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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for what reason a) Stotfold Garden Village, b) Tempsford and c) Milton Keynes scored differently for Objective 2 of the New Towns Programme methodology.

Building on the work of the independent New Towns Taskforce, my Department carried out its own assessment of potential locations for new towns.

The full methodology and outcome of this assessment can be found at Annex C of the New Town Draft Programme which was consulted on between 23 March and 19 May 2026. That Annex can be found on gov.uk here.

Table 1 in Annex C sets out the objectives, sub-criteria and guidance that was applied to the longlist of locations that were assessed. Table 2 sets out the reasons why longlist locations, including Stotfold Garden Village, did not meet the programme objectives.