Letter from the Chair of the Town and
Country Planning Association to the Chair of the Communities and
Local Government Select Committee
The House of Commons Environment Committee carried
out an investigation into the new towns three or four years ago
(it was provoked primarily by Wrekin District who were angry with
being left a load of problems by CNT and EP and was joined by
other local authorities with responsibility for former new towns).
One key recommendation was that the new towns experience should
be researched and lessons learned, as this had never been done.
The government, after a long delay and evidently
with some reluctance, agreed.
The task was delegated by the then DoE (or it
might have been ODPM) to EP. After much dragging of feet they
finally got round to commissioning a stage 1 "desk study
of the literature" which was carried out by Oxford Brookes
University and not properly published last year (you have to know
it exists in order to ask for it).
The Town and Country Planning Association (formerly
the Garden Cities Association) has always been the heart of the
new towns movement, and we are dismayed that the investment by
successive governments in 32 new towns has never properly been
examined. Further, we are dismayed that the stimulus given by
the House of Commons has been allowed to run into the sand. With
growth areas, many town expansion schemes and at least three official
new towns schemes in the planning system right now, it is very
silly not to see what was good and what was bad about the earlier
experience.
I have been asked by my colleagues here at the
Town and Country Planning Association to plead with you to pick
up the trail before it goes completely cold.
If you want a more detailed briefing I can put
one together.
Professor David Lock CBE MRTPI
Chair
30 January 2007
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