19
Built Environment Committee
Corrected oral evidence: New towns: practical delivery
Tuesday 6 May 2025
10.50 am
Members present: Lord Gascoigne (The Chair); Baroness Andrews; Lord Cameron of Dillington; Lord Faulkner of Worcester; Viscount Hanworth; Baroness Janke; Lord Mawson; Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer; Lord Porter of Spalding; Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe; Viscount Younger of Leckie.
Evidence Session No. 3 Heard in Public Questions 31 - 40
Witnesses
I: David Lunts, Chief Executive of the Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation; Paul Richards, Chief Executive of the Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation.
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
David Lunts and Paul Richards.
Q31 The Chair: Good morning and welcome to the next edition of the Built Environment Select Committee here in the House of Lords. We are delighted to have two external guests with us. Today, we will focus on development corporations. I wonder whether our two guests would be willing to introduce themselves and the organisations they are representing.
David Lunts: I am currently the chief executive officer at the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation in London.
Paul Richards: I am the chief executive of the Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation and the deputy chief executive of Stockport Council.
The Chair: Fantastic. Thank you both—you are very welcome. We have a series of questions to run through from across the committee. The first is trying to get an overview of development corporations from your perspective. Building on your own experience, what do you perceive to be the best characteristics of a development corporation? Do you think that it should have a mayor at the top of it or not, and do you perceive that to be the most effective method of delivery?
Paul Richards: The Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation was formed in 2019. What has been most successful is its singularity of purpose and vision. The elevator statement for the corporation has been pretty much the same since 2019: 4,000 homes, 1 million square feet of workspace and 5,300 jobs by 2035. There are a variety of ways in which that could have been delivered, but the focus that the development corporation has brought to it in the borough of Stockport—the mayoral development corporation in Stockport sits within the single borough—and the existence of the vehicle focusing just on that single thing means that it does not get lost in all the other things that the local authority is trying to achieve.
The Chair: Do you think that the most effective development corporation should have a mayor at the top?
Paul Richards: The interesting thing about Stockport as a mayoral development corporation—I think I am right in saying this—is that we are the only place that has asked for a mayoral development corporation rather than having the mayor determine that there was going to be a mayoral development corporation put in place. Back in 2018, Stockport Council asked Mayor Burnham to create the mayoral development corporation as a vehicle to deliver it. Although considerable power sits with the mayor under the provisions of the Localism Act, the mayor has had a relatively light touch. This is definitely a development corporation that has been locally governed by both local representation, with both officers and politicians on the board, and external representation through our non-execs and an independent chair.
David Lunts: The development corporation model has a number of potential merits. It is not always the right solution to a problem but, where you have complexity and the need for an organisation to deliver better, quicker and more sustainable outcomes, the focus that a development corporation can bring, along with the powers that it can operate with, can be very effective. In the small number of examples that we have seen in the last few years—there are only five or six development corporations around the country; I run one and Paul runs one—you can see some of the advantages.
It is particularly useful in circumstances like mine, at Old Oak and Park Royal, where the catalyst to sustain the case for a development corporation was very much the Government’s decision to build the High Speed 2 railway network and a large interchange station at Old Oak. In what has been a rather neglected and industrial part of west London, that brings the opportunity to build an awful lot of homes, to create an awful lot of jobs and to regenerate a part of west London that badly needs it. That area spans parts of three different London boroughs—a bit like the London Legacy Development Corporation, our sister development corporation in east London, which spans four London boroughs. Where there is a need to co-ordinate across local authority boundaries, a development corporation model can be very useful.
Then, at the other end of the spectrum—Paul has already explained this—in some instances, it can bring focus within a single local authority area. It is a case of organising in ways that reflect local circumstances and local needs. In my experience in London, working directly on running one mayoral development corporation and having spent quite a number of years working closely with the London Legacy Development Corporation in the east, where there is a mayoral system, having that mayoral sponsorship, leadership and accountability can be extremely important in terms of building credibility and long-term sustainability for the organisation.
Baroness Andrews: I have a short question. You said that HS2 was the catalyst. Do you think it would have happened without HS2? Was there anything else that would have driven you to make that decision, given what you have just said about the powers that the model has for bringing about cross-borough partnership?
David Lunts: That is an interesting “what if”. I can see the potential. In the environment we are moving to, where the pressure to find more land—brownfield land in particular—for housebuilding and sustainable development is growing all the time, I can see that, possibly even without HS2, there could have been an argument for some sort of apparatus along these lines. However, without the HS2 station, the potential to deliver the kind of scale and density of development that is possible now would certainly be much undermined. It is hard to speculate but it possibly could have come forward as a development corporation without HS2.
Paul Richards: I want to come back on that question. Different development corporations have different purposes. London Legacy, David’s corporation and the South Tees Development Corporation are concentrated on big single infrastructure projects. It is extremely difficult to see how those would have happened without some sort of vehicle to carry them out. The other flavours of mayoral development corporations—ourselves and the two up in the north-east—are capable of being delivered by local authorities, but what local authorities potentially lack is the focus that a development corporation helps to bring in delivering it. Yes, some development corporations’ outcomes could have been delivered, but whether they could have been delivered as quickly is subject to question.
Q32 Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Good morning; it is very nice to meet you both. My question follows on from that. You both said that there is no one model that fits all but, at the same time, the speed with which something can be done is prompted by external circumstances. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill gives new powers and responsibilities to development corporations of all kinds; there is no one choice that the Government appear to be opting for. They have set challenging targets, particularly for housebuilding. There is a lot of political commitment behind that, but are the powers delegated from the Bill enough? If you do not see that there is enough there, what else would you like to see in terms of the powers available to development corporations, of whatever kind, to be able to deliver on these challenging targets?
David Lunts: There are some useful clarifications and improvements for development corporations coming through the Bill. In particular, given what the Government are saying about grey-belt development and new towns, it makes sense to clarify that development corporations can operate in brownfield and greenfield situations. The answer to the question is that there are perhaps one or two areas where I can see, certainly in my case, some additional powers that could potentially be useful. In my area, two spring to mind. One is whether—I say this with some caution—in some instances, it might be useful for a development corporation to have highways powers, which currently sit with the local highways authority.
I say that because, in my area, there are considerable issues with traffic enforcement and highways infrastructure. We have to navigate our way around three different highways authorities because there are three London boroughs. I am not sure that it would be right for every development corporation always to take highways powers but I can see an argument for saying that, perhaps for a temporary period where it can be justified or a good case can be made, that may make some sense.
The other one that springs to mind is a rather technical one, because again this is relevant to our work at Old Oak and Park Royal. Our project is heavily dependent on redevelopment of land that the Department for Transport has acquired for the purposes of constructing HS2. As HS2 draws nearer to completion, those construction sites that DfT bought will become available for development. Currently, the law does not allow any authority with compulsory purchase powers to acquire Crown land. I do not think that that is necessarily a problem, but an issue that I think needs clarification is that, where CPO powers are used around Crown land to acquire third-party rights—these may be easements or other third-party rights that still need to be extinguished on Crown land—there is currently an interesting discussion between lawyers as to whether the law allows for that. That is a technical point which could be relevant in other situations where government-owned land is coming forward.
Those are two fairly technical points. The wider answer to the question about powers is perhaps less related in some respects to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and more to, first, development corporations requiring the resources over a fairly long period of time to operate effectively and with credibility; and, secondly, the more work that there is still to be done, I would argue, on the way that a local-focused multiagency regeneration vehicle, such as a development corporation, interfaces with what can still at times feel like a very departmental and sometimes rather siloed mechanism inside central government.
Viscount Hanworth: Were the Crown lands pre-empted by HS2, and were they subject to compulsory purchase? I do not understand why they have been embargoed in this way, if they have.
David Lunts: It is impossible—well, it is unlawful—for any authority with CPO powers to acquire Crown land. As far as I am aware, it always has been. The Crown is sovereign, by definition, so this is less a question about acquiring Crown land. In our case, we have a framework where we have agreed that the land that we own as a development corporation will be pooled with government land to create a single land pool for development. However, within the Crown land that was acquired for the purpose of constructing HS2, there remain concerns about third-party rights that were not necessarily extinguished when DfT acquired the land. The question then is: how are those rights to be extinguished? Do we as a CPO authority have the power to do so or do we not? That needs clarification in law.
Paul Richards: Some of the questions of powers depend on the flavour of development corporation that we are talking about. For a development corporation such as David’s, which is across local authorities, there is absolutely a need for some of those powers. Highways powers are particularly pertinent. This is a question that we may come on to, but there is a balance there between local sovereignty and local government around the workings of a development corporation.
Where a development corporation is solely within a single authority, there is less need for those powers. We have not set up a new planning department in Stockport. Although the powers exist, we chose not to take them because we have one that works perfectly well within the local authority. I suppose one useful power—although I am not sure whether it is a power, or how you would actually codify this—would be the ability to compel the public sector to co-operate with a development corporation, whether on land or otherwise. I am thinking of both public sector and quasi-public sector bodies, Network Rail being an obvious example. If a development corporation is set up with a purpose then the rest of the public sector should be getting behind that purpose.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I am intrigued by that because the impact seems almost the same as Crown land—you have one government department and one organisation established by the Government with, if not necessarily different purposes, at least different commitments. What do you see as the mechanism by which that might be done—by encouragement?
Paul Richards: I am not sure what the mechanism is. Obviously Crown lands are different, but the only way currently to deal with departments that are not co-operating would be compulsory purchase and that, frankly, seems insane.
Lord Porter of Spalding: On that point, insanity is reality, is it not? No spending department will give up sovereign rights to land and assets that it owns unless someone forces them to. Even if you offered them a really good deal on it, they still would not trade it in. The MoD and national health have tried that numerous times across the country. Those big departments own lots of real estate that is underutilised, and they will not part with it even for the public good—even at a profit.
On the question about it being in a sovereign council’s area, maybe there is not such a need, but 60%-odd of the country is covered by two-tier sovereign councils. In the shires, I can guarantee that there will definitely be a need to set up development corporations to make county councils and district councils play nicely together, even if everyone can see the public good because, if someone else tries to do something to someone, the natural position is to resist.
I am a massive fan of development corporations. We should be able to set them up all over the country and build, hell for leather, across the country properly as we need to, and development corporations are the route for that. I should have declared the massive champion issue that I am pleased that we are doing this inquiry, because I think that that is where we will get to when we do proper development at scale across the country.
The Chair: I do not know if you have anything to say in response to Lord Porter. No? Let us move on.
Q33 Viscount Younger of Leckie: As we see it, there are two distinct types of development. There are the free-standing or stand-alone new towns and then the urban developments of existing towns. How do you see the differences? To what extent are there differences? Do you think those differences make a difference to the models of development corporations?
Paul Richards: I suppose the significant difference is the provision of existing infrastructure. Urban extension is likely to benefit from being able to utilise some of that existing infrastructure rather than new infrastructure being provided from scratch for free-standing settlements. In terms of whether they need different models, I am not sure I see an argument for a different model as the principles are still the same.
David Lunts: I agree. The likelihood is, as Paul says, that large free-standing or semi-free-standing settlements are likely to be infrastructure- led. However, I can see that a number of those larger urban extensions or new towns are likely to need land assembly powers and resources in a similar way to the situation that could well apply in more brownfield situations.
The other thing that springs to mind for me—I have had some experience of operating or helping large projects on the edge of towns or new settlements—is that it feels important that, where you have new settlements, the job of a development corporation is to be clear about setting a vision and clear about how you define that place as an interesting, sustainable, properly joined-together and integrated place, rather than just a series of rather unfortunate housing estates.
In some respects, that can be a greater challenge with a new settlement than it perhaps is if you are building within existing settlements, where you almost by definition have a certain urban pattern, a certain architecture and so forth that you are working with. That point about master planning and clarity of vision is crucial for a DC that is operating in a new settlement world.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: To add to both those answers, is it not the case that there is more likely to be greater disruption if you have an urban extension? It is not just to do with getting local buy-in; it is about the disruption of services, hospitals, nurseries and all the rest of it. Surely this would, or should, make quite a difference.
David Lunts: That raises a point that may be relevant to whether the Planning and Infrastructure Bill could go further. A major constraint that large developments of any sort face at the moment is that, all too often, social community infrastructure comes rather late in the process—certainly compared to a lot of the experience in the post-war new towns, where the reverse was the case. We could perhaps learn from that. Although I understand all the issues around resource constraints in the public sector, in terms of building credibility with local communities, if those questions about where the new health surgeries and schools will be could be answered positively and early on, rather than later, that would go a long way to dealing with community nervousness about large new settlements.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: Might I challenge you on that, Mr Richards? You said there was no real need for different models, but I might press you on that in terms of the difference with the urban extension, which I see as more complex—bearing in mind Mr Lunts’s response as well.
Paul Richards: In terms of land assemblies and displacement, I absolutely take the point that there is potentially more complexity there. To pick up on David’s point about vision and master planning, there is arguably a greater number of stakeholders that would be interested in that vision and master plan in terms of urban extension because they are affected by the outcome of that urban extension. I still hold the view that, while it may be more complex with a greater number of stakeholders, I am not sure that the vehicle needs to be any different to deliver it.
Baroness Andrews: I have a couple of quick questions on that. First, on where we just finished, do you think that development corporations have a greater capacity to master plan than a local authority, which, with all the best will in the world, rarely gets a chance to do a master plan?
Secondly, Mr Lunts usefully said that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill had provided clarification on brownfield and greenfield sites. What could be built into that Bill that would give powers to prioritise social infrastructure first? Is there a mechanism that could be defined, or would that have to be defined in the NPPF rather than in the Bill itself? The Bill will be in this House very shortly, obviously, so it would be interesting to know that.
David Lunts: To some extent, I would answer both of those questions with a similar theme: a lot of this comes back to how our development corporations are resourced. By resourcing, I mean not just powers but financial support and, crucially, the right calibre of professional skill and talent. All of this needs to come together if these things are going to be credible.
Speaking candidly, one of the challenges that I faced coming into my organisation at its halfway point, about five years ago, was that we did not really have resources or assets. Consequently, the credibility of the organisation was seriously undermined. If we are going to see large new schemes, new settlements and urban extensions come forward in ways, as we have discussed, where community infrastructure, affordable housing and things that people really care about locally are built in at the appropriate time, that needs to come with the resources required to deliver those. That can be cash or, in some cases, it can be the way in which we treat land, particularly public land. Can we extract more value from that land at the right moment?
Part of the answer to your master planning question is similar. There is nothing special about a development corporation’s ability to have a really fantastic master plan. Really, it is all contingent on whether it has the right capability and the right resources to do the job well. This comes back to something Paul said a few minutes ago: one of the advantages of a development corporation is that you have that exclusive focus on a particular place. My experience is that, although local authorities can do that—they have sometimes done it very well—in this day and age, it is all too easy for that to be dissipated because of the other pressures on local government that we are all so familiar with.
Q34 Viscount Hanworth: My designated question is as follows: if development corporations are to deliver the majority of the new town programmes, how should their role intersect with that of central government? If I may comment on that, I can imagine that, when a development corporation has limited resources and relies on profit-seeking building companies to do the work, there may be a need to impose upon them to bear the burden of providing the necessary infrastructure, which they may not be willing to do.
David Lunts: A number of years ago, when I was a civil servant, I was director of what they used to call the urban policy unit, back in the early 2000s. It was a new unit set up by the Government. I remember talking to my team when I started work there and saying that I thought a crucial part of our job—bearing in mind that we were dealing with many of the issues the committee is discussing here this morning—was to be the part of the organisation that could unblock the things that could not be unblocked further down the chain.
That is a crucial role for central government: there are certain things and certain moments in large strategic regeneration or new-build projects where it almost always comes back to central government. Part of the challenge is to get central government operating in a more corporate fashion, frankly, where departmental interests occasionally need to be subsumed by a wider interest. I can go into detail if you want me to.
The other factor is that, if development corporations are going to have public funding—by and large, they are going to need it—that funding needs to be offered in a way that speaks to the needs of the project, rather than what occasionally seem to be ever-increasing dedicated small funds of money. I always think that the crucial thing is that the funding needs to fit the project, rather than the project fitting the funding programme. I worked in Manchester 25 or 30 years ago on a big regeneration project that was part of the City Challenge programme set up by Michael Heseltine, who was the Secretary of State at the time. That was a real breakthrough because the core funding that we got from the Government was entirely focused on the needs of the project rather than individual departmental priorities.
So there is a whole range of issues around the management of difficult projects, where central government sometimes needs to intervene and make decisions. There is an issue around becoming less departmental and more corporate in central government, and there are issues around much more joined-up and project-focused funding pots.
Viscount Hanworth: I am thinking that, in spite of the oversight given to a development corporation, there may be missing elements and things that it has not attended to. Is that an honest supposition or not? There may be missing elements and central government may be in a position to enforce standards.
Paul Richards: To pick up on David’s point, we sometimes confuse ourselves by thinking that central government is one thing, as it does not operate as one thing. What is helpful for any large-scale regeneration project is long-term certainty of funding, but also place-based funding rather than funding for specific elements of projects or programmes. Central government can bring that. In particular, allowing infrastructure to go in at an early stage is going to convince the communities affected by this regeneration that it is actually creating a community rather than just building some houses.
Viscount Hanworth: The idea that central government may be an illusion and that there are just a lot of departments doing their own things is an interesting thought, which maybe has not sunk in for us fully.
Q35 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: In the best of all worlds, development corporations and local authorities would be all about partnership and co-operation. In the real world, do you think there is a risk that the development corporations will risk overriding local authority decision-making?
David Lunts: I will start, given that my development corporation spans three local authorities. Paul has a big advantage over me in that he has only one. He runs the local authority as well, so he has a head start on me.
Our experience is not just from OPDC, my organisation, but from the London Legacy Development Corporation. We have only two local development corporations in London, one of which, mine, has been running for 10 years and the other of which has been running for about 12 or 13 years. Between them there are seven boroughs. There have been occasional moments where there have been tensions but, because of the way that both organisations have operated—namely, with local authority leaders and councillors sitting on their boards, taking great care to involve local communities, local councillors and local Members of Parliament, and being pretty open and transparent in terms of accountability and communication—we really have not had too many issues.
In fact, I would go further and say that, by and large, the local authorities concerned, privately or indeed publicly, would go some way to welcoming the additional investment and benefits that having a development corporation has brought. That is particularly the case in Stratford in east London, where the benefits in terms of new homes, jobs, infrastructure and amenities are obvious.
It is a balancing act. I always say that running a development corporation should come with a high degree of humility, because we are there only for a certain period of time and then we have to hand things back to the democratic local authorities. We need to be humble enough to say, “We are going to work with you very closely to try to make sure that what we hand back to you is what you want and need, but we also understand that if we get that wrong then we will be gone and you’ll have the problem to deal with”. So there is a balancing act, but it can be managed and that has been done very successfully in London.
Paul Richards: I feel like I should declare an interest, although David may have done it for me. I am only the deputy, not the chief exec, so I do not quite run the local authority.
We are very strong advocates for local authority involvement in the development corporation. Stockport as a borough has been under no overall control for a number of years now, certainly since before the formation of the development corporation. In the constitution of the development corporation, we ensure that all political groups are represented on its board. While that is not equivalent to David’s situation of having multiple authorities competing, we have multiple political groups that have shown consistent civic leadership in this space. They have seen the benefits that the development corporation brings and therefore have been supportive of it.
There is a nervousness—I speak with my local authority hat on now rather than my MDC hat—about sovereignty being taken away from local authorities without understanding what that means. Having local authorities playing an active part in the workings of the development corporation is a way of alleviating that, because we have all seen arm’s-length vehicles that have drifted away from their original purpose and created a potential conflict. I absolutely recognise the fears around this, and that is why we see local authority involvement in the development corporation as essential.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: So you have not had any experience of development corporation issues becoming a political football at election time in local authorities?
Paul Richards: No, completely the opposite. We have had both Lib Dem minority leadership and Labour minority leadership of the council during the time the development corporation has been in existence. All political board members have taken equal credit and equal responsibility for the operation of the development corporation, and they have not sought to use it in any political way.
David Lunts: Dare I say it, there is perhaps some analogy here with the powers that elected mayors take. There are instances where local politics and, if you like, more strategic-level politics are sometimes in tension, and—privately, at least—it can sometimes be beneficial for local political figures to say that an elected mayor, or perhaps a development corporation, has been able to make a decision that would be very much more difficult at a local level. Sometimes there are benefits that, as I say, privately at least, local politicians sometimes are minded to acknowledge.
Q36 Baroness Janke: My question is similar. I would like you to focus on engagement with local communities and the people who are represented by the council, and the challenges and benefits of that interface.
David Lunts: My organisation spends an awful lot of time, energy and resource talking to local people and local businesses. Having worked in local government at city level, in the GLA and now in a development corporation, I would say that in some respects my time working in a development corporation has had more intense community engagement than in either of the other two. I say that because if you are running a local development corporation, with the very specific purpose to regenerate a very defined and relatively small area, then you have the resources, the requirement and the need to think quite seriously about how to engage with local people.
Something that I am quite proud of is that we were one of the first planning authorities—because we have planning powers—in the country to set up a community review group of a dozen local people from local businesses and local residents who meet every month with an independent chair and scrutinise every single planning application that comes before our planning committee, before it goes to the planning committee. Having sat through a number of those, I can tell you that it is a fairly tough gig for applicants, because they have to come and present. We have found that incredibly useful because it has helped our planning committee to make better-quality decisions.
We also spend a great deal of time working with local people on our plans for new development ourselves. Last week, in fact, we produced and published what we call a local ideas book, which is a set of principles, themes and issues that we as an MDC have adopted and have been derived from a six-month period of deep engagement with local people, schools and businesses. I could go on, but the key point here is that any development corporation doing its job professionally is going to take local engagement incredibly seriously.
Paul Richards: I echo what David said. It is incredibly important for us. Again, we are a development corporation that has a number of existing interests within the boundary of the development corporation. There will always be some tension between those existing businesses and residents and the change that the development corporation is looking to ensure takes place. We have engaged with local communities, both within and without the red line, from day one. We have always been really transparent with them, we have engaged as early as possible and helped them to shape the direction of the work that the development corporation is undertaking.
This may seem like a minor point, but a huge amount of social value can be generated from the work of a development corporation. We are incredibly passionate about ensuring that that social value is delivered as hyperlocally as possible, so that those that are affected by the work of the development corporation—particularly during the construction phase, which can be quite intrusive—see some immediate benefit from that work taking place.
Q37 Lord Cameron of Dillington: How can development corporations ensure the long-term success of new towns after they have been dissolved? I was wondering whether David, with his three local authorities, could expand on his exit strategy.
David Lunts: That is a good question. I am tempted to say that we are some way off needing an exit strategy, but of course one should build an exit strategy at a very early stage otherwise it could be too late. First and foremost, the exit strategy, if it is going to be a good one, is going to be highly contingent on making sure that the entrance strategy is correct. By that, I mean—I mentioned the word “masterplanning” a bit earlier—is there a plan here that speaks to the need to create something that is as self-sustaining, efficient and attractive in the long term as possible? It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of that. The job of a development corporation, doing the kind of work that we are tasked with, is not simply to make more things happen more quickly; it is very much to make sure that what happens is better and indeed best. Otherwise the exit strategy is going to be flawed.
The second point is that we are clear that there will be a need not only to engage with but to get early agreement with our local authorities for things like the adoption of local facilities. This is to make sure that we are not specifying things that are going to struggle to find an owner at the end of life. We are also cognisant of opportunities to think about more innovative ways of community and estate stewardship. One of the interesting legacies from the post-war new town movement, and indeed the early 20th-century antecedents of the new towns, is that some of them worked quite hard and innovatively about different ways of ensuring onward management and stewardship.
For instance—this may still be the case; it certainly was when I did some work with Milton Keynes Council some years ago—the Milton Keynes Development Corporation secured the retail units, the shops, that it was building so that its revenue went into a long-term community trust, and that trust, which I think is still in operation today, was responsible for all the landscape management in Milton Keynes. We are certainly keen to look at models like that. Are there ways to build not just social capital but financial capital that can empower local people and businesses to take responsibility—actually, it is more than responsibility—to be empowered to run things in the longer term? One of the challenges and the potential advantages of a dedicated development corporation is that it should be tasked to push the envelope on some of those more innovative approaches.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: Paul, if I may, presumably your exit strategy for your one council is quite easy; is it?
Paul Richards: It is. We have struck upon a model where the development corporation does not actually own any assets; the assets that are created sit with the council because of the nature of the funding arrangements between the development corporation and the council.
I am going to give what sounds like quite a trite answer to this, but there is something about building quality and building sustainability in a range of formats, not just the sustainability that we might jump to immediately. If you start from that position, that will ensure that the long-term nature of the assets created by the development corporation are of value and do not become a financial burden on the local authority when they return.
Viscount Younger of Leckie: I too find this a fascinating question. I was wondering if David could give us a bit more information on the prioritisation in terms of an exit strategy. One of the things we have been talking about in Committee is the question of the longevity of new developments. If you have houses that are being built, to put it rather crudely, how long are they going to last before the roof falls to bits or something happens, and the whole lot happens at the same time? That is just one aspect, but it would be helpful to have a little more detail, particularly for Milton Keynes, as you mentioned.
David Lunts: The Milton Keynes example probably derived, in part at least, from the very earliest planned new settlements of the 20th century or late 19th century. Letchworth Garden City is, I suppose, the classic case; it was built initially on a co-operative co-partnership model, and to this day I think the public realm is still managed by the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation. Something that we should be proud of in this country is that we have a lineage of interesting, innovative and successful models of delivering new settlements.
The context is slightly different in a place like mine, where we are building at pretty high densities; we are building in brownfield areas and we are building cheek by jowl in London’s largest industrial estate. The point about longevity is a really good one. I am not sure that there is a simple way to answer it, except that the quality of what is built—and the quality of the management of what is built—needs to be incredibly central.
In many respects, if you are operating in an area like mine, which is in the heart of a big city, where densities are going to be high, those issues of management and stewardship are even more important. However, this does not mean that it cannot be done—and done well. It just means that, rather than a series of discrete developments, we ought to be seeing the future of areas like mine more in a way that is akin to creating another one of London’s great estates, if you like. That sounds a bit pretentious but it is certainly the way in which the London Legacy Development Corporation has approached its job, and it has done it very well. In effect, in Stratford, with the Queen Elizabeth Park and the environs there, you now have a new London great estate.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: Are you constantly monitoring the quality of everything that is being built on your site?
David Lunts: Very much so—absolutely. As a planning authority and a development corporation, we are happy—well, not happy, but certainly content—to turn away substandard development.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I think you would both agree that the creation of historic new towns has not been without controversy in the past. My question is for both of you. Do you think that the development corporations have a role in acting as the spokespersons and champions of the new town movement, in effect? Should they be playing a part in managing and mitigating the opposition that exists?
David Lunts: That is an interesting question. Given where the Government are looking to take the development corporations—explicitly into new town territory, if you like—it raises some interesting questions around how this generation of new towns and new settlements builds on, learns from and, in some instances, challenges the lineage of new town development through the 20th century. I am not sure whether organisations like mine should be champions of the new town movement, but we should certainly be interrogators of it and learn from it, because there are many lessons to be learned and it is time that we put them into practice.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: If an organisation like yours is not to be the champion, who should be doing the championing, if anyone?
David Lunts: I do not know. I regard that more as a policy and political question. Certainly, the politicians that are championing the cause of development corporations could sensibly articulate how the new generation of new towns and development corporations relates to those that preceded it.
Paul Richards: I am glad that David went first on that one. Certainly, my organisation and David’s organisation are champions of the model of delivery; whether or not we are champions of the political decision around new towns is a slightly separate discussion. We would be champions of that model of delivering consistent development and regeneration of quality at pace. Whether that is applied to new towns, urban extensions or the existing regeneration of our towns and cities, that is where we land in that space.
Lord Porter of Spalding: It is difficult for anybody to champion a political decision, but, clearly, if a political decision has been made, a development corporation has been set up and the final product does exactly what it says on the tin, it becomes a de facto champion for the next breed of new towns. The role of the development corporations that are in existence now is promoting future new towns, not new towns when they are identified in this next round; that is probably the reality.
The trouble is that you are never going to please the public. Nobody wants their view taken away just because somebody else needs to move something. Stevenage caused the same trouble when they moved us out. Thetford was the same when they moved people out into Norfolk. Wherever you take somebody’s green and pleasant land and put concrete over it, people are going to have the hump because it is their view—but they did not buy it. As a nation, we must have a certain amount of scepticism around how far we try to bring the public with us on big stuff, because it just is needed and it is appreciated by people only 20 years after the event—not by the people living through the event. This is where the corporate development corporations come in: if you insist on the right infrastructure supporting the right people and the right quality development being built in the right place, that is when you get the champion movement, or at least our national best chance of getting champions. I think that it was an unfair question to land these two with.
David Lunts: That is a very good answer to the question.
Q38 Baroness Andrews: This follows on from that. I am going to depart from the designated question slightly; this is going to be a composite question now. Do you think that we have got the narrative right around why we need new towns and/or new extensions? There are two narratives, which you could sort of see as competing. One is about growth. You, Paul, said that you are building 4,000 houses and getting 5,000 jobs. David, I do not know how that compares for you; it would be interesting to know. It would also be interesting to know where you both think you will have done that.
If there is a national narrative that you are clear about, what is it? Do you think that that narrative requires a new national champion to articulate and deliver it? This would bring together or override government department. For example, the New Towns Taskforce will have finished its job, ostensibly, by July. Do you think that there ought to be some continuing agency to pull it all along and drive this policy?
If that is the case, do you think that one of the considerations for where new towns or extensions ought to be built ought to include a view on equity? It is probably easier to build in the south-east for different reasons—although there is a large proportion of greenfield—but you could argue that it is the north that needs the jobs. Ought there to be some sort of national decision-making that ensures that the purposes—you said that they are different purposes—are clearly being fulfilled on a national scale and reflected in where the effort is being made?
David Lunts: My short answer would be yes. It needs a powerful national narrative and a powerful central or corporate message and messenger. I mentioned some time ago that one of the things the Government need to attend to is the need for less departmentalism when it comes to pressing ahead with these big projects. Without that, some of them will struggle.
Part of the narrative also needs to be about acknowledging what I think Lord Porter was talking about, which is that you are not going to please everyone all the time. If you are building next to someone’s very nice view, they are not going to be very happy. More attention needs to be given to the quality of building, forward funding and the forward provision of essential infrastructure—social as well as physical.
The other thing I would add to the mix is that we need to really think about the kind of housing that we are building. We need to find ways to support more affordable housing—that is, more housing that is affordable for key workers and first-time buyers. There needs to be a much richer range of product than just standard, stereotypical housing estates, which no one particularly enjoys.
We should not underestimate the challenges around those things. Paul will do what he can and I will do what I can, but it would be fantastic if there were stronger, more visible leadership at the heart of government really pressing ahead with this—not just with legislation but addressing the challenge of how the public sector manages itself in a way that feels more joined up and efficient.
Paul Richards: There is something around the potential for new towns, which are running into double figures, to have some consistency in their approach, some shared knowledge and some lessons learned from the way they operate. Where they should be is a decision for others rather than for me, but there is a particular challenge around values which means that it is more difficult to deliver them in the north, where there is less infrastructure available than in the south-east. There is definitely something there around having that sponsor within central government to ensure that they get delivered in a consistent way.
Q39 Lord Mawson: I very much welcome what you have just said—I was very encouraged by it, actually—but I am interested in the cultures that we are creating in these new settlements and the problems with government silos that you have been talking about. Is it fair to say that much of the machinery of the state is increasingly cumbersome to operate and is focused on process rather than people and relationships? Both of you have talked about this. It would be good to dig into it a bit more because people like me who are operating out there—like yourselves—worry that, if we are not careful in the next phase of housebuilding and regeneration, we will be in danger of unintentionally repeating many of the mistakes of the past in terms of dependency cultures and soulless environments. David, you have been talking about some of these things. Is what I am suggesting fair? What do we do to mitigate it? What are you each doing to mitigate these issues? My experience is that they are really serious and that we are on the edge of something that could go either way.
David Lunts: I mentioned some time back that I did quite a lot of work in Manchester before I came down to London. I was running the City Challenge programme, which was the big redevelopment of the Hulme and Moss Side area. It is still going on but is pretty much finished now.
One of the things that came with the City Challenge programme at the time was that, as well as single-pot funding, you got a sponsor Minister. It was really useful, actually. You did not necessarily get a Secretary of State, but you got a middle-ranking Minister. Their job was to come and visit pretty much once a month to feed back and see it as a learning opportunity for central government. Crucially, if we had a problem that the Government could help fix, they would go back and do that with a cross-departmental brief. We could learn from lessons like that. An awful lot of the business of government is not necessarily about legislation; it is about managing the machinery. If people like Paul and I are going to be able to do our job as efficiently as we need to, the machinery needs to operate in a much more efficient way.
On culture, I worry a great deal that, if the new generation of large-scale settlements simply boils down to some rather prosaic—and, frankly, quite soulless—housing estates built by nameless volume housebuilders, it will set the whole question of new town development, major new settlements and housebuilding targets back rather than forwards. Frankly, we have precious few examples of phenomenally good major new developments in this country in recent years. We have one or two that we can learn from but, in the quest for numbers, we must not simply roll over and let the volume builders do what they have been doing for the last decade or two.
Paul Richards: It is a fascinating question: how do you create a culture in what is, potentially, a settlement dropped from the sky with a load of new residents who may not have any shared culture?
There is something around infrastructure and considering urban extension as part of that solution. There is something in the mix and the type. Again, I go back to David’s point about volume housebuilders creating the new communities that we have seen post war. How do you ensure that there is something in those new communities for everybody? Again, it is a tricky problem to solve, and history has not taught us many lessons about how we might do that successfully.
Lord Mawson: I have a supplementary on your point about an exit strategy and whom these great estates are handed over to, because it is fundamental. Certainly, in east London, some of us worry a lot about the present competency of some of the local authorities that this would be handed over to and their ability to manage such things. Where have we got to in exploring other models for that? You said something about that, but what needs to happen to enable more exploration around that to happen? It is a real worry that these excellent pieces of development will go into the sand over time if we are not careful and they are not managed properly.
David Lunts: One thing that we have not really talked about this morning, which relates to your question, is how we think about embracing shared challenges and shared learning. One of the weaknesses in the Government’s ambitions, frankly, is that there are not many people around, particularly in the public sector, who have had the opportunity to run these big projects over the last 20 or 30 years because we have had so few of them.
One thing that I would love to see is a properly sponsored and maybe even properly resourced—I do not want to use the word “academy”, but I cannot think of anything else—kind of virtual, perhaps even physical, academy and network to explore some of these questions in detail and bring together not just some of the leaders of projects like Paul’s and mine but the next generation who are coming through.
I tell you what: if there is going to be a serious endeavour to build the number of homes that the Government have committed to in the way that they want to, there will need to be serious investment in talent, skills and capacity not only to manage these projects effectively but to ask the searching questions and to get the right answers to them. What can we learn from the past? What can we learn from other countries? What can we learn from the few examples of where we are doing things well in this country at the moment? Paul may disagree with me but, at the moment, it feels as though we are all doing this on our own: we are all making the same mistakes and dealing with the same questions. The network does not really come together to become a movement; we need to think seriously about investing in that.
Viscount Hanworth: It is incumbent on development corporations to write a report on their work. I have seen one or two. Here we have something from Tempsford—not a summary, but a prospectus. I do not know why it is so voluminous but it is rather valuable, I think.
David Lunts: Indeed, it is.
Q40 The Chair: To pick up on the previous-but-one point that you made, Mr Lunts, do you both have views on whether the Government, when building these new towns, should be setting mandatory standards for them?
David Lunts: To some extent, they exist. There are standards around building regulations.
The Chair: Should they be aiming higher?
David Lunts: Yes, I think so. When thinking about what has perhaps held us back from high standards, one thinks about why the various Governments’ pledges to do more around more efficient building techniques and modern methods of construction have all come to nothing. Virtually every attempt to create a new modular factory or off-site manufacture has closed down. Why? There is no consistent demand for the product to enable economies of scale to operate.
So, yes, the Government could be doing more. We have talked a lot about some of the things that could help, such as making public sector machinery at every level more efficient and the need for infrastructure. Alongside that should come a requirement always to go better, to do more and to do things to a better standard and quality. Frankly, that will not happen if things come forward in bits and pieces and, every few years, there is another slump. We must have a consistent building programme.
For all the faults in the post-war experience of system building and large-scale construction—they are legion and we all know what they are, but this is perhaps for another day—the only reason why those new approaches to building, as well as the new designs and standards, were possible was because there was a consistent, year-on-year demand for housing, which was largely funded by the state in those days. We need to find a mixed-market programme of equal scale and longevity if we are really going to do something about housing standards.
Paul Richards: Again, I agree entirely with where David is on this. I absolutely agree about requiring higher standards from these new settlements; however, a financial cost comes with that, and, without that support, they will wither on the vine.
The Chair: That is a fair point. You will be pleased to know that that is the end of this session. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you both here today to answer our many questions. I thank you for giving your time and sharing your experience. On behalf of the entire committee, I thank you very much for being here.