New towns for the future: policy paper published

Effective public transport and links to wider transport networks listed as key priorities for new town locations

The Government has made clear that one of its aspirations is to fast-track housebuilding, and has established the New Towns Taskforce and New Homes Accelerator to help with delivery at scale. Both agencies recognise the vital importance of the Government’s ambitious target for building 1,500,000 new homes in the next four years.

The New Towns Taskforce is an independent expert advisory panel, established in September 2024, to support the government to deliver the next generation of new towns.

This month it published its key policy paper, Building new towns for the future, which is making recommendations to ministers on the location and delivery of new towns. The Taskforce also welcomed the announcement that the government will provide support for the next generation of new towns in its upcoming Spending Review, which will provide certainty for this transformative programme.

A key aim of the Taskforce is to provide housing for strong communities with the necessary infrastructure, services, and amenities – ensuring residents have access to education, healthcare, transportation, cultural and sporting facilities, and green spaces. Key points outlined in the Policy Paper are:

• Site selection – Location selection for new towns should be strategically rational, supported by existing infrastructure, and ideally with local support to ensure successful development. Additional infrastructure investment will be required to go beyond this approach

• Well-connected – A new town must have effective public transport within the town itself as well as links to wider transport networks

Urbanist Russell Curtis has been working on densifying housing around rail stations for years, and for 2025 he’ll be joining us again at Rail Stations and Property to update us on his recent work. 

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Join Russell, GBRTT and other expert speakers at Rail Stations + Property 2025 to hear more about rail stations, housing and development

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Russell submitted a proposal to the New Towns Taskforce outlining how England’s rural train stations could accommodate 1.2 million new homes, while just four rural stations in Cambridgeshire could sustain 27,000 units.

Russell has lately presented his work to the Taskforce, investigating the opportunities for development close to England’s rural stations, including how the Design Council might take a lead in supporting Labour’s mission to deliver 1.5m homes in the first term of government through the expansion of existing settlements, and how good design and placemaking must play a part in making new towns healthy and attractive places to live.

Great British Railways Transition Team, who will also be speaking at Rail Stations + Property, are clear that putting rail stations at the heart of development is a key objective for the incoming Great British Railways: "Looking forward, in the context of placemaking, we (GBRTT) want to help integrate railway planning with both wider planning for walking, cycling, public transport, spatial and urban planning. That’s because placemaking is critical to a number of key activities:

• Making end to end journeys as easy as possible – connecting people to places and to opportunities, not just jobs but also, for example, leisure and access to healthcare, is good for the economy.

• Providing a greater sense of ‘pride in place’ 

• Increasing the catchment area for potential rail customers, by investing in stations and supporting local planners with redevelopment opportunities that are near to stations.

Published on 13 February, the Taskforce's interim update states that 'the next generation of new towns "will have a clear long-term vision for each town, with a distinct identity, so they become places residents are proud to call home.

'Other principles for the new towns include that they will be higher in density, have a “clear plan” for maintaining the towns through their lifetime, have “effective” public transport in each town and links to wider transport networks and support climate resilience.

'According to the update, the next stage of the task force’s work “will focus on exploring locations for new towns, focusing on areas ripe for early intervention as part of a first initial wave, alongside the longer-term pipeline”.'