New Towns

Tim Roca Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

In Macclesfield, one topic has dominated conversation for several months: the proposed new town at Adlington. It has been talked about on every street corner, in every coffee shop and at every parish meeting. Well, almost—for one glorious weekend, Adlington was briefly knocked off the top spot by the small matter of Macclesfield beating Crystal Palace in the FA cup. I am on dangerous ground, because I think the Minister was brought up in south London, so I will leave the football at that.

Jokes aside, this is an important debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for securing it. I am not a nimby. I support house building and development, and I support the principle of new towns, done well, in the right places, with proper planning, and in the right manner with proper infrastructure. This country needs homes, especially genuinely affordable ones, and new towns have a proud history of delivering them, when they are carefully planned and sensibly located. I do not oppose that ambition; I welcome it. But supporting the principle of new towns does not mean signing a blank cheque for every proposed site, and it certainly does not mean abandoning the basics of good planning—which brings me to Adlington.

Adlington is not an empty space on the map. It is a small rural community of about 1,000 people, first recorded in the Domesday Book. It is a place shaped by continuity, with fields and farms; its working farmland is still producing food, supporting local jobs and sustaining wildlife. The proposal before Macclesfield would place up to 20,000 homes on 1,000 hectares of strategic green belt, wiping out 15 working farms, ancient hedgerows and bluebell woodlands, and fragmenting some of the most environmentally sensitive land in Cheshire. That matters, because the green belt is not an accident. It exists for a reason: to stop urban sprawl, protect countryside and make sure that we regenerate brownfield land. Once green belt on this scale is gone, it is gone forever.

I want to make a broader point about the new towns taskforce and its shortlist, because it is quite telling. Among all the sites recommended, Adlington stands out, not as the most suitable, but as the one that has faced the greatest opposition. That opposition has come not from one group, one parish or one campaign, but from across the community, across political lines and across civic society. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me before Christmas to discuss those concerns. It is particularly striking that the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has not opposed a number of the other new town sites recommended by the taskforce, has taken a clear and firm position against Adlington. When it singles out one site among many, it is because something genuinely does not stack up.

If that were not enough, Cheshire East council has voted unanimously against the proposal. That almost never happens in local government, and that alone should tell us that this is not a narrow ideological objection, but a considered judgment by the democratically elected planning authority for the area.

I want to talk a little more about Cheshire East, because it really matters. It is not a council that avoids building homes. It has met its housing targets consistently in the past, it has adopted a sound local plan, and it has delivered thousands of homes and continues to do so. It is not a planning authority that is dragging its feet or shirking its responsibilities. It is now preparing a new local plan, which will set out how housing need will be met in years ahead—transparently, democratically and with proper public engagement. That is how planning should work. The council has delivered before, and with its new plan it will deliver again—but without dropping 20,000 homes into the open countryside, against the opposition of local communities. Opposing the Adlington site does not mean opposing housing; it means respecting the plan-led system rather than bypassing it.

I mentioned brownfield land, and there are brownfield sites across Cheshire, Greater Manchester and the wider region that are crying out for regeneration, many of them close to jobs, transport, schools and services. Building there first is not anti-growth; it is sustainable planning. Indeed, there are alternative new town sites in the north-west that could be considered. Let us not jump straight into one of the most sensitive stretches of green belt in the region, next to a national park. Let us think again.

Powerful points have been made already this afternoon about infrastructure. Those concerns have not been convincingly addressed in the case of Adlington, which has limited rail services, constrained road capacity and utilities that were never designed to support a town 20 times its current size. Fixing that would take decades, not years, and there remains no clear answer about who would pay, who would deliver or when any of it would realistically be in place. That has been compounded by the way that we have gone about this. We need engagement with residents, but there has been only one engagement session with local residents by the company Belport. Communities have been left scrambling for information about the proposal. That is not how to build confidence in a major national project.

Before I finish, I want to thank local campaigners and activists—people who never expected to become planning experts, transport analysts or ecology specialists, but who have given up their evenings, weekends, and indeed savings, to engage constructively, responsibly and in good faith. They have not shouted from the sidelines; they have done the hard work of evidence, scrutiny and civic engagement. That is democracy at its best. They deserve recognition.

Let me be absolutely clear once more that this is not about saying no to development; it is about saying, “Not like this, and not here.” We should be building homes where infrastructure already exists, where growth can be absorbed sustainably, where local authorities are partners rather than bystanders, and where the environmental cost is justified by an overwhelming and proven need. Adlington does not meet that test.

I will end with a bit of history, because this House likes its history. In the Minister’s office hangs a picture of Clement Attlee, who I think is a hero to both of us. It was Attlee’s Government that created the green belt, precisely to protect landscapes like this from unchecked development. It was not anti-housing; it was pro-planning. It is about balance, foresight and stewardship. We owe it to that legacy and to future generations to show the same care now, so let us support new towns, let us build the homes our country needs, but let us also say calmly and clearly, in the Attlee spirit, that Adlington is the wrong place.