Satellite cities for pioneers
Seventy years after the war, new towns are still affordable, finds Christopher Middleton
When Britain emerged 70 years ago, dazed and weary from the rubble of the Second World War, the one thing everyone agreed the country needed was new towns.
No sooner had the air-raid sirens stopped, than the government started a programme not just to rebuild bomb-shattered cities but to construct whole new conurbations where previously there had been none.
Over the course of a quarter of a century, some 32 new towns were built, founded on the notion that people should now live in welldesigned, carefully thought-out cities. These towns were located all across the country in places as far apart as Skelmersdale and Stevenage, Peterborough and Peterlee, Cwmbran and Cumbernauld, County Antrim and Corby.
Seventy years on, out of the 32 towns the top 10 by house price growth, according to the estate agent Savills, are all in the South East.
In first and second place are Welwyn Garden City (where the average house price is £299,110) and Letchworth (£284,039), while Peterborough is the only south-east town not to feature in the top 10 (in 14th place, with an average house price of £159,387).
By contrast, the four bottom places are occupied by northern new towns, the most expensive of those being Runcorn (£127,592) and the cheapest Peterlee, in Durham (£84,841).
“Across all the locations, prices are on average 12 per cent below the regional urban average”, concludes the Savills report, “meaning that typically these towns have provided relatively affordable accommodation.”
To which notion many thousands of post-war families must have waved their hats and raised a loud cheer. The guiding principles were that, as well as being affordable, the new towns should have clearly defined residential and industrial areas, innovative architecture, lots of green space and pedestrian-friendly town centres.
“A lot of the motivation was to relieve social pressure in the large cities”, says Lucian Cook, who led the Savills research. “And the two places that provided the perfect model for the post-war garden city were Welwyn and Letchworth.
“Of course, you’re always going to bump up against individual issues, but designing a new town becomes a lot easier if what you are doing is not just rejuvenating an area but putting a strong infrastructure in place.”
These towns were designed with good roads, open spaces and a railway station in mind, and many in the South East are becoming affordable commuter towns for London.
When it comes to people voting with their feet, no new town has grown faster than Milton Keynes, which has experienced an 81 per cent population growth since it was just a sketch on the planners’ notepad, in the mid-1960s.
It may have been sneered at for its concrete cows and huge number of roundabouts, but it is becoming increasingly popular as a place to bring up children. It has its own snowdome, ice hockey arena and Championship football club.
“We moved here in 1979 for work and love it. Milton Keynes offers everything regardless of age. We felt like pioneers and we’ve stayed,” said Angela Panes, a retired head teacher. “It has also retained the original village.”
Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City have been deemed so successful that the creation of more towns has been pledged as a solution to the housing crisis.
Currently in planning are some 19,500 new homes to the north of Cambridge, plus 6,200 new houses in the Rugby area. Not forgetting the 15,000-house development at Ebbsfleet in Kent, where commuters will be able to get to St Pancras in just 20 minutes.
“There is no single solution to the housing crisis”, says Susan Emmett, Savills’ residential research director. She is calling for the formation of a New Town Development Corporation to speed up the process, and for landowners to put forward land on which the new towns can be built.
“The creation of new garden cities is not a panacea but a piece in a much bigger jigsaw,” she says.
In contrast to the success of the south east new towns, prosperity has been lacking in other parts of the country. In some cases this was because the new town was built specifically to accommodate iron and steel workers (Corby) or coal miners (Peterlee). As for Cumbernauld, built as an overspill for Glasgow, it was voted the worst town in Scotland in 2002.
But just because a new town starts off on a shaky footing, it doesn’t mean it can’t make progress – as demonstrated by the fact that Cumbernauld was voted the most improved town in Scotland in 2012. Elsewhere, the numbers of newtown residents owning their houses has increased. More than 64 per cent of people living in Warrington, Cwmbran and Glenrothes are now owner-occupiers. And that figure is 84 per cent in Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City.
Which is not, of course, to say that all 32 new towns in the UK have experienced expectations and house prices rising in graceful tandem. You can’t just put up buildings and expect people to come and live there.
“The reason some new towns have not been as successful as others might just be down to the fact that they are not located in the right area,” says Cook.
“The fact is that for a new town to work, you need to have not just the political will, but the policy framework to make it happen.”
Plus, of course, the roads, the stations, the jobs and sufficient buzz to attract not just people, but people with a pioneering spirit.
Seventy years after they were first invented, most of Britain’s new towns have not just taken root, but flourished. And if other, even newer, towns are to be built over the coming years, it won’t be long before the likes of Harlow, Hatfield and Hemel Hempstead drop one significant word from their names.
They won’t be known as new towns. Just towns.
‘Prices are 12pc lower than the regional urban average ’