Forest City: West Suffolk

Fourthly, even assuming compulsory purchase at existing use value with hope value removed—which I believe is not what the developers have said to local landowners—land acquisition would require around £1 billion of up-front public expenditure. Removing hope value reduces up-front costs, but capping resale prices through a so-called permanent affordability model means that there is no mechanism to pay back the capital. In other words, this is yet another black hole.

Taken together, these funding gaps suggest up to £175 billion of Government funding, with no way for the state to recover the costs. When I put these problems and detailed questions to the developers in a letter sent in March, the reply I received one day later did not even seek to provide answers. When their report, “We Can Build A City”, was published and sent to Ministers in April, it failed to address a single one of these very serious challenges. That is no wonder, because building a city is far more complicated than these cowboys pretend.

Let us take the Government’s new towns programme as an example. Those are only towns, not cities, and only seven of the original 12 schemes are going ahead. Where whole cities have been built from scratch elsewhere in the world, many have failed. Those that have worked—to an extent—are often artificial new capital cities where the functions of government create jobs, such as Brasilia and Islamabad. Often they are in countries where there is still a great migration of people from rural areas to cities, such as in China. Even in China, though, people have simply chosen not to move to many of the new cities, and they stand partially empty. There are similar stories in Songdo in South Korea, Ciudad de la Paz in Equatorial Guinea, and Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates.

The reasons for that failure are all too familiar to those of us who have studied the Forest City proposal. These cities are built speculatively, without real demand; there are massive infrastructure costs without feasible revenue generation; and they are elite-driven projects, disconnected from the needs of real people.

During a debate in the other place two weeks ago, Baroness Taylor, a Housing Minister, told my noble Friend Lord Herbert:

“We are aware of the Forest City proposals and will be following how they progress through the appropriate local consultations and approvals”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 June 2026; Vol. 856, c. 1423.]

But this is the point: Forest City will not go through local consultations and approvals. Its proposers are asking the Government to circumvent local democracy and create a development corporation with compulsory purchase powers. The Government could just say no, but so far they have refused.

In the meantime, it is local people who are suffering. I have had emails from people who have told me that they would like to sell their house, but cannot. I have had emails from people who have found their dream home in Suffolk, but cannot commit to buying it as long as this development remains on the table. People in the Bradleys have been told that their village will have to be flooded to make way for a reservoir. People in Great Wratting and the Thurlows have been told that village life will be gone forever. People in Exning, Newmarket and Haverhill have been told that their communities will become suburbs. People in Wickhambrook and Withersfield and Hundon and Kedington and Denston and Stradishall and Ousden and Dalham and Lidgate and Cowlinge—which, like Haverhill, the developers cannot even spell—have been told that they do not matter. Their lives will be ruined, and they have been told that they will have to live amid a building site for decades, often for the remainder of their lives. They have been not only disrespected, but insulted.

The Forest City developers, Shiv Malik and Joe Reeve, bussed in supporters from outside the area to a supposedly local meeting in Haverhill. They cancelled a public meeting in Thurlow because too many locals wanted to come—it was apparently a secret public meeting. Behind our backs, they and their supporters have disparaged local people as too old to have a stake in the future, too white to be interesting, and too rural to understand the obvious joys of city life. In the Financial Times, Mr Malik was photographed next what was called a “deserted field”, seemingly unaware that the farmland in our corner of Suffolk is the best in the country.

The poor behaviour does not end there. Malik and Reeve present their plan as an act of altruism for the country and the next generation, but they want to keep 160 acres of the city for themselves. Based on Cambridge land values, that would be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The chairman of their company, Dame Patricia Hewitt, is opening doors for them and promoting the proposition as being in the national interest. She is less open about the fact that Mr Malik will soon be her son-in-law, and her family therefore have a direct financial stake in what she promotes.

On different occasions, Mr Malik has claimed the support of local landowners, when only one is believed to support Forest City and the rest oppose it. He has claimed the support of the British Horseracing Authority, which has had to write to him to tell him to stop. He has also claimed the support of the Jockey Club, which has also sent him a legal letter. He threatened to sue me for revealing these things, but when I held my ground, he backed down.

In truth, Forest City has attracted almost universal opposition among the people of West Suffolk—those living in villages and those in the towns; those who were born and bred in the area and those who chose to move there; those who are young and those who are old; the landowners, homeowners and renters; and the businesses and residents. There is value in the rural way of life, even if the Forest City developers disparage it. Local people do not want to see their homes and communities destroyed.

This is not about knee-jerk opposition to new homes, because we have had thousands of new homes built in the last five years. The new local plan proposes 5,000 new homes, on top of the 8,700 already marked for planning permission. Although Government housing targets have been cut for the cities, they have gone up by 57% for us. To put things into context, Haverhill has doubled in size in only 30 years. Given our proximity to Cambridge, this is understandable. As I said in my maiden speech, we should

“embrace the opportunities, not just fear the risks”,—[Official Report, 22 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 445.]

of housing demand connected to Cambridge. That is why I have never been an anti-housing campaigner, but the solution to the demand created by the innovation and enterprise of Cambridge is not Forest City.

The solution is the densification of Cambridge itself, the development of land adjacent to the city, and the construction of transport connections to the towns and villages within a commutable distance. Haverhill, for example, provides Cambridge with workers, including many at Addenbrooke’s hospital. It needs a rail link and not just the often single-lane A1307. The line between Newmarket and Cambridge should be dualled, and there need to be more services through Newmarket and Brandon.

My concern is that this Government, who have been setting and missing ambitious house building targets, will see Forest City not for the impracticability of the plan but as a big idea that they can seize to show that they still have radicalism. The developers are already talking about their pitch to the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), and some local Labour politicians—we have heard from one today—have already hinted at, or even given, their own support.

The hon. Gentleman kindly provided me with advance notice of the questions he asked, so in response to each of them, let me give him as much clarity as I can. He asked whether the Government recognised that the Forest City promoters do not seek to go through

“the appropriate local consultations and approvals”,

and plan to rely instead on the legal, financial and political support of central Government. In response, I say to the hon. Gentleman that, while the size and nature of the proposed development would suggest as much, it is not entirely clear from the high-level material published by the promoters. Their website states, for example, that subsidy is not sought. A clear preference is expressed, however, for a development corporation as the delivery model, but it is not made explicit whether they are seeking Government backing for a centrally-led urban development corporation or are interested in a future mayoral or locally-led approach. In short, we simply do not have enough detail about this proposal to be able to say with any certainty precisely how its promoters believe it should be delivered.

When it comes to the east of England, however, the Government’s focus is firmly on the establishment of the Greater Cambridge development corporation and using it to deliver nationally significant growth in Cambridge and its surrounding areas, in partnership with local leaders and communities.

The hon. Gentleman pressed me on whether the Government will take this opportunity to rule out Forest City for good. For the reasons I have just set out, it is not for the Government to rule in or out any proposed scheme in general terms. He is aware that when the promoters of Forest City 1 applied to be part of the new towns programme, officials reviewed the application and concluded that it did not meet the programme’s objectives, specifically the deliverability objective. However, as per the remarks made by Baroness Taylor in the other place on 10 June, which he cited, it is open to the promoters of the scheme to engage with the relevant local planning authorities and communities about their proposals.