Prime Ministers Office 10 Downing Street
- Today (24 July 2023), as part of a long-term plan for housing, the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities have committed to a new era of regeneration, inner-city densification and housing delivery across England, with transformational plans to supply beautiful, safe, decent homes in places with high-growth potential in partnership with local communities.
- Building on work already underway to meet our commitment in the Levelling Up White Paper to regenerate 20 of our towns and cities, the Levelling Up Secretary has announced the regeneration and renaissance of a further 3 English cities, committing to transformational change in Cambridge, central London and central Leeds.
- This follows work to level up towns and cities across the country including in Sheffield and Wolverhampton. The Levelling Up Secretary also outlined plans to continue working closely with local partners in Barrow, to help make Barrow a new powerhouse of the North.
- 800 million will also be allocated today from the 1.5 billion Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land fund to unlock up to 56,000 new homes on brownfield sites, taking an infrastructure first approach to build up our cities. We are funding Homes England with 550 million, which with income generated will mean a total investment of 1 billion. We are also providing landmark investments of 150 million to Greater Manchester and 100 million to the West Midlands.
- Additional reforms to the planning system will speed up new developments, put power in the hands of local communities to build their own homes, and unlock planning decisions with a new fund of 24 million to scale up local planning capacity, and an additional 13.5 million to stand up a new super-squad of experts to support large scale development projects.
Regeneration of 20 places
Following the commitment in the Levelling Up White Paper to regenerate 20 places, the Levelling Up Secretary and Prime Minister set out further plans today on Cambridge, and inner-city London and central Leeds.
Proposals will see Cambridge supercharged as Europes science capital, addressing constraints that have left the city with some of the most expensive property markets outside London, and companies fighting over extremely limited lab space and commercial property with prices that rival London, Paris and Amsterdam.
These ambitious plans to support Cambridge include a vision for a new quarter of well-designed, sustainable and beautiful neighbourhoods for people to live in, work and study. A quarter with space for cutting-edge laboratories, commercial developments fully adapted to climate change and that is green, with life science facilities encircled by country parkland and woodland accessible to all who live in Cambridge.
Any development of this scale will have substantial infrastructure requirements. The government will deliver as much of the infrastructure and affordable housing as possible using land value capture with the local area benefiting from the significant increase in land values that can occur when agricultural land is permitted for residential and commercial development. Land values will reflect the substantial contributions required to unlock the development (see annex).
A Cambridge Delivery Group, chaired by Peter Freeman and backed by 5 million, will be established to begin driving forward this project. The Group will work to turn this vision into a reality, taking a lead on identifying the housing, infrastructure, services and green space required. It will also consider options for an appropriate delivery mechanism that will be needed to lead the long-term work on planning, land acquisition and engagement with developers, starting in this Parliament but running through the next few years as development takes shape.
In the meantime, the Delivery Group will take forward immediate action to address barriers such as water scarcity across the city, including:
- Convening a Water Scarcity Working Group with the Environment Agency, Ofwat, central and local government and innovators across industries to identify and accelerate plans to address water constraints. The Group will include all relevant partners to understand what it would take to accelerate building the proposed new Fens Reservoir and enabling Cambridge to reach its economic potential.
- Supporting the council in efforts to make sure new developments proposed as part of the local plan can be as sustainable as possible, including whether new houses in planned developments such as Waterbeach and Hartree can be made more water efficient. To support this, the government is announcing today a 3 million funding pot to help support measures to improve the water efficiency of existing homes and commercial property across Cambridge, to help offset demands created by new developments in the local plan.
- The government will also take definitive action to unblock development where it has stalled, providing 500,000 of funding to assist with planning capacity. Cambridge City Council, Anglian Water, Land Securities PLC and Homes England will work together to accelerate the relocation of water treatment works in Northeast Cambridge (subject to planning permission), unlocking an entire new City quarter delivering approaching 6,000 sustainable well-designed homes in thriving neighbourhoods as well as schools, parks and over 1 million square feet of much needed commercial life science research space.
In addition to Cambridge, today the government has also announced:
- A Docklands 2.0 vision in East London for up to 65,000 homes across multiple sites of significant scale including at Thamesmead, Beckton and Silvertown. Beautiful, well-connected homes and new landscaped parkland will be integral to the vision. We will look at how we can ensure better transport connections from east to west, to crowd in local and private investment, and to build the best evidence on how and whether HMG will invest in the future.
- London will also see the benefits of this governments decision to allow the Affordable Homes Programme to be directed towards regeneration for the first time with up to 1 billion available in London alone as part of a transformative reform that will change how we level up communities across the country. We have also made 1 million available to push forward work with the Mayor to consider how we drive housing delivery in London, including looking at innovative new ways that industrial land can be released for housing.
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A commitment to work with local partners in central Leeds, to regenerate the city centre and explore how a West Yorkshire mass transit system could open up the city to many more workers across the citys burgeoning financial, digital and legal sectors. This builds on the 40 million that is already being provided by the government to West Yorkshire Combined Authority to support development of the mass transit system and offer a greener, quicker and more reliable option of travel. The government will accelerate work in the centre of Leeds by identifying the remaining barriers to delivery for key housing growth sites within the city rim, including the South Bank, Innovation Arc, and local and neighbourhood plans, potentially delivering up to 20,000 new homes on these sites over the next decade. The government will also work with local authorities to adapt existing HS2 land safeguarded in Leeds City Centre where appropriate, supporting economic growth and housing delivery. Additional revenue funding will be provided to support capacity and development to deliver these ambitions.
- Plans to continue working closely with local partners in Barrow-in-Furness, to help make it a new powerhouse of the North extending beyond its current boundaries with thousands of new homes and space for new businesses to benefit from the scientific and technical expertise already clustered there.
- We are also investing 800 million from the 1.5 billion Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land fund to unlock up to 56,000 new homes across England, to transform disused site and create vibrant communities for people to live and work, while also protecting our cherished green spaces, including further accelerating activity in areas such as Sheffield. We are funding Homes England with 550 million which, in real terms, will be an investment of up to 1 billion through the reinvestment of receipts back into the fund. As set out previously, we are also providing 250 million to Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities.
Building up and building out across the country
In addition to targeted action in a few high-potential areas, the governments plan delivers a package of reforms to unleash building on underused sites in high-demand regions. Densification, done the right way, will transform the opportunities available to people across the country our inner cities have much lower population densities than comparable Western countries, impacting our productivity. The plan therefore includes:
- Launching a consultation on new Permitted Development Rights, to provide more certainty over some types of development, and how design codes might apply to certain rights to protect local character and give developers greater confidence. New and amended permitted development rights would make it easier to convert larger department stores, space above shops and office space. The plan also backs rural communities, with changes to support farm diversification and development, to allow businesses to extend and mo