Government reviews eco-town programme

The Office of Government Commerce, an independent branch of the Treasury, is conducting the review to ensure that the £35 million programme can meet its aims and that the 14 projects will use their funding correctly.

It intends to test the governance and delivery structures of those delivering the projects, particularly the Homes and Communities Agency, local authorities, government offices, Natural England and the Environment Agency.

The OGC has been holding interviews with stakeholders in the projects, which were announced in two waves last year. One of the questions was whether the projects should be renamed, one source who was interviewed said.

An email to interviewees, seen by Inside Housing, said the review would also consider how well the Communities and Local Government department was connecting the programme to ‘mainstream society’. It said this was because the second wave of projects contained a number of connected developments rather than the self-contained towns first planned.

One of the interviewees said he felt the projects should be renamed ‘future towns’, as ‘eco-town’ had a number of negative connotations.

Planning sector figures believe the government will try to sell the programme to sceptics by renaming it.

One source said: ‘I can’t see that they will put any money into this, so the rebrand would have to be something very low-key. It will be a move from it being a central policy to a more locally decided matter.’

A CLG spokesperson said the government already had a ‘relaxed’ policy on whether the projects were called ‘eco-towns’ or ‘eco-developments’.

The spokesperson said that the OGC review predated the current government and was ‘looking at the implementation process of the eco-towns programme’.

Last week, Inside Housing reported that the government had quietly halved the funding for all eco-town developments.

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