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.

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