New Towns

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate brings in the important element of the necessary range of tenure and types of property. In garden town and village status applications, various things are looked at: the value-added aspect, need, particular aspects of community, green spaces, and design. All those things are weighed when awarding the status. I think 51 applications were made for garden villages; 14 were awarded. Those are the criteria we look at.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

As new towns, by definition, will not be built on brownfield sites, I urge the Minister, with the government machine, to constantly put the case for the building needed, because only 12% of the land of England is built on. We are not short of land; it will have to be what people call the green belt. I do not think that we as a Government did enough—nor have the current Government—to propagate the fact that there is more than enough land for the building needed.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The noble Lord has a point, though of course it is not always in the right places. Very often, we have great areas of green land where it would not be appropriate to put a new town. He is right about the pressures that exist and the fact that we often overstate the amount of built-up land, even in the south of England. That said, we are using brownfield sites, for example in Ebbsfleet.