Milton Keynes City Council – Written Evidence (NTP0086)
Briefing note
History of Delivery Bodies involved in the growth of Milton Keynes.
Prepared by Fiona Robinson, Strategic Lead for City Projects
Purpose To set out the history of the various delivery bodies that have been involved in the development of Milton Keynes since designation as a new town in 1967.
The note has been prepared for the House of Lords Built Environment Committee New Towns Inquiry, as part of the evidence submitted by Milton Keynes City Council.
Pre-1967: Bletchley Urban District, and Buckinghamshire County Council
Before the designation of Milton Keynes as a new town, Bletchley had been the focus for a significant amount of growth, welcoming large numbers of families moving out of London and the towns in the south of Buckinghamshire. The town was identified as a growth location in the Greater London Plan of 1944 and the 1952 Town Development Act.
Bletchley Urban District Council worked with five London Boroughs and funding from the Greater London Council to accept people and businesses from bombed out parts of London through the 1950s and 1960s. The first ‘overspill’ estate was the Saints, followed by the Counties, Rivers, Castles and Abbeys, and later the Lakes Estate. New industrial estates were also constructed in Mount Farm and Denbigh. Between 1951 and 1971, the population of Bletchley grew from 10,919 to 30,642.
Bletchley Urban District had the ambition for further expansion of the town, but by 1964 Buckinghamshire County Council was developing its own plan for the area, known as Pooleyville. The focus of development was to be based around Loughton – close to today’s city centre rather than Bletchley – with a monorail system of four separate loops. The plan envisaged housing estates for 350,000 people, grouped around monorail stations with the space within each loop providing open space, public buildings, schools, light industry, shopping and health facilities, with heavy industry outside of the loops, linking up with the strategic road network.
In 1965, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government overlooked both the Bletchley and Pooleyville proposals and instead in 1967, the New City of Milton Keynes was designated in the third and final wave of UK new towns.
1. 1967 – 1992: Milton Keynes Development Corporation
Under the New Towns Act 1965, the Ministry made the North Buckinghamshire (Milton Keynes) New Town (Designation) Order 1967. This designated 21,883 acres of land in Buckinghamshire which included the existing towns of Bletchley, Stony Stratford and Wolverton as well as many smaller villages and hamlets. The existing population of the area covered by the whole borough today was approximately 60,000 people, with around 45,000 within the designated area.
Following the designation, a Development Corporation was established in May 1967. A chairman, Lord Campbell of Eskan, and general manager, Fred Roche, were appointed. Consultants – Llewelyn- Davis, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bor – were selected at the end of 1967 to lead the development of the masterplan for the city, with the Plan for Milton Keynes submitted and accepted by the Secretary of State in 1970. The plan was published in two volumes; the first describing the background to the designation and proposals for the new city, and the second providing evidence and a greater level of detail.
The Corporation took the view that the planning of the new city should be guided by a set of explicit goals:
i. Opportunity and freedom of choice
ii. Easy movement and access, and good communications
iii. Balance and variety
iv. An attractive city
v. Public awareness and participation
vi. Efficient and imaginative use of resources.
The Plan for Milton Keynes was to be used as the basis for further planning applications, developed for each area as the growth of the city proceeded. It laid out a plan for the grid pattern of cross-city roads and the linear park network, and the requirements for drainage, water supply and other basic services. But within this framework of fixed elements, it was intended that there would be flexibility and freedom in how the detail would be delivered, recognising that policies and patterns of building would change over time as the city grew.
The Plan for Milton Keynes set out proposals for how the growth of the city should be phased, which would culminate in the final ‘completed’ city laid out in Map C, the Strategic Plan. At a glance, the city today looks very similar to what was planned and is recognisable in the Key Policies map from our current Local Plan (Plan:MK), with grid roads, employment areas, open space and the city centre broadly aligned with the Strategic Plan. However, the detail shows that not everything was developed as proposed in the original. A key divergence has been in the positioning of local centres which the plan proposed should be at points of connection between grid squares, helping to create movement between estates and convenience for passing custom due to their visibility from the grid road. The grid roads themselves were intended to have speeds of 30-40mph with signalised cross- roads rather than roundabouts at their intersections.
The plan set out the growth trajectory it expected to see, with growth to around 250,000 in the 1990s. It stated that this was both desirable – because of the early benefits that size could bring in terms of social facilities – and feasible – with the wide and expanding range of opportunities that would come with rapid growth. The expected rate of growth would require, each year, over 3,000 new homes, one secondary school, two middle schools and four first and nursery schools, and the creation of 4,000 – 5,000 new jobs. The plan recognised though that the delivery of this would rely on a range of factors including resource availability within the construction sector, the coordination of a range of local and national government departments, and the need for a community development programme to help newcomers settle in to the city. It also – mistakenly – expected that planned in-migration would cease in the 1990s and growth after that date would be mainly due to natural increase of the population.
Residential density was also discussed in the plan, with an expectation that average new residential density over Milton Keynes as a whole would be around 20 dwellings per hectare (dph), but that this would depend on whether homes were built for rent (mainly social housing) at around 25-30dph or predominantly for private sale, expected to be around 15dph. Interestingly, the Corporation believed people would demand more space within and around their homes (for both public and private housing), hence development within Milton Keynes was to be generally at a lower density than in other new towns, recognising that economics may require higher density development in the early years. Part of the intention for lower density, larger homes was to be able to attract people in professional and managerial positions which had been a challenge for other new towns.
Importantly, the Development Corporation didn’t just undertake the planning and construction of the new town; they also engaged in a range of other activity that was necessary in building a place
and a community. They had people involved in community development, including involving local communities in public art projects and employing arrivals workers to help new residents settle into newly built estates. Inward investment and attracting companies to relocate to the city was essential in order to provide employment opportunities for new residents. Recognising the changing industrial structure of the country at the time, there was a need for a range of business sectors, and educational and training facilities to enable residents to find employment to meet their skills. Major marketing campaigns aimed at employers and residents were therefore an important part of the corporation’s activities. With the scale of the organisation’s activities, at its peak it employed around 1,700 people and with the opportunity to create a new city, was able to attract the best and brightest to work together on these major endeavours.
In the delivery of the growth of Milton Keynes, outline applications would be developed for major infrastructure projects or for individual or groups of grid squares. These outline applications were considered by the Secretary of State, and if they complied with the masterplan, they were usually approved without delay. When approved, the Development Corporation was authorised to grant detailed permissions to itself or to third parties for development within the designated area.
The Development Corporation was responsible for the first planning and development of the area within the designated area. The individual local councils would have been the planning authority for most subsequent development or redevelopment, dependent on scale. It is clear that the working relationship between MKDC and the local authorities was minimal. The democratic involvement in the operation of the Development Corporation was negligible and the local council would have been treated with a degree of contempt, with them having a marginal influence in the development process.
Applications would be accompanied by a financial statement which set out the overall cost and means by which receipts would be generated to repay treasury loans that had been put in place for the delivery of the new town. Proposals were assessed against a standardised cost ‘yardstick’ for each type of development. In some cases, to achieve the large room sizes and the generous amounts of open space that were proposed in some schemes, the materials used were non-standard, leading to developments that are now in need of significant investment.
This approach to development had been tried and tested across all the previous New Towns over 20+ years and was recognised as the normal way to deliver large-scale, joined-up growth. There were agreements between government departments to share the initial capital costs of infrastructure in the new towns. For example, there were rules about how much the Department of Education would pay the Development Corporation for land on which schools would be built, or agreements between the Development Corporation, the Department of Transport and the relevant neighbouring Local Authorities about sharing the costs of upgrading roads in the area surrounding the new town.
The Department for Environment effectively took on the investment risk through what was originally a 60-year fixed rate loan. The total capital cost of the new city was estimated to be £700 million over 25 years (adjusted for inflation since 1967 this is the equivalent of around £11bn today). £333 million was borrowed from the Treasury and the remaining half of the cost shared by local authorities and other public bodies and the private sector. In return for the government taking the risk – via the Development Corporation – they gained the long term ‘profits’ from receipts which continued long after the loans had been repaid. By 1997, during the life of CNT, the Treasury were fully reimbursed for their investments in Milton Keynes since the designation of the new town via receipts from development income.
By returning those profits to central government, some local authorities in new town areas were left without the means to maintain the infrastructure and assets they had inherited once the Development Corporation was wound up, or to support further development and renewal of their areas.
In terms of the number of homes actually delivered during the New Town Development Corporation era, the graph below sets out completions between 1980 and 2024.1 It is clear that in the early years of the city’s growth, social housing formed a significant proportion of completions, and this pattern would certainly have been true for the period 1970-1980, pre-dating the data below. Total completions after 1992 rarely reached the levels achieved during the MKDC period.
2. 1992 – 1998: Commission for New Towns
In 1961, under the New Towns Act 1959, the Government established the Commission for the New Towns (CNT) to take over, manage and dispose of the assets and liabilities of twenty-one New Town Development Corporations in England, once each Corporation had substantially achieved its objectives. Milton Keynes was the last of the corporations to be wound up, in March 1992, and from April 1992 the Commission became the sole authority for new towns in England. The Commission inherited at least 4,800 acres of land and 1.7m sq.ft. of build estates from the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, valued at £255.6m in 1994.2
1 Table 253 Housebuilding: permanent dwellings started and completed, by tenure and district at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1084086/LiveTable253.ods
2 National Audit Office, “Commission for the New Towns: Disposal of Land and Property Assets”, 1995, Figure 1 https://www.nao.org.uk/pubsarchive/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/11/Commission-for-the-New-Towns-Disposal-of- Land-and-Property-Assets.pdf
It had been the intention from 1993 to wind up the Commission by the end of 1998, as a demonstration of the government’s move away from the new town programme. The Commission’s overall aim became to disengage from the new towns as soon as was practical through the sale of its built estate and land holdings – securing the best price reasonably obtainable – and undertake a programme of withdrawal from other activity in the towns. With the disposal receipts and rental income from other assets, year-on-year the Commission made a net contribution to the Exchequer. Between their establishment in 1962 and a report dated 1994, more than £2bn had been secured through disposals.
It could be argued that because of the scale of the city’s planned growth – and that there was still much to be delivered – that the winding up of the Development Corporation was premature in the case of Milton Keynes. It did mean that the role of the CNT was different in Milton Keynes compared to other new towns, and along with the transfer of land and assets, planning powers were also transferred. This meant the CNT continued the Development Corporation’s role of planning and placemaking and developing its land and assets, although without many of the individuals that had been involved in the city’s growth to date, and the consequential loss of knowledge and experience. This period also saw a ramping up of the democratic involvement in the development process, with an increasing role for the Council and local politicians, a marked difference from the autocracy of the Development Corporation.
As part of the winding up of MKDC and the transfer of land, assets and powers, two other important organisations were established to manage the long-term stewardship of open space and to support the voluntary and community sector. Both organisations continue to be very active within the city, helping to manage assets and support local communities without further significant public sector funding.
The Parks Trust was established as an independent charity in 1992 and today cares for over 6,000 acres of green space, including parks, ancient woodlands, lakes, river valleys and 80 miles of landscaped grid road corridors. The trust was given a 999-year lease on 4,500 acres of the city, with an endowment of £20m and a portfolio of commercial property that could be used to fund the maintenance and management of the open space. These assets include many of the city’s local centres and some industrial units, plus some properties outside of Milton Keynes altogether.
At the time of the establishment of the Parks Trust, there was pushback from Milton Keynes Council that the strategic green estate (and the accompanying maintenance endowment) should be held by the local authority. However, it was the view within the Development Corporation that the Council would not be able to maintain the quality and scale of the estate given the wide-ranging role that the local authority must play. The establishment of the Parks Trust was not intended to be money- making – hence being set up as a trust – but it is clear that there was a degree of arrogance in the Development Corporation in their dealings with the Council and, anecdotally, a continuing animosity amongst some about this part of the city’s history.
The second organisation, the Milton Keynes Community Foundation, was established in 1986 with a mission to connect people with resources, skills and ideas to enrich lives and create positive growth for MK. Over almost 40 years, the charity has distributed more than £15m in grant funding and provided organisations across the voluntary, community and cultural sector with a further £18m in rent subsidies.
The Foundation was endowed plots of land by the Development Corporation as it was wound up, to be used for community purposes. These plots must be used by not-for-profit organisations with a clear plan for a use appropriate for Community Foundation land. Land cannot be used for housing or residential buildings – even if charitable in nature – or used for projects or activities that will not directly benefit the people of Milton Keynes. Many of these sites were reserve sites within built estates, allocated as the area surrounding was designed and developed, and retained for uses that would only be realised later in the life of the community. Recently completed examples include the Oak Tree Centre in Shenley Brook End, developed by the Shenley Christian Fellowship.
Other assets were transferred to Milton Keynes Council and Buckinghamshire County Council at the point of the winding up of CNT. This included landscaping areas within estates which wasn’t of the scale appropriate for the role of the Parks Trust. The transfer to the Council also included a £1m property portfolio of income generators intended to pay for the upkeep of assets, including the Food Centre in CMK and the National Bowl, although neither delivered the income expected.3
Within Milton Keynes, the CNT continued the MKDC approach to development, with the preparation of planning/development briefs and the sale of land in accordance with those briefs. Through this process, a range of developments came forward including many residential estates across the city and some key schemes in CMK including the Milton Keynes Theatre and Theatre District (now 12th Street), Midsummer Place, the Gallery and Xscape.
3. 1998 – 2014: English Partnerships and successors, and Milton Keynes Partnership
English Partnerships (EP) was formed in 1998 when the Commission for the New Towns (CNT) merged with the Urban Regeneration Agency (URA). EP’s core function was to redevelop urban areas in order to provide affordable housing and sustainable growth. Assets and powers from the CNT were transferred to English Partnerships, as well as those from the URA. The two organisations kept their individual legislative powers as separate entities, but operated as a single body under EP. Many of the powers subsequently used in Milton Keynes were inherited from the Urban Regeneration Agency.
English Partnerships4 role was different to that of the CNT; it was a return to making places rather than the disengagement and retreat that had largely been the focus of the Commission. EP, using some of the URA powers, continued the strategic planning and development management for the designated area and the use of land and assets in delivery. However, there was a further building of democratic involvement in the development process, so the Council – with Milton Keynes Council now a unitary authority after 1997 – having an increasing role.
With the development of the national Sustainable Communities Plan in 2003, there was a renewed focus on the city, as part of the Milton Keynes South Midlands sub-regional growth area. This was further developed through the MKSM Sub Regional Strategy, with a housing growth target for Milton Keynes of 44,900 homes between 2001 and 2021, including some major cross boundary strategic development areas in Aylesbury Vale and Central Bedfordshire.
3 “Putting the Magic Back into Milton Keynes”, July 2011, Report of the Homes and Communities Agency Asset Transfer Scrutiny Panel
4 On 1 December 2008, the powers of English Partnerships (and therefore Milton Keynes Partnership) passed to a successor body, the new Homes and Communities Agency. Records created or inherited by the Commission for the New Towns and successors | The National Archives
In June 2004, Milton Keynes Partnership (MKP) was established by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), to drive forward the growth of Milton Keynes. MKP used planning powers from the Urban Regeneration Agency and the land assets received from the Commission for New Towns, put in place through a 2004 Statutory Instrument. MKP was set up as a sub-committee of English Partnerships with planning powers for areas within the boundaries of the designated Urban Development Area (UDA). The UDA boundary included the Eastern and Western Expansion Areas, Tattenhoe Park and Kingsmead South. Major planning decisions would be made through the Milton Keynes Partnership Planning Sub-Committee (MKPPSC) for development within the UDA.5
The geographical coverage represented a significant change from that of the previous bodies. MKP’s remit covered new growth locations beyond the previously designated area and the Council in effect took over strategic planning for the remainder of the city. It was also different that the organisation didn’t own the sites it was planning for, which had been the case with previous iterations of delivery bodies within the city.
Following this change, Milton Keynes Council took over the authority to make planning decisions through its Development Control Committee in all areas except the designated expansion areas in the Urban Development Area. The Council also held the plan-making powers, so all decisions by Milton Keynes Partnership had to be made in accordance with the Milton Keynes Local Plan (December 2005) which included planning policies for the expansion areas. The policy (EA1 – Expansion Areas) made a requirement for the preparation of comprehensive design documents such as development frameworks, development briefs and design codes. MKP, having control of significant assets within CMK and other sites across the city, continued to have a major place leadership role to play beyond the UDA, however, working in partnership with MKC.
MKP also ran the inward investment function, held the land assets that would have been transferred from the MKDC to CNT and operated the tariff programme (developer contributions through a pooled S106 agreement across all the landowners in those development areas).
At a political level, there wasn’t support across the Council for a quango within the city but at an operational level, there was good joint-working between MKP and MKC with a spirit of partnership and collaboration. MKC Councillors were including on the Committee and both officers and members took an active part in stakeholder groups set up to guide new development proposals.
In terms of delivery, MKP’s activity had a residential focus, reflecting the priorities of the ODPM Sustainable Communities Plan, with delivery of areas including Oxley Park and Broughton Gate within the Urban Development Area. Within CMK, they also delivered the Hub and Vizion, the Pinnacle and Quadrant:MK. They also developed schemes and did the land deals for other projects that were delivered after the winding down of the partnership.
At its peak, there were more than 100 staff working within MKP, plus a large number of consultants also working on projects within the city. The work of MKP also created around £90m pa in land sales through the disposal of development sites. Each year, around half of this was reinvested in the city.
5 Milton Keynes Partnership Committee Role and Remit, Milton Keynes Partnership Committee (cmis.uk.com)
4. 2011 to date: Milton Keynes (City) Council and Milton Keynes Development Partnership
In 2011, the Localism Act was given royal asset which reflected the government’s agenda to shift power away from central government and give local councils greater control in their areas. The Council’s conservative administration wrote to the government to recommend the winding up of the Milton Keynes Partnership Committee in line with the localism agenda, to bring all of the powers held by the committee to Milton Keynes Council. This approach was agreed and in 2011, the first of MKP’s activities were transferred to the Council.
The culmination of the transfer of powers to the Council meant that this was the first time in the history of Milton Keynes a single, locally accountable authority would have control over planning and the capability to drive social and commercial development.
The move of the Inward Investment function saw a small team transferred to the Council. This function had always been operated outside of the Council – a historic carry over from the role of the Development Corporation and the Commission for New Towns. Within MKP it had a significant operational budget and is still paid for via contributions from the Tariff.
The development management team who had been responsible for decision making in the UDA were also transferred to the Council, although this also required secondary legislation through the Localism Act to revoke the previous statutory instrument.
The transfer of the Tariff function was linked with the land transaction. In total, around 10 members of staff were TUPEd to the Council from MKP/EP by 2013.
The transfer of land and assets that were held by MKP was more complex. Some sites were transferred to the Parks Trust, for example the non-developable areas of Tattenhoe Park that would become a future extension of the Tattenhoe Valley linear park as development progressed. Some sites remained with the Homes and Communities Agency (now Homes England)
Of the remaining sites, it had originally been intended that they would be sold to the Council, but it was subsequently decided that a separate company should be created to hold those assets, hence the establishment of Milton Keynes Development Partnership (MKDP). This included many vacant or redevelopment sites within CMK, and also other sites of varying size and quality across the city. The country was emerging from a recession so the land was being sold at a lower value than might otherwise have been achieved, so a significant overage needed to be added to be able to rebalance any future uplift in value. The asset transfer totalled £30m.
Milton Keynes Development Partnership continues to play an active role in supporting the growth of the city. It has helped deliver over 1.25m sq ft of commercial space, hotels, as well as a flagship waterside residential and leisure development adjacent to CMK at Campbell Wharf. The scheme is due to be completed in 2025/26 and will deliver over 380 homes, a marina, pub, café, restaurant and specialist retail units. MKDP has also set up its own local housing company – Milton Keynes Housing Company (MKHC). MKHC is targeting delivery of 2,000 affordable homes by 2031. MKDP also leads placemaking projects within the city centre including improvements to CMK market and the redevelopment of Station Square.
Milton Keynes City Council continues to hold big ambitions for the future of the city. In 2021, the Council adopted a Strategy for 2050 that sets out proposals for the continued growth of Milton Keynes, with a focus on inclusive growth – ensuring that everyone has access to opportunities, skills, mobility and a good quality of life.
Through our conversations with MHCLG and the New Towns Taskforce, the Council is thinking about how to use alternative delivery approaches to help deliver long-term population and economic growth, including how to deliver some major infrastructure projects, including an ambition for mass rapid transit – Milton Keynes Metro – across the city. The Strategy, and other Council policies, include other challenges that need to be factored into the delivery of the growth agenda, for example being carbon negative by 2050, achieving healthy placemaking and maintaining the city’s green character.
5. Conclusions
The scale of what has been achieved in Milton Keynes since its designation in 1967 is unprecedented within this country and the different delivery bodies that have been engaged in that growth programme have undoubtedly been crucial in that success. The powers that have been transferred between those bodies have been used in different ways over time. However, it is clear that the ability to acquire land at a cost that allows the uplift in value as a result of development to be captured and reinvested into the city has been an important element that has enabled success, with those land assets also transferred over time to continue that ability. With Milton Keynes as a known growth location, a large proportion of the area surrounding the built-up area is likely to already be under option by the housebuilding industry and the expectation of development on that land will have an impact on the ability to secure contributions towards infrastructure or other facilities under the normal planning and development approach. The land still in the ownership of Milton Keynes Development Partnership, especially within Central Milton Keynes, may provide an opportunity to harness the opportunity of securing the uplift in land value.
The investment and support from central government has also changed over time, with a much greater expectation now of private sector investment. This however needs to be balanced with the challenge around land values and development viability, which has the potential to undermine the infrastructure-led approach that has been one of the principles of Milton Keynes’ growth; ‘infrastructure before expansion’.
It is also apparent that there has been a move towards much greater democracy over time, leading to far more engagement with the local authority compared to the initial governance arrangements. For Development Corporations, the board was appointed by the government with local councillors making up a minority of the board, and only there at the discretion of the minister rather than as a right. In many cases, the local authorities had very little real power in the process. However, this was part of the attractiveness to the government of the time, that their operation outside of the political local authority environment allowed them to be more dynamic and less cumbersome.
Ensuring that there is cross-party buy-in for the future plans for the city and the pro-active and positive commitment of all partners to work towards a shared ambition will be important in maintaining pace and quality and overcoming the impact of political cycles.
For Milton Keynes, the nature of the growth programme moving forward will be different to the type of developments that previous delivery bodies were responsible for. The majority of their role was in greenfield developments, including schemes within the city centre. Moving forward, we will see
more brownfield, regeneration and intensification proposals. The most appropriate delivery solution may look different to those that have gone before with different barriers and challenges to development.
The creation of the Parks Trust and the Community Foundation at the winding down of the Development Corporation demonstrated the need to consider the future stewardship of assets. Moving forward, this is something that should be built in any new approach rather than being a future add-on. It may be possible to expand our thinking about stewardship to consider other assets, including cultural facilities, public art or other infrastructure assets. It is clear that an endowment to cover the cost of ongoing maintenance is a key element of ensuring that this model can work effectively.
It is also notable that the different delivery bodies active in Milton Keynes have been extremely well- resourced, both in terms of their development budget and assets, but also their staffing levels.
Having a work force of high calibre professionals who were attracted by the vision of the city and the ability to get on with the job outside of the normal distractions of local authority business, would undoubtedly been an important element of the success of those organisations.
It is also useful to note that the activity of these organisations was much wider than the built environment part of the process. They each took on elements of placemaking and community building, inward investment and economic development, landscaping, highways, drainage and other infrastructure. It was a holistic, comprehensive approach to creating and growing the city.
The areas surrounding Milton Keynes are also planning further significant growth. Through the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor and neighbouring areas delivering growth close to Milton Keynes, considering the opportunities for cross-boundary working or a partnership approach with neighbouring authorities should also be considered.
8 July 2025