Government 'recycled announcement' on garden city, says Labour

In a blog for the New Statesman, shadow housing minister Emma Reynolds said plans for 20,000 homes in Ebbsfleet, Kent, were first unveiled in 2012.

On Sunday, Mr Osborne announced an urban development corporation would be set up to deliver 15,000 homes on the site as the first garden city in a generation.

But Ms Reynolds said: ‘George Osborne’s announcement yesterday on Ebbsfleet will not be seen as a sign of success but one of failure. After four years of empty rhetoric, the best the chancellor could do was to recycle an announcement from 2012 with a commitment to fewer homes.’

Ms Reynolds also pointed to accusations that a report on garden cities had been suppressed by David Cameron.

The Communities and Local Government department announced the planned homes at Ebbsfleet in December 2012.

Ms Reynolds said Mr Osborne’s announcement had said nothing about how garden city principles – including affordable and mixed tenure homes, tackling climate change and access to green space for local communities – would be incorporated into the plan.

‘To tackle the housing shortage, so central to the cost-of-living crisis, we need a government that is prepared to take real action, not just talk. That’s why Labour has committed to getting 200,000 homes a year built by 2020, including by building a new generation of new towns and garden cities,’ she said.