14 Garden Village locations announced

The Government has announced the first venues for England’s first garden villages, with locations ranging from Cornwall to Cumbria.

In all, 14 planned developments have been approved, each delivering between 1,500 and 10,000 properties.

These new villages are predicted to provide 48,000 new home in total.

Planned Proposals

Proposals for the new sites include developments of a 1,000 home garden village on the site of a former airfield in Deenthorpe, Northamptonshire.

Ministers say that the developments will all be in new places, boasting individual community facilities, as opposed to extensions to existing urban spaces.

Interestingly, there is no single model of design to be approved as a garden village-with only the instruction that they should be of high quality and be well designed.

The full list of proposed garden village sites are:

• Long Marston in Stratford-upon-Avon
• Oxfordshire Cotswolds
• Deenethorpe in Northamptonshire
• Culm in Devon
• Welborne in Hampshire
• West Carclaze in Cornwall
• Dunton Hills in Essex
• Spitalgate Heath in Lincolnshire
• Halsnead in Merseyside
• Longcross in Surrey
• Bailrigg in Lancaster
• Infinity Garden Village in Derbyshire
• St Cuthberts in Cumbria
• Handforth in Cheshire

Community infrastructure

Housing Minister Gavin Barwell stated: ‘The whole programme is about trying to make sure that at the outset we design in the sort of crucial community infrastructure – the jobs, but also school places, GPs’ surgeries, the transport infrastructure – that make these places not just dormitory suburbs.’[1]

Mr Barwell observed that both the regeneration of run-down regions, alongside adding to existing developments, were crucial in solving the country’s housing crisis.

The new villages will receive £6m in Government funding during the next two years in order to deliver the projects. Another £1.4m of funding will also be provided for the delivery of these new towns.

However, the shadow Housing Secretary, John Healey said: ‘In the last six years we built fewer homes than under any peacetime prime minister since the 1920s. The country deserves a proper plan for fixing the housing crisis, not just more hot air.’[1]

Specifics

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) noted that garden villages and towns could assist in tackling the housing crisis should they be delivered, ‘well with genuine local consent.’[1]

Chief executive of the CPRE Shaun Spiers, noted: ‘Some of these proposals may meet these criteria, but others are greatly opposed by local people.’[1]

‘We will look closely at these specific proposals to ensure that they really are locally led, that they respect the green belt and other planning designations, and that they meet real local housing need,’ he added.[1]

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38486907