Watching the open field pass the train windows, developer Nigel Humill points to an unobtrusive section of the countryside at the heart of British housing ambitions.
“Without an attractive fate,” he said, he considers the land along the mainline on the east coast near Tempsford village in Bedfordshire, a major candidate to become one of the new towns of the Labour Government’s flagship.
Hugill’s company Urban & Civic already has the option to buy 2,100 acres of land here, and there is enough space to build 7,000 homes at a location where the existing mainline intersects the East West Rail project connecting Oxford and Cambridge, recently revived by Prime Minister Rachel Reeves. If named a new town, the site can grow and include over 30,000 homes.
Land near the village of Tempsford is a major candidate for developing into a new town © Hi-eye Photographics Vis u&c
The CEO of U&C has no choice but to say whether he doesn’t know exactly what role his company will play in such an epic project. The government’s new town task force will report on how these huge projects will work by summer and where they will be placed.
Inspired by the success of places like Milton Keynes, now a city of around 300,000, the program is a key pillar of workers’ ambitions to build more homes than any government of a generation. But previous attempts by the governments of Gordon Brown and David Cameron to revive the new town concept have shaking off due to the fierce grassroots opposed to more buildings.
Milton Keynes under construction in the 1970s. Government’s new Towns Programme is inspired by the success of Milton Keynes © Homer Sykes/Alamy
Buyed in 2021 by the Wellcome Trust Charitable Foundation for around £500 million, U&C offers a precedent for key questions about the new town.
“In the southeastern part of the UK, if there’s nothing I don’t call structural infrastructure… You should be able to pay for development yourself, and that’s what our development is doing,” says Hugill, a 30-year veteran of the real estate industry.
U&C’s financial model ultimately sells households to private buyers and sells blocks of rental flats to investors at a price sufficient to cover the expensive infrastructure needed for large-scale developments.
This will become even more difficult outside the thriving southeast and will require taxpayer money, he warned. “You’re going to commit billions of dollars rather than hundreds of millions of pounds to the extent you’re doing them outside the Southeast,” said Hugil, who is from Durham County, northeastern England.
However, finding all new towns in the southeastern England is politically difficult as it violates both labor and conservative pledges to spread economic growth throughout the UK.
Hugill warned against pursuing “leveling up” by finding new towns in areas that require economic boost. “The danger is that the task force is trying to do it all and wants to worry about realigning the UK economy. …It prevents the ability to deliver in all sorts of time frames,” he said.
A house being built at Alconbury Weald Development, U&C, Cambridgeshire © Daniel Jones/ft
The government’s task force has received over 100 proposals for the site of the new town with the largest number in the southeast. Despite the branding of the “new town”, many of the projects are expected to be expansions of existing settlements, which are specialised in U&C.
U&C’s first development, Alconbury Weald, has climbed the train line from Tempsford to complete 1,100 of at least 6,500 units on the 1,400-acre site, a former RAF air force base acquired in 2010 from the Department of Defense and logistics giant Prologis.
It’s easy to see why the frontline costs of the Alconbury project are high. Hugill points out that every new tree costs between £2,000 and £3,000 and drives the streets that quickly lose count. He is fanatic about landscaping, claiming curved roads, irregular road patterns, flood protection, many greenery and large corridors.
The primary school was one of the first buildings, along with the first home. Outside – Instead of narrow pavement where parents dodge traffic at school gates, large public spaces allow neighbors to mix up as they wait for their children.
Cold War Ammunition Bunker at the former Alconbury Airfield © Daniel Jones/FTCommunal Alone Outer Alconbury’s New Elementary School © Daniel Jones/ft
Alconbury already has cafes, shops, playgrounds, cricket pitch, a new headquarters for Cambridgeshire County Council, as well as a lively industrial park. Doctor surgery and secondary school will soon follow.
Hugill said it is essential to help infrastructure ahead of time, rather than stimulating additional population pressure on existing roads, schools and healthcare. The idea of a new town in Tempsford is already facing local opposition.
“We need to be prepared to invest our upfront capital in ways our house building models don’t actually allow,” he said.
Looking at it, the Alconberry sits during the development of a new build of the historical nostalgia stereotype cookie cutters in towns such as Poundbury in Dorset, defended by King Charles. The home includes features that buyers most often request, Humill said – garages, street parking, “a garden big enough for barbecues and trampolines.”
Children’s Playground at Alconbury Weald © Daniel Jones/ft
U&C bills itself as “master developers,” a niche business procuring land for residential developments, looking after planning, shared infrastructure and design.
The site is generally broken even in its 12th year, and often benefits from UK mortgages and funds infrastructure such as roads that will later be repaid. U&C had revenues of £62 million for the fiscal year ending September and pre-tax profit of £7.5 million. This year, the company reported more than £1 billion in net concrete assets (NTAs) on 20 sites for the first time.
Hugill is keen on the new town agenda, but is worried that the government wants too much. In particular, “acquiring land value” (increasing value when the land is given planning consent) is concerned about paying for infrastructure, affordable homes, and more.
“It’s like the Holy Grail,” he said, but added, “If (land) value capture is likely to be what people are assuming, U&C would be much more valuable than we do.”
Residential Facility at Alconbury Weald Development © Daniel Jones/ft
The minister says he hopes the next generation of new towns have an ambitious target of as much as 40% affordable housing. The reality is that Hugill said there is a need for a more flexible approach.
Even in the southeast, he said the amount of infrastructure needed to acquire many of these sites from the ground would not leave enough money for high-level affordable housing, unless funded by the government.
U&C sites generally start with just 10% affordable housing and head towards 30% over the development period.
Ultimately, if the government wants to bring together private sector capital and developers behind the New Towns project, Hugill insists that it must be practical about location, affordability and more. “There is a really great danger that the perfect person is the enemy of good.”
