Taskforce suggests new town close to Milton Keynes
The chair of a government taskforce has said that there are “lots of reasons” to consider building a new town close to Milton Keynes. Sir Michael Lyons said that the city is “bound to be an area you look at” as it was in the M1 corridor between Oxford and Cambridge. He made the comments while visiting the city with the New Towns Taskforce.
However, a city councillor has asked for a pause on the development to the area. The government set the taskforce up in July to identify sites for settlements of at least 10,000 homes each, hoping to build 1.5 million over the next five years.
The taskforce held its first meeting in Milton Keynes with Sir Michael calling it “arguably the most successful of the post-war new towns, certainly in terms of scale.” He also called it “premature” to identify specific sites for a new town, however.
When asked about building in the M1 corridor near Milton Keynes, he said that “in terms of economic growth, this area has considerable potential.”
Because it is on the M1 and between the university cities Oxford and Cambridge, “it’s bound to be an area that you look at in terms of where you can build and develop at less cost than might be necessary elsewhere, where’s there’s unmet housing need and where by building more homes you can contribute to economic growth in the country.”
“So there’s lots of reasons to look here, but it’s not the only place that we’re looking,” he added.
The taskforce met in Milton Keynes and heard about how the area was developed along with what lessons could be learned from it. “Absolutely top of the list,” of the lessons according to Sir Michael, was how it “managed to take its population with it” and develop “an appetite for growth.”
However, funding the maintenance of infrastructure, he added, was important. “If you’re going to do grand things in terms of public infrastructure, you simply have to fund the maintenance of them, otherwise they become a burden on later generations,” he said.
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