Today I can confirm a major package of support for communities to take control of their future. This includes £301 million to reimagine and revive struggling high streets through our high street innovation partnerships, £18 million to improve children’s playgrounds in deprived areas, a major expansion of the Pride in Place programme, and pilots to drive place-based public service reform. Through these measures, the Government are boosting the sense of pride that people feel in their area and making sure that they see change for the better.
In February, the Prime Minister announced that a further 40 places will join the Pride in Place programme. That means that 284 communities will benefit from this transformational fund, with each receiving up to £20 million over the next decade to invest in the things that matter to local people. Today I am confirming the 40 places selected.
We have also approved plans for the first phase of Pride in Place places, setting out what the communities included in the programme will be spending the money on and how they plan to transform their areas.
In Ramsgate, the community has decided to invest £500,000 to save the town’s last youth centre from closure, securing the building’s future and ensuring that vital services for young people can continue. In Bilston, Wolverhampton, the local neighbourhood board has chosen to bring back the Bilston carnival for the first time since 2008, reviving a well-loved tradition and giving a new generation something to celebrate together.
Backed by £301 million of funding, our high streets innovation partnerships will help struggling high streets to shift to a new model: one that is based on an exciting new future, not a return to an imagined past. In a select number of areas, local authorities will be encouraged to work alongside communities and businesses to develop transformative plans such as to bring public services, green spaces and homes into the centres of these towns, working with anchor institutions and businesses to secure co-investment.
The partnerships will also deliver a summer of activity on high streets this year, with innovative measures to boost footfall in a season of major cultural and sporting events, such as the world cup. Later this year we will also publish a high streets strategy to support all high streets nationally and equip local authorities with the tools they need to drive long-term regeneration.
In too many neighbourhoods, local playgrounds are sliding into disrepair or have disappeared entirely. Our investment in playgrounds will reverse this decline, building and restoring play equipment in the places with the highest levels of child poverty and the lowest quality of playgrounds. The £18 million investment that we are confirming today will ensure that children in some of the most deprived communities have the quality of space they need to play. The funding is to be spent by 66 local authorities on up to 200 new or refurbished playgrounds and has been allocated across England, from Tyneside to Torquay.
We are using place-based budgets to pool public service budgets in local areas to enable services to be delivered better, joined up around the people who need them most, by breaking down silos, unlocking more funding for prevention and improving better outcomes for taxpayers. These will ensure that users are helped based on their need.
We have launched five projects with mayoral strategic authorities initially, focusing on special educational needs and disabilities across the Liverpool city region; young people at risk of offending in Gateshead and South Tyneside; adolescent mental health across four local authorities in the Black Country—Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall—adults facing multiple disadvantage in Doncaster; and preventing youth unemployment across West Yorkshire.
Taken together, this package demonstrates a genuine shift in power and investment into our communities. We are not starting at square one. In every community, thousands of community leaders, volunteers and grassroots organisations are already working hard to make their areas a better place to live. This package provides the investment they need to deliver the change that people want to see.
Over the past 20 months, this Government have taken a series of bold and decisive steps to lay the grounds for high and sustainable rates of house building and improved infrastructure delivery in the years ahead. Today, I am announcing a series of further targeted measures to help stimulate housing supply and infrastructure provision.
It sets out in detail the steps we will take over the coming months to bring into force the beneficial reforms to the nationally significant infrastructure projects system contained in our landmark Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025.
This implementation plan will give applicants, investors, practitioners, local planning authorities and other statutory bodies and affected communities the clarity they need to realise the full potential of our reforms. Its publication supplements the efforts already under way to test more efficient and streamlined approaches to determining development consent order applications, including smoother and faster planning inspectorate examinations where appropriate, and pilots for key projects like East West Rail to make use of new flexibilities.
To provide further support for house building, a new consultation direction will be made this month specifying that where a local planning authority intends to refuse planning permission for a housing scheme of 150 dwellings or more, they must consult the Secretary of State to enable Ministers to decide whether to use their existing powers to call in that planning application.
The New Towns Act 1946 was a response to the urgent need to alleviate housing shortages and urban overcrowding in a war-ravaged Britain. The acute and entrenched housing crisis that afflicts England today has far different causes, but the need for equally bold solutions is no less pressing.
As the final report of the New Towns Taskforce laid bare, a chronic shortage of housing is not only blighting countless lives but also hampering economic growth and productivity. The creation of a series of large-scale new communities provides a golden opportunity to make a significant contribution to meeting housing need across England, and to support economic growth by releasing the productive potential of our constrained towns and cities.
The original New Towns Committee established by the then Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis Silkin, rightly recognised that building well-planned new communities is a means of achieving national renewal as well as ensuring more families have access to decent, safe, secure and affordable homes. Inspired by the proud legacy of the past, we are now taking the first formal step to honouring our manifesto commitment to build a new generation of new towns.
Building on the diligent work of the New Towns Taskforce under the expert leadership of its chair, Sir Michael Lyons, and deputy chair, Dame Kate Barker, the Government are today launching a public consultation, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/new-towns-draft-programme/new-towns-draft-programme on their new towns programme and the environmental implications of it.
I am also confirming today that we will consult on further proposed changes to the consultation direction covering commercial development of 15,000 square metres or more and approvals within detailed emergency planning zones. The relevant consultation can be found on gov.uk at:
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 introduced new powers for local fee setting, which will enable LPAs to set their own planning application fees through a local variation model. Under this approach, a national default fee will remain in place and apply to all LPAs, unless an LPA chooses to vary from the default fee for any or all application fee categories to reflect their own cost recovery needs.
We are today launching a consultation on the national default fee schedule designed to better reflect the costs LPAs incur. This is a vital step towards better resourcing LPAs and driving better outcomes including faster determination times, improved service standards and stronger performance across the planning system. The relevant consultation can be found on gov.uk at:
We have also published regulations to fully implement the power for compulsory purchase orders to be conditionally confirmed. This will give councils greater confidence to use CPOs earlier to deliver public benefits, help progress stalled sites and provide certainty in respect of land assembly. The regulations can be found on gov.uk at:
I can also confirm today the allocation of £234 million of devolved land and infrastructure grant funding from our new national housing delivery fund for mayoral strategic authorities in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the East Midlands, Greater Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West of England and York and North Yorkshire. This will be delivered as a continuation of the existing brownfield housing fund to enable mayors to collectively enable the delivery of up to 8,000 new homes.
Finally, I am announcing today that we intend to award an £8.2 million contract to Google and Faculty to develop an artificial intelligence-powered planning tool designed to halve the time it takes for planners to process minor household applications, so that LPAs can provide a more efficient, high-quality planning service.
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Through this consultation, we are seeking views on our proposals with a view to informing final decisions on how the new programme will operate; which locations will be taken forward; how the next generation of new towns will be planned and delivered; and how design, place-making and planning policy should be approached. The consultation also seeks views on the Government’s offer to locations and feedback on a strategic environmental assessment report that addresses local environmental constraints, the cumulative effects of new towns development, and practical methods of mitigation and monitoring.
The proposals set out in the consultation are the product of the Government’s assessment of whether each of the 12 locations recommended by the New Towns Taskforce, as well as an assessment of alternatives including sites submitted as part of the taskforce’s call for evidence in December 2024, other sites that MHCLG and Homes England were already aware of, and sites that were identified during the SEA process, were capable of meeting the programme’s objectives.
Each location was assessed against three objectives, namely scale, economic growth potential and deliverability. After reviewing over 100 potential sites, the Government determined that 13 locations appeared capable of supporting the programme to achieve its objectives. Of those 13, seven have been assessed as most capable of achieving those objectives and are therefore proposed for inclusion in the new towns programme.
The seven proposals are at different stages of maturity and require different types of intervention and support—including blends of public and private capital—to achieve their potential. The Government therefore intend to tailor their approach to each new town, with a view to making as much progress as possible as fast as possible.
Our seven proposed new town locations include three priority interventions:
A large-scale new settlement in Tempsford at the heart of the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor and at the intersection of East West Rail and the east coast main line that could deliver over 40,000 homes.
An expanded landscape-led development of up to 21,000 new homes bringing together Crews Hill and Chase Park in Enfield that could help address London’s acute housing need.
Urban development to create a well-connected, high-density, city-centre neighbourhood in the heart of Leeds South Bank that could deliver circa 20,000 new homes and support an agglomeration of HMG investment and growth in the city.
As set out in our initial response to the New Towns Taskforce final report, these are particularly promising sites that could make significant contributions to unlocking economic growth and accelerating housing delivery. Subject to the SEA, each will receive significant Government focus and support to deliver.
The remaining four locations also have great potential and will be provided with targeted support to ensure they can progress. Two mature schemes are exciting opportunities already in train where the Government will provide assistance to maximise development opportunities:
The creation of a riverside settlement in Thamesmead, Greenwich that could deliver up to 15,000 new homes, unlocking inaccessible land in the capital and improving connectivity via the planned docklands light railway extension.
Inner-city development and densification of the Manchester Victoria North urban quarter that could deliver at least 15,000 new homes, supporting agglomeration benefits and access to jobs in the growing city centre and other employment hubs across Greater Manchester.
Two scalable schemes are of considerable potential where the Government will provide support for initial phases while exploring opportunities to further scale up development:
A corridor of connected development in south Gloucestershire, across Brabazon and the West Innovation Arc, that could deliver up to 40,000 new homes in one of the highest productivity areas in the country.
A “renewed town” of circa 40,000 new homes in Milton Keynes, reinvigorating the city centre and delivering much needed housing growth to its north and east whilst reshaping the way people travel through a locally appropriate transport solution.
Collectively, schemes in these locations have the potential to provide hundreds of thousands of new homes in the decades ahead and to make a vital contribution to a stronger and more secure economic future for our country. We are determined to get spades in the ground on at least three new towns in this Parliament and will strive to accelerate work on all of the sites that are eventually selected for inclusion in the programme.
As the accompanying SEA report demonstrates, development at the scale we are proposing will need to be mitigated. Good planning, up-front investment, and high-quality design is the best way to achieve this. That is why we are so determined that the next generation of new towns will be built in a way that is consistent with our ambitious place-making principles. As we have always promised, we intend to create well-connected, well-designed, sustainable and attractive places where people want to live with all the infrastructure, amenities and services necessary to sustain thriving communities.
The fact that over 100 sites were submitted in response to the New Towns Taskforce’s call for evidence tells its own story about the significant opportunities that exist across the country when it comes to large-scale new communities. We were impressed by the strength of propositions across the board, including the six locations that we have identified as reasonable alternatives to the programme.
That is particularly true of Plymouth, which is a unique opportunity to bolster the UK’s defence and security and, if not ultimately taken forward as part of the programme, will require special consideration and its own bespoke financial support package to unlock its potential as a centre of excellence in naval technology, and to ensure that housing does not act as a barrier to further growth.
Our new towns programme forms an integral part of our plans to boost innovation, quality and competition in house building. Through land supply certainty, integrated planning, infrastructure co-ordination, the expansion of supply chains, and increased investment in skills and new construction methods, building the next generation of new towns will help transform the way that future large settlements in every part of the country are delivered.
Following the consultation and completion of the SEA and habitats regulations assessments, the Government intend to publish their final proposals later this year. This will confirm the final locations to be taken forward as part of the programme, alongside a full Government response to the recommendations of the New Towns Taskforce, and further detail on precisely how the next generation of new towns will be delivered.
The Government will continue to engage extensively with local leaders, mayors, investors and communities throughout this process to ensure new towns are planned and delivered to the highest standards of design, sustainability and long-term stewardship.