The Government has recently announced its support for 12 new garden settlements.  These will share a meagre £6m fund to assist with delivery over the next 2 years.  The Garden Village concept is an extension of the existing Garden Town programme and will comprise schemes between 1,500 and 10,000 homes.  The fund will be used to ‘unlock the full capacity’ of the proposed sites and it is suggested can be used to provide for additional resources and expertise to speed up the development delivery programme and to reduce delays.

The initiative expects to deliver 48,000 new homes nationally, though in our view the level of funding is extremely limited given many of the village initiatives require the use of compulsory purchase [CPO] to facilitate implementation.  So, it is hard to see how this fund will actually proactively assist in the speedy delivery of nearly 50,000 new homes.

The selected proposals are:

  • Long Marston, Stratford-on-Avon
  • Oxfordshire Cotswolds, West Oxfordshire
  • Deenethorpe, East Northamptonshire
  • Culm, Mid Devon
  • Welborne, Fareham
  • West Carolaze, Cornwall
  • Dunton Hills, Brentwood
  • Spitalgate Heath, South Kesteven, Lancashire
  • Halsnead, Knowsley, Merseyside
  • Longcross, Runnymede
  • Bailrigg, Lancaster
  • Infinity Garden Village, South Derbyshire/Derby
  • St Cuthberts, Carlisle
  • North Cheshire

At the same time the Government confirmed support for three new garden towns located in:

  • Aylesbury
  • Taunton
  • Harlow & Gilston

We understand that to assist with delivery of all these schemes new ‘Planning Freedoms’ will be established though no detail has been revealed suggesting what these may comprise, how they will be enacted given the existing legal planning framework, how a specific implementation relates to the process of providing up to date Development Plans and cross boundary co-operation regarding sub-regional housing delivery targets.

 

For more information please contact:

John Foddy, Managing Director

FoddyConsult

john@foddyconsult.co.uk