Brokenshire proposes new garden communities programme

Housing Minister James Brokenshire is calling for more garden towns, as he announces his brand new garden communities initative.

According to Brokenshire, the programme will kick-start the creation of high quality homes and green spaces, in line with the government’s aspirations for more community-led housing developments. Crucially, garden towns have the potential to contribute to the 300,000 homes per year target by the mid-2020s.

Councils across England will be able to apply for a place on the programme, alongside any private developer who has secured support from local authorities. The winning bidders will receive tailored advice and potential grant funding to aid staffing or environmental assessments; part of the planning process for new garden towns.

“This plan is about the government working with councils and developers to get great homes in keeping with beautiful areas in England,” said Brokenshire. “We want to help local authorities build strong and vibrant communities where people want to live, work, and raise families. Our garden communities programme already has the potential to provide over 200,000 new homes by 2050, and we want to go further.”

Garden communities can take the form of new villages, towns or cities and have the potential to deliver high quality homes at increased scale, with projects ranging in size from 10,000 to 40,000 homes. This prospectus is the latest step by government to bolster interest, with 23 locally-led garden communities already receiving funding support, with the potential to deliver over 200,000 homes by 2050.

Reaction has been mixed however. According to Matt Thomson, Head of Planning at the Campaign to Protect Rural England: “As a whole the prospectus is another example of the ‘garden’ soubriquet being applied to even more random development proposals, which all seem to lead to low-density, car-dependent, residential-led sprawl.

“Even the revised National Planning Policy Framework recognises the importance of using what limited land we have more efficiently. We need to ask whether ‘homes with gardens’ are compatible with the achievement of sustainable, walkable communities, and we need to get the efficient use of land back onto the garden cities agenda.”

Launch of the garden communities programme now signals the start of a three month application process, with successful proposals to be announced in the new year.

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