New Towns

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing the debate. Building new towns was a good idea—it was a necessity of the time, in both economic and population terms—but they failed to deliver their promise, which leaves my constituents in despair even today. We need to find a way to deliver that promise in a manner that befits the 21st century.

The new town of Skelmersdale was designated in 1961, with a target population of 80,000. Some 60 years on, it has a population of almost half that and little or no local facilities, amenities, transport links or adequate housing. It is a town built around the car, where people are driven underground and forced to use underpasses. The roads mostly have no pavements, but cars move about freely. It is a town famous for its roundabouts, like that mentioned by the hon. Lady.

Skelmersdale residents are proud of their town and work hard to put the best of themselves in the shop window. Only last year, local football coach Carl Eaton was nominated for a BBC sports personality award for his work with Skem Men-Aces, a football team that he founded for people with learning disabilities. The club has won countless trophies, and some of its players represent us at international level. There are many such impressive stories, and they are all the more impressive given that the town is deprived of an adequate town centre, a railway station, sports facilities, education opportunities and so much more. We have a shopping centre that pretends to be the town centre, but it is just a building. When the local council attempted to build a genuine town centre and a modern high street, the owners of the Concourse took out High Court injunctions and made appeals to block it. Skelmersdale is a town failed by narrow commercial interests. People are forced to spend their money elsewhere.

Although Skelmersdale became a designated new town in 1961 and a bright new future was projected, its tracks were pulled up and its train line was shut two years later. It is a town failed by a lack of foresight and that is desperately fighting to get a railway station. It is a town that has low car ownership—I concur with the hon. Lady on that point—but promises are still being broken. The Secretary of State for Transport visited during the general election campaign and told my constituents that bringing back the Burscough curves would be a quick win. I am still waiting for that announcement. Skelmersdale is so poorly served by bus services that, were it not for a planned rescue by the county council, an area of Ashurst would be without any bus service whatsoever.

All those things absolutely impact on the town’s economic prospects. It is a town where, rather than fixing the roof of a local sports centre, which was well used and generated an income, the council shut it down and it eventually burned down. It is a town failed by the council. The promised local hospital never materialised, and even education did not fare well—one high school was forced to close and its students had to relocate elsewhere in the borough. The recently built college withdrew its offer of A-level studies, forcing any student with an aspiration to progress at that level or further to study outside the town. That is an obvious difficulty considering what I said about rail connectivity and the lack of buses. It is a town failed by the education authorities. What can I say about housing? After 60 years, thousands of people still live in what was referred to as “temporary” housing. The planned development of 20,000 houses still has not happened. It is a town failed by planning authorities and developers.

I have fought really hard for Skelmersdale, which I have represented for the past 12 years, and I share local residents’ frustration. We still have not seen improvements and investments that were promised more than half a century ago. All the infrastructure has decayed at the same time and needs massive investment, of which we see little or nothing.

Before we move forward and build new towns and villages, we must ensure that we leave no one behind and we must invest in the towns that we have. We must keep our promises—promises that were made a long time ago—to people, update these towns and make them fit for the 21st century. We must help people like my constituents, who moved to our older new towns based on promises that they were given that even today we have not fulfilled. Yes, we need more new build housing, but as we look forward, we must ensure that we do not leave people like my constituents behind. If there is no future for them, what future can we tell other people that they will have in their new towns?