Failure to work with private developers hits eco town plans - report

Mar 4 2009 by Jonathan Walker, Birmingham Post

Controversial new eco towns including a planned 6,000-home development in Warwickshire have been branded a flop in a critical new report.

A House of Commons committee predicted the government would fail to meet its target of creating 100,000 new homes across the country.

Although the credit crunch was partly to blame for sending the housing market into chaos, the Government had also failed to work in partnership with the private developers building the towns, the report said.

The findings were published by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, which includes Nuneaton MP Bill Olner.

They were looking at plans for up to ten new towns, known as eco-towns, which include the planned Middle Quinton development in Long Marston, near Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. This is fiercely opposed by local residents, who successfully applied for a Judicial Review into the consultation process after claiming it had been too short.

But Ministers insist new homes are urgently needed and argue that opponents represent the views of existing homeowners, not those who would would desperately like to own a property if more were available. The MPs said: “The eco-towns policy is clearly in some difficulty. It was bound to be affected adversely by the general slowdown in the housing market but even so the difference between the original vision and the proposals which are now emerging is considerable.”

Only one site – in East Anglia – had been approved as suitable for a new town by a government study, the MPs said.

The government’s ambition of creating up to 100,000 homes “looks highly unlikely to be achieved”, they warned. They added: “The eco-town programme, even if successful, will make no huge contribution to the very significant problem of housing supply which is, rightly, one of the Department’s top priorities.”