Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what his Department's policy is on the future of New Towns.

Across England, we are currently supporting 24 locally-led garden communities to be exemplars of high quality, good design and best practice. Together, they have the potential to deliver up to 220,000 homes. Our support has helped foster local ambition to accelerate the pace of delivery, with over 12,000 new homes started. This support has included provision of £19 million of capacity funding expert delivery advice from Homes England and cross-government brokerage to resolve barriers.

At Autumn Budget 2017 we announced we will extend this support to the delivery of a further 5 locally led garden towns that will seek to bring together public and private capital. To deliver on this ambition we will introduce legislation to enable locally accountable New Town Development Corporations to be created as a key instrument of delivery.