did not want it, on communities. What is so exciting about our proposals for garden towns and cities is that they are locally led. We all know from our constituency role that development is often opposed, but when there is buy-in from the community from the first day, it makes it much easier to deliver.

In Bicester, we have already had 1,000 starts. In Ebbsfleet, 350 properties have been completed. In Northants garden community, Kettering, Corby and Wellingborough, 650 homes have been built and in Aylesbury Vale there are 2,500 starts, showing that this Government are absolutely determined to deliver our promise to build more than 23,000 homes in new towns.

There is still a problem with new towns and people’s perception of them, and the APPG could work on that to ensure that towns that may previously have been associated with roundabouts, with or without traffic lights, and with decay and ageing town centres start to be the leading lights of our country. I hope and believe that, when the APPG is formed, it will invite me to address it and that I can talk about our progress under the recent housing White Paper to ensure that we build a record number of homes in this Parliament, and emphasise that new towns and new new towns continue to be a focus for this Government and a fantastic place for people to live, work, raise a family, own a car, drive round roundabouts and live their lives as happily and freely as they can.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered challenges facing new towns.