Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to encourage and support private sector investment in proposed garden settlements.

Across England we are already supporting twenty-four locally-led garden cities, towns and villages to be exemplars of quality, design and best practice. All told, they have the potential to deliver up to 220,000 homes across England.

Autumn Budget 2017 announced that we will extend this support to deliver five new garden towns that will seek to bring together public and private capital. This recognises the importance of private sector investment to deliver new garden settlements.

To help achieve this ambition, we are introducing legislation to enable locally accountable New Town Development Corporations to be created as a key instrument of delivery. We expect such operational independence to be attractive to private sector investment to get on with the job of delivering any new garden settlement.