The two previous blogs (31 October and 5 November 2025) talked about the dangers the New Towns Taskforce recent report faces, from landowners and local residents. There is a third threat, from a source overlooked in the report. It is what I call phoney political polarisation, or if you prefer phoney political posturing. Wokingham Borough Council is the worst or is it best? …..example I know. They are veterans at yaboo politicing. Put aside debate about what type of homes are needed locally, and you are left with a simple, spatial question. Where do the homes go? On green field here, but not there? Or brownfield regeneration here, but not there? Spatial policy making has next to no political dimension. It is an issue of local geography or the local environment. But my goodness, local political activists in high demand, high priced areas like the Thames Valley and many leafy residential areas in and around London would have it differently. So they create phoney political divisions and, very successfully over several decades have convinced local electorates to vote along the lines of these phoney divisions. Does it matter? Unfortunately yes, because the apparent spatial differences between the parties result in far more policy U-turns. Which are extremely bad news if you want to plan ahead, think ahead, make long term policies, and deliver change which cannot happen in the short term. Which is why so many residents in and around Wokingham are restless as council after council since the eighties has failed to deliver the wonderful potential a picturesque the towns could enjoy. But Wokingham’s advanced myopia is not unique in the Home Counties.
is there a solution? Go back to the previous blog. Select the National Land Service register solution, and you will find the false debates about where tomorrow’s homes go will be replaced with grown up debates. New debates about where the homes needed between 2035 and 2085 will dominate thinking. And in the process will compel elected civic leaders to think strategically, the highest common denominator and not yaboo point scoring, the lowest common denominator.
Is this sort of brutal fact facing too much to accompany the current new towns debate? I do not know Without eliminating phoney politics, replacing it with local leadership driven by independent civic duties, building the homes needed with local support will be far more difficult. But perhaps it is the price of our form of governance. Interesting times lie ahead.
Ian Campbell
6 November 2025
