The New Towns Taskforce is fully manned, fired-up and away. The chair and members look promising. Reading its Terms of Reference, the NTT looks like the government’s best hope so far for boosting economic growth, the supply of new homes and above all putting the national interest first when making spatial decisions about development.
For example it is heartening to read that the Taskforce is asked to evaluate options for long term work on planning; and on land acquisition. Not so sure about engagement with developers at this stage but the Chair seems clear headed about not having housebuilder members due to the threat of conflicts of interest. Conflicts might be a difficult area for members who represent this industry.
Another encouraging reference marker is the need for the Taskforce to advise on long term stewardship arrangements to ensure successful delivery of new towns over the long term. Here is a crucial and often overlooked area of expertise so foundational to rebuilding public trust in planning. As Nicholas Boys Smith shrewdly observed in a recent BBC interview (In-Depth, 19 September 2024, Mark Easton), ‘We need to help people to fall back in love with the future, thinking that new development can improve both places and their lives. Right now they don’t’. Shame I think that the experts in creating premium values like the landed estates are not represented on the Taskforce. Perhaps they will be interviewed and new horizons of opportunity will be seen by Taskforce members,
All this is good news, and welcome. But as I said in an earlier blog the government do not have any idea what will hit them in terms of local hullabaloo when say a dozen different locations will be highlighted for new town development, which is in the national interest even if it is not part of local priorities and may be diametrically opposed to local wishes. Handling the conflicts between local fears of change with national needs for economic growth will require national and local leadership skills of the highest order. This is why I have long advocated a far more consensual, cross-party, cross-border approach to planning. How else are we to help people to fall back into love with the future as Nicholas Boys Smith points out? Perhaps they should interview the King too, who after all was the driving force for the creation of premium values through the Crown Estate long before most recently born housing experts. Let us hope they go down to Dorchester to …see the Crown Estate extension and its 30% premium values at Poundbury.
Or is it too early to learn from local reactions to growth plans, first launched a year ago by Michael Gove to treble the size of Cambridge in twenty years? As I am not up to speed on this promising initiative I do not know. No doubt the Taskforce will go and have a look?
The essence of the local v. national conflict problem is ignorance. Put simply, myopic horizons, Nicholas Boys Smith says despite 60% of the public supporting more houses, only 7% trust the planning system to creat places. How is this distrust to be reversed. As my last blog records, there is in my personal experience a distinction between intellectual support, the 60% for the idea of many more new homes and the reality on the ground of building near them, the 7% who do trust the planning system.Elsewhere I advocate financial incentives for residents in host locations, paid for by residents whose overspill housing is exported to the host locations. Crude as a solution it may be, but money talks.
Good luck Taskforce. Your findings are going to hit the headlines. Please think hard about messaging now.
Ian Campbell
21 September 2024
