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Government announces £9m for ‘garden towns’
The government has announced it is putting £9m of extra cash into “new garden towns and villages”.
It will pay for the masterplanning and technical studies on 21 large council-led sites, which are speculatively slated to deliver 200,000 homes between them by 2050.
Work has begun on 10,000 of these homes and the government said it expects this number to rise to 36,000 by 2022.
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Kit Malthouse, housing minister, said: “We have not built enough homes in this country for the past three decades, and we are turning that around as we work towards our target to build 300,000 properties a year by the mid-2020s.
“This £9m funding boost is giving councils the support and cash injection they need so they can finish planning new developments and get diggers on site.”
The largest of the developments affected by this funding is based in North Essex, where four Essex councils are overseeing the development of three “garden communities” comprised of 43,000 homes.
This scheme will receive £1m of the new funds to help with planning.
A development in Otterpool Park, Folkestone, however, will receive the largest chunk of the money at £1.25m. This scheme is set to deliver 10,000 homes.
Other affected developments include a plan to build 33,000 homes in North Northamptonshire and a 24,000-home scheme in Harlow and Gilston.
John Spence, chairman of North Essex Garden Communities, said: “The government rightly recognises the importance of North Essex both in terms of its economic potential, and also in the work being done to look at how homes of the future will be provided in a manner that supports the creation of cohesive communities and ensures the necessary social and strategic infrastructure is provided.”
