Forest City: West Suffolk

Debate between Nick Timothy and Ian Sollom

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Nick Timothy]

I completely agree, and I will come to the needs of Cambridge and the surrounding area.

You will have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that none of the examples that I have just given is in a western country. That is because advanced economies do not build artificial communities from scratch in the hope that economic growth will follow. That is the logic of the autocrat and the socialist planner, and there is enough evidence from history to inform us of its chances of success. In truth, the Government know that.

In the small print of the new towns programme, officials were dismissive of Forest City, saying that it had no local support, no landowner backing, no broader development interest, and no route to delivery. They said that Haverhill did not meet their economic tests, and that the area near Exning and Newmarket had too little water. Simon Dudley, the former chairman of Homes England, called Forest City

“a recipe for disaster, paid for by the taxpayer and dressed up as progress.”

Simon Lovegrove, an expert in new towns and cities around the world, has said that there is

“no need for such a city”,

that the proposal has “major flaws”, and that—for the reasons that I have already given—it is “unaffordable”. As Mr Lovegrove says, according to the employment-population ratio and the labour force participation rate, a city of 1 million people would have a working population of nearly 400,000, but the city of Cambridge has a working population of less than 70,000. The developers talk about the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, but I wonder whether they have even looked at a map, because we are on the wrong side of Cambridge for that.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

My constituency is in the path of the Oxford-Cambridge arc. I welcome the proposed development at Cambourne; there is also a proposal for a new town just south of the constituency, in Tempsford. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Forest City could just be a huge distraction from the new towns programme, which is a credible way of getting on with delivering the housing for which we certainly see the need in my constituency?

[Nick Timothy]

I do agree, but it is not just a distraction from the need to build in the way that that is needed in the broader region around Cambridge. Only today I received an email from one of my constituents who said, “I see that you have a debate. Please will you emphasise the damage that this is doing to people’s mental health, and the anxiety that it is causing local residents?”

Why, if this proposal is so flawed, has it not already been killed off? The developers behind Forest City have won fawning media coverage in The Guardian, the Financial Times and the BBC, and to date the Government have refused to say no. In March, the Housing Minister said in answer to a question from me:

“Officials will review this proposal in the usual way, including through a meeting with the promoters.”

In April, he confirmed that the meeting had in fact been held in February. When the developers claimed to be in talks with the Treasury, I asked Ministers there, in April, whether they, their advisers or their officials had met the Forest City team, but they refused to answer. When I asked whether the advisers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government had met the Forest City team, I was directed to a publication about meetings held last year—not this year—with senior media figures, not developers. To date, everyone has been completely evasive about the whole thing.

During a debate in the other place two weeks ago, Baroness Taylor, a Housing Minister, told my noble Friend Lord Herbert:

“We are aware of the Forest City proposals and will be following how they progress through the appropriate local consultations and approvals”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 June 2026; Vol. 856, c. 1423.]

But this is the point: Forest City will not go through local consultations and approvals. Its proposers are asking the Government to circumvent local democracy and create a development corporation with compulsory purchase powers. The Government could just say no, but so far they have refused.

In the meantime, it is local people who are suffering. I have had emails from people who have told me that they would like to sell their house, but cannot. I have had emails from people who have found their dream home in Suffolk, but cannot commit to buying it as long as this development remains on the table. People in the Bradleys have been told that their village will have to be flooded to make way for a reservoir. People in Great Wratting and the Thurlows have been told that village life will be gone forever. People in Exning, Newmarket and Haverhill have been told that their communities will become suburbs. People in Wickhambrook and Withersfield and Hundon and Kedington and Denston and Stradishall and Ousden and Dalham and Lidgate and Cowlinge—which, like Haverhill, the developers cannot even spell—have been told that they do not matter. Their lives will be ruined, and they have been told that they will have to live amid a building site for decades, often for the remainder of their lives. They have been not only disrespected, but insulted.

The Forest City developers, Shiv Malik and Joe Reeve, bussed in supporters from outside the area to a supposedly local meeting in Haverhill. They cancelled a public meeting in Thurlow because too many locals wanted to come—it was apparently a secret public meeting. Behind our backs, they and their supporters have disparaged local people as too old to have a stake in the future, too white to be interesting, and too rural to understand the obvious joys of city life. In the Financial Times, Mr Malik was photographed next what was called a “deserted field”, seemingly unaware that the farmland in our corner of Suffolk is the best in the country.

The poor behaviour does not end there. Malik and Reeve present their plan as an act of altruism for the country and the next generation, but they want to keep 160 acres of the city for themselves. Based on Cambridge land values, that would be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The chairman of their company, Dame Patricia Hewitt, is opening doors for them and promoting the proposition as being in the national interest. She is less open about the fact that Mr Malik will soon be her son-in-law, and her family therefore have a direct financial stake in what she promotes.

On different occasions, Mr Malik has claimed the support of local landowners, when only one is believed to support Forest City and the rest oppose it. He has claimed the support of the British Horseracing Authority, which has had to write to him to tell him to stop. He has also claimed the support of the Jockey Club, which has also sent him a legal letter. He threatened to sue me for revealing these things, but when I held my ground, he backed down.

In truth, Forest City has attracted almost universal opposition among the people of West Suffolk—those living in villages and those in the towns; those who were born and bred in the area and those who chose to move there; those who are young and those who are old; the landowners, homeowners and renters; and the businesses and residents. There is value in the rural way of life, even if the Forest City developers disparage it. Local people do not want to see their homes and communities destroyed.

This is not about knee-jerk opposition to new homes, because we have had thousands of new homes built in the last five years. The new local plan proposes 5,000 new homes, on top of the 8,700 already marked for planning permission. Although Government housing targets have been cut for the cities, they have gone up by 57% for us. To put things into context, Haverhill has doubled in size in only 30 years. Given our proximity to Cambridge, this is understandable. As I said in my maiden speech, we should

“embrace the opportunities, not just fear the risks”,—[Official Report, 22 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 445.]

of housing demand connected to Cambridge. That is why I have never been an anti-housing campaigner, but the solution to the demand created by the innovation and enterprise of Cambridge is not Forest City.

The solution is the densification of Cambridge itself, the development of land adjacent to the city, and the construction of transport connections to the towns and villages within a commutable distance. Haverhill, for example, provides Cambridge with workers, including many at Addenbrooke’s hospital. It needs a rail link and not just the often single-lane A1307. The line between Newmarket and Cambridge should be dualled, and there need to be more services through Newmarket and Brandon.

My concern is that this Government, who have been setting and missing ambitious house building targets, will see Forest City not for the impracticability of the plan but as a big idea that they can seize to show that they still have radicalism. The developers are already talking about their pitch to the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), and some local Labour politicians—we have heard from one today—have already hinted at, or even given, their own support.