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6 October 2025
As cries of ‘Build Baby Build’ echoed around the Labour party conference hall in Liverpool last week, planning and real estate professionals across the country were reviewing the New Towns Taskforce’s report to Government, published on 28th September.
The report recommends that the Government consult on 12 proposed locations for a new generation of new towns and urban expansions. Three sites have already been earmarked for early development this parliament:
While the selection of these sites and the Government’s YIMBY (Yes, In My Backyard) rhetoric was headline grabbing news at the conference, the report also makes a number of notable recommendations regarding how the new towns should be delivered.
These recommendations – summarised further below – are likely to offer a glimpse into the future for impacted stakeholders, including the host local authorities who will be fundamental to each new town’s delivery.
Affordable housing, infrastructure and viability
In recommendation six of the report, the Taskforce propose that there should be a minimum target of 40 per cent social housing for the new towns, of which at least half should be available for social rent.
These are ambitious ‘gold standard’ proposals, which may be challenging in some areas in view of the current viability climate.
On this front, the report recommends that – where viability testing shows that 40 per cent affordable housing is not achievable through land value capture – grant funding should be made available from central government to ensure that all of the proposed new towns meet the requirement.
Readers will recall the Spring Statement’s significant £39 billion investment in affordable housing earlier this year, meaning funding should be available where required.
The Taskforce have also recommended that upfront Government funding is made available for infrastructure delivery.
As per recommendation 40, the Taskforce suggest that early-stage funding should be used to enable delivery vehicles to acquire land, build infrastructure, and secure early planning permission.
By subsequently selling ‘serviced parcels’ to developers on this basis, it is hoped that the public sector to capture land value increases, reducing reliance on developer contributions through CIL and section 106 agreements.
The need for public sector funding is reiterated throughout the report, with recommendation 43 urging central government departments to prioritise new towns in their budgets to address viability gaps and avoid delays to the delivery of essential social infrastructure: a common issue for major development nationwide.
In a context of rising construction costs and depressed build-out rates, it will be interesting to see how the Autumn budget and the forthcoming update of the Government’s viability guidance impact the public and private sector’s respective roles in the delivery of affordable housing and infrastructure.
Development corporations
New towns have traditionally been delivered through development corporations: time-bound statutory bodies created to facilitate development in a specific area.
In keeping with tradition, the Taskforce has recommended that all of the proposed new towns should be delivered through development corporations eventually, while acknowledging that interim delivery models will also be important in the short term.
There are various types of development corporation, with varying sets of powers, available under the current legislation. Notably, Part IV of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill – currently going through Parliament – proposes to amend the current legislation to standardise the way in which different forms of development corporation operate (for example, by allowing Mayoral Development Corporations to carry out development which goes beyond ‘regeneration’).
Importantly, recommendation 16 of the Taskforce’s report states that wherever a development corporation is used, that development corporation should become the local planning authority for the area and should make use of a wide variety of planning powers including:
The specifics of how these planning powers could be transferred to development corporations will be determined by Transfer of Functions Orders made under the relevant legislation.
Recent examples of orders made for Ebbsfleet and Old Oak Common may offer local planning authorities an early glimpse of how planning functions are likely to be reallocated.
Notably, recommendation 18 does make clear that there should be an ‘increased role in the delivery of New Towns for local or combined authorities that have a strong recent track record of housing delivery”.
Whilst not mentioned in the report, we are interested to see whether the ‘Locally-Led’ development corporations, conceived in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, are to play a role on this basis.
Planning policy changes
The Taskforce’s report also makes recommendations regarding the national planning policy changes which will be required for the delivery of new towns.
Firstly, in the very short term, the report calls for immediate policy action to safeguard New Town locations from speculative or piecemeal development coming forward which could frustrate proposals.
To this effect, the Government’s policy statement responding to the report notes that “planning decision makers should give consideration to any potential impacts of other developments on the delivery of the locations for potential new towns as recommended by the New Towns Taskforce”.
Secondly, the report also calls for policy changes to clarify the interrelationship between new towns and local housing needs targets under the National Planning Policy Framework (Recommendation 24).
This is a challenging issue for national policymakers. On the one hand, the Government will wish to ensure that all the homes delivered through new towns are truly additional to the current pipeline.
However, excluding these homes from Local Housing Need Targets may disincentivise local authorities from engaging in the delivery of new towns which would not count towards their own housing targets.
For local authorities hosting new towns in their areas, policy change which clarifies this interrelationship will be of fundamental importance to long-term strategies and plan-making.
What next?
The Government’s initial response to the report signals there is strong momentum behind the Taskforce’s recommendations for delivering new towns.
Further due diligence will be required across all of the proposed new town locations, with Homes England already commissioned to conduct early work on the most promising sites, including by commencing Strategic Environmental Assessments.
For other stakeholders – including the host local authorities and developers who will be crucial to delivery – it will be important to review the Taskforce’s recommendations in further detail and monitor the progress of the Government’s broader planning reform agenda to ascertain how the new towns will be delivered.
Sharpe Pritchard LLP will be publishing articles over the coming weeks and months exploring some of the key delivery options in further detail.
This article is for general awareness only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Law and guidance relating to the Code is continually being updated and the law may have changed since this page was first published. If you would like further advice and assistance in relation to any issues raised, please contact us today by telephone or email.
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