Labour’s key housing pledge is to build 1.5m homes if it wins the general election. Its plan includes a promise to build new towns but what would it take to pull it off?
“I think the new towns idea is very grabbing,” Robert Booth, the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, tells Hannah Moore. “To build genuine new settlements, which are sufficiently large to have all the infrastructure, all the character, all the sense of place of a town or even a small city, rather than just another housing estate.”
However, it’s not clear how Labour would achieve this policy.
“The level of detail that Labour have put out about this is thin,” says Booth. “We don’t know where these might be, we don’t know very much about how they would be funded or delivered, and how long it would take to do that.”
Booth explains how Labour plans to change the planning laws to allow for more building, including on some greenbelt land. He reports from Hitchin, North Hertfordshire, where former greenbelt land is already zoned for over 2,000 new homes. He meets residents who are worried about the destruction of nature and the loss of identity for the hamlets there. He also meets renters who are struggling. Will Labour’s policy on social housing help?
Photograph: Roger Tillberg/Alamy
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