New Towns

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered challenges facing new towns.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Bailey, and to see so many colleagues from across the House here to discuss this incredibly important issue. At a time when the Government are embarking on an ambitious house building programme, it is particularly important that we consider the experiences of new towns—the successes and, in some cases, the challenges and the things that have gone less well in their history. New towns are an experiment that should inform housing policy in this country. There is much that we can learn from our different experiences in our constituencies. Although there are many issues that we share concerns about, we also have common successes that we can bring to the House.

This is a wonderful opportunity to get colleagues to think about working together collaboratively on this issue. We often hear about our coastal town colleagues, who band together successfully, our rural colleagues, who also band together successfully to lobby for some of the things they want, and our urban colleagues, but there is something very distinctive about a new town. Very often we are by nature isolated within a rural environment. New towns were created outside cities as part of a vision for fresh, clean air and to tackle overcrowding. That isolation means that we are not always welcomed by the rural communities that surround us.

Connectivity and transport issues sometimes create urban isolation both within the new town and in connection with the rest of the country. We certainly have that issue in Telford: we are isolated in many ways. People sometimes say, “Where is your constituency? Is it somewhere on the way to Wales?” No, it is not. It is a vibrant, thriving new town set in the heart of rural Shropshire, not too far from Birmingham and now easily connectible to London. I want people to think about the ways our new towns interact with the hubs across the country.

Many new towns are marking their anniversaries. Harlow celebrated 70 years this year, and Milton Keynes has had its 50th anniversary.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. This year Crawley celebrates the 70th anniversary of its designation as a new town, and it has certainly been a very successful community. One of its problems, which she touched on and no doubt will expound further, is that it was designed for about half its current population, so we must address issues such as access to health services, parking and housing as we go forward for the next 70 years.

[Lucy Allan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very helpful intervention. He is absolutely right that our respective constituencies share many features.

One of the other reasons for calling this debate is that I want new towns to be recognised as distinctive areas with specific needs.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. I represent about two thirds of Cwmbran new town, in the southern part of my constituency. Unfortunately, the Government are proposing to relocate jobs away from the Cwmbran pension centre and out of the new town. Although we can certainly have policies in favour of new towns, I suggest that the Government need a coherent approach and should not be withdrawing jobs from new towns at the same time.

[Lucy Allan]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. I completely agree that a successful new town must have inward investment and jobs. It is about not just housing, but the whole community. We must look at new towns from that perspective.

Some years ago the Communities and Local Government Committee did some excellent work on new towns. It first looked at them in 2002, and it revisited them in the 2007-08 Session, but the Government of the day were reluctant to take on board its recommendations. The Committee visited Harlow, Corby and Telford, and did a significant amount of research. Disappointingly, there was the sense that new towns should be normalised and treated just like any other town. There was no recognition of their distinctive and specific needs, which is partly why I wanted to hold this debate.

Fortunately, the Town and Country Planning Association revisited those reports and produced some excellent work on how to use the experiences of the past to inform what we do for the future. It set up the new towns network to work with local authorities in new towns across the country and try to bring together some of these common themes. I only discovered that wonderful organisation while researching for this debate, which was fortunate, because had I come to this place without that knowledge, I would probably have been reinventing the wheel. I am grateful to it for its excellent publications, which I will happily send to any hon. Members who would like to see them. They contain a thorough analysis of the challenges. I am delighted to see that the Minister has a copy of one of them with him, and I hope that he has read it.

I have the great honour and privilege of representing the fastest growing new town in the country. Telford is a unique town. It has a specific identity and a proud industrial heritage as the birthplace of the industrial revolution. It is a collection of former mining villages on the east Shropshire coalfield. It has an enviable rural-urban mix and a fantastic quality of life, which we should seek to emulate in the house building drive that the Government are committed to. Despite the many hurdles that Telford has experienced along the way, and rural Shropshire’s considerable resistance to its development—for example, there was resistance to the building of the M54, the main link road to Birmingham, and it took many years of persistence to get that connection—it is now a dynamic, thriving centre of gravity for the entire surrounding area. Some of that was brought about by welcome Government investment in Telford. We should not ignore the part that the Government have played in their commitment to Telford, for which I am very grateful. I very much hope that, as the MP for Telford, I will be able to continue to secure such investment.

Telford is now a huge population centre and a huge business centre. It has inward investment, commerce and advanced manufacturing, and all sorts of high-tech and new economy businesses are coming to Telford, but it has never had it easy. Its success is all about its innovation and willingness to embrace change. All new towns have had to have exactly that spirit: they have had to have determination, optimism and hope to make the towns what they are today. The new town movement was conceived with the vision of hope, opportunity for all, clean air, green spaces and better living conditions, but in some cases that vision did not come to full fruition.

Telford has overcome those obstacles and is a shining example of what a successful new town can be. That is why I wanted to share its example today. It is now where all the houses are planned and all the jobs are going, so it needs to be where the schools and hospitals are built and where the infrastructure is located. I say that because we still have many battles with the surrounding rural Shropshire about what investment should come to Telford.

As I said, all new towns were based on a premise of optimism and a vision for a better future. The lessons we can learn from the past will play a fundamental part in tackling this country’s housing shortage.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is generous in giving way to me again. I entirely agree about the vision for new towns. When they were conceived by the post-war Labour Government in the late 1940s, it was not only with a vision of hope and optimism, but with the idea that things could be planned in advance, rather than only as a response to past problems. The new towns were settlements where we could plan for the future. That could be used again as a strategy for future new towns.

[Lucy Allan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. The long-term stewardship of the assets of new towns is fundamental to their future success. It is all too easy to say, “We have a local authority that is thinking only about the needs of today and is neglecting to look at the long-term vision.” We want the stewardship concept.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her generosity and forbearance in giving way to me a second time. Yes, it was under a Labour Government that new towns were created, but it was also under a Labour Government that, sadly, Crawley lost its hospital’s maternity and accident and emergency services in 2001 and 2005. It is therefore pertinent that we concentrate on the importance of long-term, sustainable planning.

[Lucy Allan]

I entirely agree.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on the importance of health services in future plans for any new town. In Redditch we have seen the unfortunate removal of A&E and children’s A&E services from the Alexandra Hospital—a temporary closure has now become permanent—and they have moved to Worcester. I will not go into the details, but they highlight the need to plan holistically for health services, and that is in addition to all the other issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) is discussing.

[Lucy Allan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. In Telford we, too, have had some debate about the future of our health services. I am delighted to report that we will not lose the A&E or the women and children’s unit, as was widely touted during the election campaign. One reason is that Telford has a rapidly growing population, so the need is self-evident. However, she makes an important point.

I have talked about some of the positives and good lessons that we can learn from new towns, but this debate is about the challenges, so I will move on quickly. Colleagues will face many of the same challenges in their constituencies, such as the new build challenges. New build brings its own huge range of different complications and problems experienced by residents, including pressure on infrastructure, school places, doctors’ waiting lists and little things such as postcodes or polling stations, which we do not have in new build areas, as well as street names and bus stops. Those are some of the things that are so important to quality of life.

People move to a new town because they are buying the dream—they are buying their own home, their future and their children’s future—but some of them will end up living in part-finished estates, paying exorbitant fees to management companies that do not discharge their obligations—that is probably a matter for another day, as we cannot address it in detail in this debate, but I wish to revisit it on another occasion.

Another common challenge we face is transport connectivity. Infrastructure investment often lags behind population growth. In addition, many new towns are designed around the car, but in Telford we have low car ownership and poor public transport, because of the low density of population. Low density is a good thing and part of what new towns are all about, but there are knock-on consequences for everyday life. As for digital connectivity, I will not talk much about it because only yesterday in the main Chamber we had a very full discussion about digital shortcomings with regard to broadband. People spoke at great length about new build and deficiencies in broadband.

Low-density population also makes bus routes unprofitable, which is a difficult problem to address. Road layouts even make walking difficult and—perhaps other Members share this view—we have many roundabouts bristling with traffic lights, which hold up traffic flow completely unnecessarily. That will definitely be the subject of another debate, such is the volume of constituency letters I receive on the subject, and the frustration it causes many people in Telford.

Some hon. Members present will share some of those concerns, but all new towns share the major challenge of a maturing new town, which is renewal and regeneration. As our new towns come of age, whether they are 50 or 70, we have to look at how we deal with fading infrastructure and faded housing estates that are sometimes not fit for occupation. As has already been mentioned, the failure to plan for the long term has caused some of those difficulties.

We all have decaying housing estates in our constituencies, built 50 years ago with poor design and poor materials. Whole estates are now in need of renewal, because they have been left behind. Every time I go to one of those estates, I ask where they will be in 10 years’ time, never mind 50 years’ time, and where the plan is to make the homes fit for the next generation. Such homes are often part of the private rented sector, so I feel that no one is looking after them—the council will often wash its hands of the responsibility. Yes, selective licensing might be introduced to try to make the landlords responsible, but the issue is much bigger than that, because often whole estates are in need of renewal and regeneration.

Infrastructure, too, from local centres to bridges that have outlived their intended lifespan, affects the perception of what was once an ambitious and modern project, but which is now looking faded and tired. That can affect the whole ambience of a town. An essential part of the success of a new town is not only to keep replacing the old, but the need for a vision and that concept of long-term stewardship, as we have discussed.

I am delighted that last week the Department for Communities and Local Government announced a £2.3 billion housing infrastructure fund as part of the Government’s commitment to their ambitious house building programme. It is very welcome. Telford has 17,000 new homes planned for the next 14 years, and I very much hope that it will be able to take advantage of the infrastructure fund. When the Minister responds to the debate, will he give us some steer as to whether new towns will be able to make bids to that fund in order to solve some of the problems of renewal and regeneration?

Will the Minister also recognise the fact that new towns are special? They have specific qualities and challenges. A cross-departmental approach is needed to support them. We are talking about housing, transport, business and the digital economy, so I would like to see Departments across Government focusing on the issue as a whole. We want to see the investment that we have had in Telford replicated in other new towns, which have not always benefited to the extent that we have done. Some challenges are specific to new towns, but previously Governments have wanted to normalise new towns, as if they were just like any other town. That was a mistake, so I reiterate how distinctive and special they are. Colleagues in all parts of the Chamber will agree with that.

In such a short debate we can barely scratch the surface of these issues. I would very much like to set up an all-party parliamentary group to take forward this initiative—I will definitely be knocking on the doors of those Members who are present. There are 32 new towns throughout the UK, and I will talk to the representatives of all of them to ask whether they wish to be part of an APPG.

We need to challenge the stereotype of new towns. Too often they are seen as substandard, but they are not; they are fantastically inspiring places to live, work and raise families. I could not recommend Telford more highly to anyone who wants to live the dream. Yes, there are problems and things that need to be ironed out, but Telford is definitely the place to do that. In fact, we have been very lucky; the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has been to Telford on many occasions, and I think he fully understands the issues I have raised today. I am grateful to him for his support.

Telford is special. In 2018 we will mark our 50th anniversary. Although there may be lots of events and celebrations, we must not lose sight of the need for a vision for the next 50 years. The Government may be able to help local authorities with that. The nature of the election cycle means that local authorities are not always preoccupied in the way they ought to be with long-term thinking about infrastructure needs. I want to hear from the Minister that there is cross-departmental recognition of the specific needs of new towns, that new towns can access the housing infrastructure fund, and that they will receive help to plan ahead for future challenges.

I make a final plea. We have had a housing White Paper and there is a New Towns Act, but that was passed in 1981, so there may be scope to modernise it and make it fit for purpose for the present day. The key point that I would like everyone to take away is the need for long-term stewardship to secure the future of our fantastic towns, which we are all privileged to represent.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I add my thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing this important debate. She hit many nails on the head, particularly about the need for the Government to work on a cross-departmental basis and have a long-term strategy for new towns over the next few decades.

I should put the record straight: Milton Keynes is actually a new city, not a new town. As my hon. Friend correctly said, we celebrated our 50th birthday earlier this year. I should also say for the record that Milton Keynes has more than 900 roundabouts, which I think is more than anywhere else in the country.

[Lucy Allan]

Does my hon. Friend have bristling traffic lights all over his roundabouts, or are they left unfettered to let the traffic flow?