Overview of the growth areas

The provision of new homes has failed to keep pace with the numbers of new households. The Sustainable Communities Plan (launched by the Deputy Prime Minister in February 2003) was clear that we need to take radical action now. The current housing pressures in London, the south east and other regional hotspots are acute and ambitious solutions are required if we are to avoid the urban sprawl of the past.

The Deputy Prime Minister announced in his July 2002 statement, echoed in the Sustainable Communities Plan, that there was potential for 200,000 homes to be provided additional to current plans by 2016. Much of this growth will be contained in the growth areas identified in regional planning guidance for London and the rest of the south east in 2001 (RPG9). These areas include the already established Thames Gateway and the three new growth areas of Milton Keynes/South Midlands, London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough and Ashford.

Thames Gateway

The Thames Gateway was established as a national policy priority in 1994, with the publication of the Thames Gateway Regional Planning Guidance. The launch of the Sustainable Communities Plan in February 2003 put further focus on the Thames Gateway as one of the key south east growth areas.

By 2005 the Government has pledged there will be visible progress in the creation of sustainable communities within the Gateway. The Government wants to see a stepping up of the supply of new housing. The existing regional planning guidance already includes 80,000 new homes in the Gateway by 2016. But there is scope to achieve much more than that in the biggest area of brownfield land in the south of England.

The Government aims to bring together the best of design and planning to ensure new communities are of the highest quality and have proper public services and infrastructure.

To help achieve these aims the Gateway has the political impetus from the highest level. The Prime Minister is the chair of the cabinet committee, charged with overseeing the development of the Thames Gateway.

We also have the resources. In February, the Deputy Prime Minister announced £446m for the Thames Gateway to help with land assembly, remediation of brownfield land and the delivery of additional affordable housing and local infrastructure.

A new £164m programme by the Department to support the three newer growth areas was announced in the Sustainable Communities Plan. These funds are to enable a rapid start to be made on "early wins" housing sites, and to lay the foundations of large scale future growth. Funding was given to help local partners with delivery, provide pump-priming for key projects, and unlock "log jams" which are blocking development.

In addition to the first round of Growth Area Funding (GAF) (2003-06), Lord Rooker announced that £235m would be spent over 2006-2008 as the second wave of Communities and Local Government support for the three newer growth areas and the successful projects for this round (2006-08) were announced on 16 February 2006. For further details on this funding by area please see to the right of this page.

What do we mean by sustainable communities?

Our intention is that everyone should benefit from growth, including existing communities. We want to see development of the highest quality - models of well-designed, vibrant urban living, marrying homes with jobs, quality public services and infrastructure.

What about the environment?

The alternative to creating sustainable communities would be for growth to be scattered and much more random across the south east. The Sustainable Communities Plan makes it clear that: 'We must raise the quality of how we build and what we build, protecting and enhancing the countryside and green spaces for all to enjoy'. £24m of the second round of Growth Areas Fund (GAF 2) is dedicated to projects which enhance the environment of the newer growth areas through the provision of green infrastructure.

A huge amount of work has taken place over the last 24 months towards the provision of strategic green infrastructure to support growth at key locations both through Local Delivery Vehicles and Green Infrastructure Partnerships. Funding support has been provided by Communities and Local Government through the Growth Areas Fund, totalling £38m between 2004 and 2008.

Communities and Local Government funding is supporting the delivery of key components of green infrastructure in each of the key growth locations through the development of:

the rural/urban fringe - to improve the interface between the urban and rural environments by providing improved access for people and wildlife
habitat creation - to restore areas of the countryside back to a more natural state, providing people with more opportunities to experience and interact with their environment first hand.
habitat protection - to provide rare and sensitive habitat with the increased protection through buffering and habitat enhancement works, securing their biodiversity value for the future.

What about infrastructure?

We agree that over the long-term (30 years), major investment is required. But some of this investment would be required, even if the growth areas were not being proposed, to meet existing south east growth requirements. Our approach is to ensure that infrastructure, including public services, is provided in step with growth, as plans for individual growth locations are developed. The main elements of this approach are:

ensuring that mainstream funding reflects the needs of growth
making available selective additional grant funding, such as the Growth Area Fund and Community Infrastructure Fund, to unlock major growth schemes and locations
maximising the potential for private sector contributions.

We are working closely across Government to ensure that the necessary funding is in place to ensure that the growing populations have the facilities and services they need to ensure that growth locations are sustainable communities. In specific response to growth area issues we are:

ensuring that main public expenditure programmes such as health and education are sufficiently flexible and responsive to the needs of growing communities. For example, the Department of Health has included a growth area adjustment in its revenue funding allocations to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). Amongst other factors, this will lead to the PCTs in the growth areas receiving funding increases of £860m in 2006-07 and £970m in 2007-08 - an increase of 20.8 per cent over the two years compared to a national average of 19.5 per cent
recognising the pressures on local authorities of rapid growth. For example, as a result of recent changes to the formula for allocating local government Revenue Support Grant, namely the abolition of "ceilings" and (as from 2006-07) the use of forward-looking population data as part of multi-year settlements, local government funding will now be more responsive to the relatively rapid population growth associated with growth areas
continuing high levels of mainstream investment in infrastructure. For example, around £3.5bn is committed or planned by the Department for Transport for infrastructure schemes in the four growth areas.

In addition to mainstream funding we are continuing to allocate resources to support additional infrastructure and other critical interventions in opening up major growth locations. For example, Communities and Local Government planned funding in the four growth areas now totals around £1.2bn from 2003-4 - 2007-8 to support local and community infrastructure and regeneration projects within the four areas. Supplementary to this, the Government announced as part of the 2004 Spending Review a £200m Community Infrastructure Fund (CIF) for transport projects supporting housing growth in the four growth areas. Responsibility for this fund is shared between the Department for Transport and Communities and Local Government. As of February 2006, £128m of funding has been approved from CIF. For further details about how this funding has been allocated by area, please see the link to the right of this page.

Good progress has been made but it is important that this continues in the future as the plans for the growth areas develop. We will be considering in future spending reviews what can be afforded beyond the considerable sums we have already committed (between 1999-2000 and 2003-04 identifiable public expenditure per head increased 27 per cent in real terms in London, 23 per cent in the east of England and 21 per cent in the south east). As announced in the Government's Response to Kate Barker's Review of Housing Supply (December 2005) we are undertaking a cross-cutting review of spending across Government as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. This will help ensure that all Government Departments provide the necessary infrastructure to support future housing and population growth. In addition Government is currently consulting on proposals for a Planning Gain Supplement which would recycle a modest proportion of the uplift in land value uplift created by granting planning permission back to local authorities to fund additional infrastructure to support growth.

In addition to providing significant levels of infrastructure funding into locations where significant growth is expected, we are encouraging local delivery partners to focus on identifying, prioritising and sourcing investment in their locations - based on individual circumstances and priorities, and using a mix of public and private funding. For example, Milton Keynes Partnerships has developed a "prospectus" identifying and costing the local (eg schools) and strategic (eg roads) infrastructure within Milton Keynes.