Government backs new towns development in the North

The government said a newly-announced £10m support package would back the development of new towns in the north of England and the Midlands the size of London’s Canary Wharf and Milton Keynes.

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick said at the weekend the government wanted local councils to draw up plans to deliver 10 new communities and local authorities were being invited to submit proposals to win a chunk of the £10m investment funding.

Sir George Iacobescu, the founder of Canary Wharf, will advise Jenrick on which proposals to take forward.

The government is also throwing its weight behind a new development corporation led by ex-Burberry chairman Sir John Peace, which is designed to create a new community at Toton in Nottinghamshire.

Jenrick said: “We want to drive economic growth outside London and the south east.

“Our new development corporations will empower local areas to come forward with ideas for new towns that deliver jobs, houses and economic growth, creating the future Canary Wharfs of the North and Milton Keynes’s of the Midlands.”

To qualify for the funding councils would have to show they were prepared to build new infrastructure as well as housing, along with “vibrant communities were people wanted to live”, Jenrick added.

Towns such as Milton Keynes and Telford were delivered via development corporations in the 1970s and 1980s.

The government said a review of laws covering the development of new towns – legislation which dated back to the early 1980s – was being carried out to see if legislation needed to be updated.