GORDON BROWN has unveiled his solution to the lack of affordable housing. It
is the five new eco-towns, promised to deliver 100,000 homes. But there are
now predictions that new communities will provide as many opportunities for
investors as for first-time buyers.
Creating affordable homes is a laudable aim, but what is there to stop those
with the cash snapping up these agreeably priced properties and renting them
out? It is happening already at New Broughton, in Lower Broughton, Salford,
where Countryside Properties is creating a substantial new suburb just a few
miles from the BBC’s new base at the Media City at Salford Quays. The first
residents move in next week.
“We’re not encouraging them, but we are getting investors,” says a spokeswoman
for Countryside Properties. People recognise that there is scope for huge
growth in Salford. They have seen what’s happened in Manchester.”
The BBC intends to bring 1,500 employees to work at Salford Quays, many of
whom will want to rent. But that is just the start. The BBC is planning a
“media city” that will eventually support more than 1,000 businesses and
create 15,500 jobs – which could make Salford the most high-profile example
yet of the invest-ment/renting culture taking hold in our cities.
Brown’s first “eco-town” is planned for a former barracks in Oakington,
Cambridgeshire, where the average price of a home is £234,173 (Land Registry
figure). But eco-towns aren’t a new initiative; a whole range of
“sustainable communities” are being developed under the
£38 billion sustainable communities programme launched by the Department for
the Environment, Transport and the Regions in 2003. The next Prime
Minister’s big regeneration idea is to create “communities with combined
heat and power with a whole range of eco-measures, including better public
transport and cycle lanes, that make it possible for us to have a much
higher quality of life”.
At New Broughton, Countryside Properties is trying to tick all these boxes. In
partnership with Salford City Council and the Contour Housing Group, it is
building a sustainable community of more than 3,500 mixed-tenure two, three
and four-bedroom houses and apartments, a new primary school, shops and
community spaces. The project, on a 183-acre site of former industrial land
and rundown housing, will cost more than £500 million. The first 432 homes
are available to buy now, priced from £161,950 for a three-bedroom house.
One development, One Planet Living, is taking “eco-living” to the limit. This
is a scheme in the New England quarter of Brighton by the developers
Bio-Regional Quintain and Crest Nicholson to build 172 new homes, including
starter “eco-studios”. Prices are not finalised but 30 per cent will be
designated affordable. One Planet Living aims to achieve zero carbon
emissions, as well as to provide a zero waste plan.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that buyers are excited by living in new
communities. On a wet Tuesday morning the sales office at New Broughton was
thronged with prospective buyers and tenants. “It’s always like this,” said
the sales manager, as she politely fended off inquiries from a professional
property investor.
Carole Ann Guild, an assistant bank manager, has been renting in Manchester.
Rather than buy she is moving into a three-bed £175,000 house at New
Broughton: “I like the fact that it’s close to the city centre but has a
sense of community. Also, it’s easy to commute to my job in Salford Quays.”
And how will she do that? “By car.”
As Gordon Brown is about to discover, you can build all the cycle lanes you
like, but you can’t make people get on their bikes. New
Broughton: 08000 856857 www.oneplanetliving.org 020-7478 9372
REGENERATION
So-called modern regeneration started with the Thatcher Government’s Urban
Development Corporations in the 1980s. These created showpiece schemes such
as Canary Wharf in London and Albert Dock in Liverpool.
A new wave of thinking in the 1990s resulted in the creation of the Urban Task
Force, chaired by the architect Richard Rogers. Its brief was to establish
where the 3.8 million new homes estimated to be required in Britain by 2021
would be established. In doing so, Rogers was asked to find ways to tackle
urban decline and to reduce development pressure on the countryside. The
resulting report, Urban Renaissance – Sharing the Vision, was
published in 1999. A year later Rogers was fulminating that the Government
had ignored his recommendations. His main complaint was that ministers were
allowing rapid and piecemeal urban development to go ahead. “We are in
danger of making different mistakes to the 1950s and 1960s,” he said.
“Instead of ‘stack them high and build them cheap’, it’s still too often
‘stack them anywhere you like’, creating sprawl.”
Since then, cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol have
“regenerated” with thousands of new homes, shops and, crucially, private
sector jobs and investment.
