Developers who are by nature traders, not long term investors cannot deliver new towns-even if they say they can. Place making, creating premiums locations people will love, takes decades, foresight and shrewd civic leadership.
According to the government today this New Town Code will be a code of rules that developers will have to meet to make sure the new towns and extensions they are proposing are well-connected, well-designed, sustainable and attractive places where people will want to live. The NTC will ensure these communities have the infrastructure and public services needed to support them. Hurrah to the principle, if the spatial analysis leads to choices that are market reality driven by the new Chair, Sir Michael Lyon. But asking developers to line up and deliver these principles is plain silly. They won’t. They can’t. They don’t know how. To be blunt master planning, place making at micro-spatial detailed level ie. , estate management guidelines is not their bag. Although many may claim otherwise. Ignore such claims. Getting the governance foundations right is critical for long term market confidence. How do I know? Experience.
Ask, are they traders or investors in the eyes of HMRC? The former have no interest or track record in long term spatial commitments. They live by making a capital gain on the house sale. The latter will have a big property investment portfolio which they have owned for decades or generations. Their primary focus is adding value locally, incrementally and generationally. Landed estates understand place making, creating premium values, and as a result focus on quality and durability. I love it that this government now has the housing bit in its teeth, but I am scared at the names they listen too, and the absence of the ones who know how value is added, how value grows if you create places with appeal and how easy it is to go off the rails at the start. Once this happens it is very difficult to recover market credibility.
Step 1. Who will buy the first controlling pieces of land BEFORE locations are chosen and announced? Step 2.:When will the government announce that from date x all land deemed to be potential new town/extension land will have its price frozen that day at its open market value, including hope value if it exists? Plus IMO. a generous ‘compulsion’ bonus to all land owners whose land is subsequently CPO’d in the following 5/10 years. Date x is vital to capture hope value in long grass locations.
How will local residents react in the NTC locations? That distinct and all powerful topic will be in another blog to come. Local support is a very different type of issue to this one. Get either wrong and it is statis for another half generation.
Ian Campbell
31 July 2024
