MP: Make new towns top priority
Chancellor urged to back regeneration
An MP is calling on the Chancellor to help breathe fresh life into new towns like East Kilbride – by backing calls for regeneration in his Autumn Budget.
East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow SNP MP Dr Lisa Cameron has urged the Westminster government to spearhead efforts to prioritise new towns and put them back on the map.
Dr Cameron, whose own family relocated to East Kilbride, is also co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on New Towns which was set up to celebrate their contribution to the United Kingdom as a whole.
Last year East Kilbride celebrated its 70th anniversary of being designated Scotland’s first new town – with status granted on May 6, 1947.
But with many of the big employers, like Rolls-Royce, who helped see the town grow and flourish now gone, challenging times lie ahead.
However, Dr Cameron and the APPG believe there is a significant opportunity to turn around the fortunes of new towns – including East Kilbride.
“I had a fantastic childhood growing up in East Kilbride and I am so very proud of our new town,” she said.
“But we need to refocus government on supporting regeneration plans for new towns.
“The development corporations did a great job in their time but this must be now spearheaded by government to ensure that new towns become the priority they should be and are placed firmly back on the map.”
Dr Cameron, along with the APPG, is now calling on Chancellor Philip Hammond to include new towns in a ministry for housing; communities and local government minister’s list of key responsibilities; publish a new towns prospectus, setting out how it will help existing new towns to regenerate and grow and review the tools and powers that local authorities need to transform the town centres of new towns including the regeneration of shopping areas.
The post-war new towns programme was the most ambitious large scale town-building programme ever undertaken in the UK.
Between 1946 and 1970, the New Towns Act, and subsequent legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland, led to the designation of 32 new towns across the UK.
The new town development corporations had a range of borrowing, planning and master planning powers, the ability to acquire land by compulsory purchase and proactively manage the values created as the towns developed.
Today, the new towns provide homes for over 2.8 million people and include both the fastestgrowing and most successful yet also some of the most deprived communities in the UK.
However, as a result of building at speed – and, often, under the constraints of the day – whole estates are now in need of renewal, putting a significant burden on local authorities, while tired-looking buildings affect contemporary perceptions of what were once ambitious plans.