Leicestershire Parish Councils

Over-ambitious eco-town plans thrown into turmoil
Published: 09 July 2008 11:05 (New Civil Engineer)
Author: Damian Arnold
Ministers were this week under intense pressure to cut the government's flagship eco-towns programme from 10 schemes to just one or two.
Senior officials within the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
and members of the government's advisory Eco-towns Challenge Panel want the initiative scaled down.

Current plans involve creating 10 new towns of between 5,000 and 15,000 homes built to low-carbon standards.

NCE understands that a war is raging within the government on the direction of its much-vaunted eco-towns policy.Many of the shortlisted proposals are already in danger of collapse as developers have got cold feet.

Now, DCLG officials want to focus on two or three eco-towns that could act as "exemplars" for future developments.

But the department is understood to be under intense pressure from 10 Downing Street to push ahead with the whole programme.

Members of the Challenge Panel said that a scaled down eco-towns programme that was "worthy of the brand" would be far better.

Social housing designer Wayne Hemingway said it was time to be more realistic.

"To take [housing developments] to a new level we might be better off just doing one or two as a testing ground for something larger," he said.

"If they are really fantastic and people want to live in them, then the developers will start queuing up to do them anyway. If 10 get built in a half hearted way that's not going to change anything. I just think that 10 eco-towns is a bit too ambitious."

Hemmingway was backed by Campaign for Better Transport executive director Stephen Joseph, who is also on the Challenge Panel. "There should just be a few exemplars otherwise if you just get the 10 you end up devaluing the brand," he said.

"Certainly from some of the bids we have seen so far there are some eco-towns out there that don't deserve the brand."

Last month the current short list of 15 proposed eco-towns was savaged in a report from the Challenge Panel for being "unsustainable" (NCE 26 June).

This week it emerged that more proposals from the original shortlist were in danger of failing.
Developer Curborough Consortium, which was planning to build an eco-town near Lichfield in Staffordshire, confirmed this week that it was withdrawing its submission after talks with DCLG.
Developer Gallagher is also reported to be considering pulling out of its bid to build an eco-town at New Marston, Bedfordshire following heavy criticism.

This follows the scrapping of an eco-town bid for Manby in Lincolnshire after the local authority withdrew. Meanwhile the bid for Coltishall in Norfolk is "on hold" because the Ministry of Justice which owns the site has yet to confirm it will release the land.

Council bosses also rejected a planned eco-town in Selby last month.