A new garden city – backed by a development corporation and £200m from the government – is to be built in Kent.
Chancellor George Osborne said the development at Ebbsfleet would see up to 15,000 new homes built on brownfield land.
He said a development corporation would be set up to lead the project with a mandate to create a high quality settlement modelled on garden cities like Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City. It will capitalise on Ebbsfleet’s high speed rail station from which London can be reached in just 19 minutes.
Last month, the Centre for London think tank published a report, Go East, arguing the case for focused and staged development in the Thames estuary region. Led by Labour peer and former transport secretary Andrew Adonis, it outlined the case for building a new town at Ebbsfleet ‘to demonstrate what is possible when delivery is properly organised and overseen’.
Ben Rogers, director of Centre for London, said: ‘New towns are controversial in some circles because people fear that they will involve building on the countryside and worry that they will be car dependent.
‘But the Ebbsfleet development is focused on an old quarry and has high-speed rail connection to London. If you are going to build new towns to help meet our housing crisis, this is the place to start.’
