Urban sprawl fear as plans to create 23 garden cities are unveiled

‘Sustainable communities’

a NEW wave of garden cities will be built across the country by 2050 as part of a ‘housing revolution’, ministers announced last night.

The 23 new ‘garden communities’ would host a total of nearly 200,000 high-quality homes and green spaces, Housing Secretary James Brokenshire announced.

The proposal to create 23 towns in England is a major extension to plans announced last year to build 14 garden villages with 50,000 new homes.

But the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) last night warned that the idea could lead to urban sprawl.

Matt Thomson, its head of planning, said the developments would lead to ‘low-density, car-dependent, residential- led sprawl’. The announcement is a key issue for the Conservatives due to fears over housing affordability and space.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government yesterday invited bids for projects to build ‘garden communities’ across the country.

Mr Brokenshire said the blueprint would allow more highquality homes to be built and green spaces created.

Councils and developers can apply if their proposal reflects the character of an area, includes green space and if they have local community support. Successful bidders will receive advice from experts and funding for staffing and environ- mental assessments. The housing ministry said the garden communities can vary in size between 10,000 and 40,000 homes.

Mr Brokenshire said: ‘This plan is about the Government working with councils and developers to get great homes in keeping with beautiful areas in England.

‘We want to help local authorities build strong and vibrant communities where people want to live, work, and raise families.’

It follows calls by the likes of Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss and prominent Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to allow more housing in green belt land.

a report from CPRE last week showed plans for almost 460,000 homes have been pencilled in for green belt land since 2013.

Earlier this year, the Government unveiled plans to build up to five new garden towns in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor.

Last night, CPRE’s Mr Thomson said: ‘New emphasis on brownfield and transformational regeneration in the Government’s latest garden communities prospectus is welcome, but would be better placed if support for such schemes were prioritised. as a whole, though, the prospectus is another example of the “garden” soubriquet being applied to even more random development proposals.

‘Even the revised National Policy Planning 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.’