Villagers told me their biggest fears about having a new town built next to them ...Middle East

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Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s Home Front.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it all feels a bit mid 20th century. European leaders including Keir Starmer have met in Paris for an emergency summit about defence while the utopian promise of Labour’s new towns offers glimmers of hope for Britain’s future.

The Government’s New Towns Taskforce is scoping out locations for a “new generation” of settlements. A shortlist is expected to be discussed with Deputy PM Angela Rayner and Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook by July.

Support – in the form of cash – is expected to be announced in Rachel Reeves’s spending review.

Labour is banking on new towns to do two things: boost the economy and help the party hit its housebuilding target of 1.5 million new homes over five years.

Is Labour right to do this? I think so. The new towns project is an incredibly rational one even though it is being framed as a war between Yimbys and Nimbys both in and outside of Westminster.

In the post-war years, new towns from Stevenage in Hertfordshire to Skelmersdale in Lancashire were not only a huge part of bringing Britain’s economy out of the doldrums, they also allowed politicians to deliver hundreds of thousands of new homes quickly.

This mass building drive was enabled by planning reform and the New Towns Act of 1946.

Milton Keynes is an example of a particularly successful new town. It was built alongside new infrastructure that turned it into an economic centre in its own right.

Similarly, Stevenage was turned from a sleepy market town into a busy hub, close to both London and the Hertfordshire countryside.

On the other hand, Basildon, in Essex, has struggled because of low employment and high deprivation, despite being within easy reach of the capital and countryside.

If Labour is to fulfil the promise of easing the housing crisis, then the party really needs its plan to create “the next generation of new towns” across England to work.

Each new town should contain at least 10,000 new homes, 40 per cent of which will be affordable. This will be crucial. Unaffordable housing eats into people’s disposable income, not only making their lives difficult but also hampering economic growth.

Choosing the right locations will also be crucial. New towns need to be places where jobs can be created if they do not already exist, and they need to be well-connected to other economic centres.

There has been much speculation about where these new settlements will be built. Residents across the country worry about poor quality or ugly homes being built near them without the infrastructure to support them.

Expanding the historic village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire is favoured by Yimby, pro-housebuilding campaigners. But residents recently told me they already travelled to the neighbouring village for a doctor’s appointment because there is no GP surgery on their patch. There is only one junior school. And since the Elizabeth Line into London launched, cars have lined the country roads around their local station.

Keir Starmer has regularly decreed that Labour will be the party of “the builders, not the blockers”. The Prime Minister is determined to deliver planning reform and do what the Tories could not because of their own Nimby backbenchers who feared difficult conversations about building on the green belt.

As a result, Rayner’s department has been very busy with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (expected next month).

The historic village that could become a new town - but locals aren't convinced

However, the awkward truth is that while some people do block new developments for the wrong reasons – they are snobbish about social housing or modern building, for example – many people are too quickly dismissed as Nimbys when they raise legitimate planning concerns.

In Taplow, I met a young man in his mid-20s who had moved from London with his girlfriend in search of more space and tranquillity. He understood the need for more housing, in particular affordable housing, but feared the arrival of a poor-quality development and ill-considered retail space in the village.

A mother-of-two in her late fifties was worried her children could not afford to live near her but did not want green space destroyed to build what she feared would be sub-standard housing.

If Labour wants to build new towns, the party will have to take local people, whose concerns are very real, along with them.

Labour must confront two difficult realities. The first is that we have to build, which might be on underused green spaces. The second is that there has been a crisis of quality and design in Britain’s new buildings over the past two decades which has undermined public support for new housing.

The final locations of new towns will not be announced until later in the year, suggesting Labour is keen not to rush decision-making. More than 100 locations have been considered.

The focus on “beautiful” place-making is also included in Labour’s update. The Government says it will “create beautiful communities, provide affordable homes, and deliver much-needed infrastructure, including schools and nurseries, GP surgeries, and bus routes”. It suggests Number 10 Yimbys are aware that riding roughshod over local concerns won’t get them very far.

Labour’s plan is a credible one. And, like the post-war housebuilding drive, it is a noble one, too. Britain’s housing crisis is out of control.

But instead of making this a reductive discussion about Nimbys and Yimbys, Starmer, Reeves and Rayner should be appealing to older homeowners – the people most likely to vote against new development – and ask them whether they are worried about their children and grandchildren and where they will live in the future.

They might then find they unite the country together in favour of these vital new towns a little faster.

Then the big question will be whether Labour can bring everything and everyone together – including finding construction workers to make up our current shortage and getting planning reform over the line – quickly enough. By the time these new town locations are confirmed, it will be almost a year since Labour won the election. That is one year down, and just four left to hit the 1.5 million new homes target.

Key housing

Some promising GDP figures have been released by the Office for National Statistics. Britain’s economy grew by 0.1 per cent between October and December 2024. This will be a welcome boon for the Treasury which has been hammered by bad economic news and rising borrowing costs in recent months.

However, as always, the devil is in the detail. If you look at these numbers a little more closely, you will see that GDP per head fell by 0.1 per cent. GDP per head is, broadly speaking, a good measure of living standards and income as it reflects economic output per person.

Living standards have fallen significantly in recent years according to the Insitute of Fiscal Studies. Real incomes have been diminished by inflation, which includes rising housing costs.

Growth is good. Britain’s economy needs it. But Labour’s big challenge will be making sure everyone benefits.

If you’re interested in new towns, have a read of my reporting on this topic:

ICYMI you can also watch my interview with Pennycook here.

This week’s question is a follow-up to a question submitted by a reader a few weeks ago. She is currently the victim of her neighbour’s severe anti-social behaviour at her leasehold flat in north London. Sadly, since she last wrote in, the situation has escalated, and her neighbour has been arrested. This has not resulted in council action against the other resident, however.

“Is there anything else I can do? I don’t feel safe in my home and the council don’t seem to be able to help me?,” the reader has asked.

Sadly, the support for victims of anti-social behaviour is not as robust as it should be. In law, landlords are not deemed responsible for the behaviour of their tenants. This reader, like so many others, finds herself falling between several stalls, none of which are equipped to provide adequate support. If a local council has failed to act after three reports of anti-social behaviour, the next step is to submit a complaint to the Housing Ombudsman.

Have you been a victim of anti-social behaviour at home? Do you work at a local authority and have thoughts about how anti-social behaviour is handled? I’d love to hear from you.

Send in your questions to: @Victoria_Spratt, on X, formerly Twitter, @vicky.spratt on Instagram or via email [email protected]

Vicky’s pick

Over the weekend, I watched the Molly-Mae documentary – Behind It All – on Amazon Prime. You might not think this was the perfect activity to spark yet another Saturday night spiral about the legacy of Thatcherism and the individual reliance it promoted. Think again.

A few years ago, the former Love Island winner got into hot water after she said: “If you want something enough you can achieve it… It just depends on what lengths you want to go to get where you want to be in the future.” The influencer and businesswoman has built an empire and gained millions of followers in the process.

Watching her documentary, I couldn’t blame the majority (57 per cent) of Gen Z members for saying they’d prefer to be influencers than do other jobs. Molly-Mae has a large house and autonomy. It’s a far cry from where many of her peers are stuck living with their parents or renting privately. The problem is, not everyone can be Molly-Mae.

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