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Right now, the UK simply doesn’t have enough homes. When the current government took power last year, it pledged to build 1.5 million more before the next election. And for all those new homes, it needs to build new towns.
So, on September 28, the government’s New Towns Taskforce revealed its recommended locations for Britain’s ‘next generation of new towns’. Two of those proposed locations are in London itself – Crews Hill in Enfield and Thamesmead in Greenwich – but there are three more within commuting distance of the capital.
All three sit within the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, which has been designated as a priority area for investment in housing, transport and digital infrastructure. The task force said that each should have a minimum of 40 percent affordable housing, half of which will be for social rent.
The government is ‘determined’ to begin building at least three of the proposed towns during the current parliament. Here’s a breakdown of the new towns that could be popping up near London, according to the New Towns Taskforce.
Heyford Park, Cherwell
Heyford Park, a former US airbase near Oxford, is set to become a standalone new town and get 13,000 new homes as part of the government’s New Towns Taskforce. During the Cold War, the site housed more than 8,000 American military personnel and their families at any one time.
The taskforce report said that development ‘could capitalise on proximity to the city of Oxford’, being just a 15 minute train journey or half hour drive away. That means that it’ll have convenient links to London, too.
Milton Keynes
Obviously, Milton Keynes already exists as a city. It started life as a ‘new town’ in the 1960s and now is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. What the government is proposing here is not a new town but a ‘renewed town’ that could support the delivery of roughly 40,000 new homes and ‘help unlock the full growth potential of Milton Keynes’.
Central to this proposal is the creation of a Mass Transit System. The report says that a new transport system for the city would ‘would not only discourage car dependency and connect residents to key existing employment, commercial, and cultural spaces, but it could unlock other neighbouring sites for large-scale development that would otherwise be unviable or unappealing to the private sector.’
Tempsford, Central Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire could be getting a brand new town with more than 40,000 homes as part of the New Towns Taskforce. The task force has recommended Tempsford as a prime location for its access to the East Coast Main Lone and East West Rail, with strong links to Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Oxford and London.
The report says that building a town at Tempsford would help relieve housing pressures in nearby Cambridge and open up more employment opportunities for people in the area, ‘particularly through the provision of lab space for life sciences’.
A vast new £450 million new town is being built in England – with 4,500 new homes.
Two London neighbourhoods are getting nearly 4,000 new homes.
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