Nancy MacDonald draws on new YouGov research to reveal a gap between industry ambitions for new towns and public scepticism. She argues that rebuilding trust through strong community identity, affordability, and access to services is essential to making new towns succeed.

 

A wave of new towns will soon break across England, and ultimately the wider United Kingdom. With each needing to contain a minimum of 10,000 homes, they hold a lot of potential when addressing the national housing crisis. For us in the built environment, it’s an exciting time full of opportunity to create a new generation of well designed, thriving places in Britain. 

But is the overall concept of a ‘new town’ even understood by the British public? Is this national mission to deliver connected and cohesive communities resonating with the population? Or is it falling flat? At Stantec, as a company with a deep history of design in this space, we’ve conducted exclusive research with YouGov to dive deeper into these questions and understand what makes people in Britain tick, and what doesn’t when it comes to new towns. 

Stantec’s recently launched report, New Towns: Creating Communities, Building Trust, mapped public sentiment around new towns across 349 British local authorities. We found a clear disconnect – one between what the industry believes it will deliver, and what people have come to expect. 

Our research suggests that just 25 percent of British people find the idea of moving to a new town appealing, while nearly 62 percent find it unappealing. We also found that British people support the principle of new towns (net +21 percent) but oppose them if built nearby (net -34 percent). The people who are most accepting of new towns tend to come from urban areas with poor housing affordability, such as London, Manchester, Oxford, and Cambridge. 

The results are stark, painting a picture of discontent and scepticism. But for us in the built environment, I know we’ll see this as a clear opportunity for progress and a challenge we can’t ignore. 

So, what would make a new town more appealing? Our report has identified several key characteristics that boost the appeal of new towns. These won’t be surprising for us in the development industry. But they are major factors likely to shift negative perceptions when considered, and we need to keep them at the heart of our visions.  

A new town is about the building of a community with a place-based identity. People want their towns to feel like home. They want access to healthcare, jobs, and amenities. People want to feel safe, and to have a stake in their community. They want them to have a positive impact on the environment, and, of course, they don’t want to be out of pocket during a cost of living crisis. 

None of this can be left as being just nice to haves – these are critical selling points that determine the success of a new town, and our report reiterates this. 

It also offers 12 key recommendations establishing how to rebuild the trust of the public and deliver new towns that will meet the needs of people across the country. 

We, in the private development industry, have an immense responsibility to support the efforts of the New Towns Taskforce, delivering these new towns efficiently and with communities’ best interests in mind. This is a moment that will be felt for decades that demands more than business as usual. 

But if we are to meet this moment, we need to eliminate our own biases. We need to ask difficult, meaningful questions like the ones in our report that we may not like the answers to. We must confront uncomfortable truths, and we should accept new approaches. 

Our report lifts the veil on all of this, outlining solutions and best practice that will help build public trust. The full research is available online and to download for free.