The New Towns Model Didn’t Fail - We Failed It. Redditch Shows Why

With families locked out of home ownership, rents spiralling and young people stuck living with their parents for longer and longer, politicians of all stripes are suddenly rediscovering the language of housebuilding. New towns are back in fashion but before we rush headlong into announcing shiny developments and glossy masterplans, we need to confront an uncomfortable truth: Britain already knows how to build successful new towns. We just stopped believing in them.

Sixty-two years ago, Redditch was chosen as the West Midlands’ second “Mark Two” New Town. This wasn’t ideological whimsy. It was a hard-headed response to a housing crisis choking Birmingham and trapping working families in overcrowded, unhealthy homes. The promise was simple but powerful: decent homes, decent jobs and a decent life for ordinary people.

At the time, Redditch already had more than 800 years of history and a population of around 32,000. The task was never to erase what existed, but to grow a living town without destroying its character. That challenge was met with a level of ambition that today’s planners could only dream of.

The Redditch Development Corporation didn’t just dump houses on fields and hope for the best. Under chief architect Brian Bunch, it delivered a bold masterplan in 1967: self-contained neighbourhoods linked by green corridors and public transport, with schools, shops, churches and parks designed in from the start. Three million trees were planted. Pedestrians were separated from fast traffic. Roads were engineered to reduce noise. Quality of life wasn’t an afterthought - it was the point.

Within two decades, Redditch more than doubled in size. Families moved from slums and cramped terraces into homes with gardens, green space and services within walking distance. Estates like Church Hill, Winyates, Matchborough, Greenlands, Lodge Park and Woodrow weren’t planning mistakes. That was hope made concrete.

Crucially, Redditch wasn’t meant to be a dormitory town. Long before New Town status, it was a global manufacturing powerhouse, producing 90 per cent of the world’s needles. Those skills fed into bicycles, motorcycles, aerospace and defence. During the Second World War, High Duty Alloys employed 13,000 people making aircraft parts for Rolls-Royce. After the war, those same skills helped build Concorde. The Development Corporation understood a basic truth too many politicians forget: housing without jobs is a dead end.

Arrow Valley Country Park - 900 acres of protected green space at the heart of the town - remains one of the great successes of New Town planning. Historic sites like Bordesley Abbey and the Forge Mill Needle Museum were preserved. The Alexandra Hospital opened in 1987. Civic pride was real, shared and earned.

Then, in 1985, the Development Corporation was wound up. Targets were met, boxes ticked and Westminster walked away. Long-term thinking was replaced by short-term fixes. Cheap imports hollowed out industry. Between 2007 and 2017 alone, Britain lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs. Towns like Redditch, with twice the national average employment in manufacturing, were hit hardest.

Retail became our economic crutch and also our vulnerability. Today, high-street vacancy rates stand at 18.5 per cent. Bus services have withered, despite the town being designed around public transport. Hospital services have been stripped back. More than half of households experience at least one form of deprivation.

Neighbourhoods built as modern homes for working families are now so deprived that Greenlands and Woodrow qualify for £20 million of targeted regeneration funding - funding I have fought to secure. I welcome that investment but let’s be honest about what it represents. It is an admission that something went badly wrong.

When communities need tens of millions just to stand still, that isn’t success - it’s recognition of long-term neglect. Decades of underinvestment don’t disappear because money finally arrives. We can’t starve a town for forty years and then celebrate because help eventually turns up. So let’s be clear: the New Towns model didn’t fail. We failed it.

New towns worked when five things came together: a clear social purpose, long-term institutions with real power, integrated employment, infrastructure built upfront, and community cohesion by design. Redditch had all five. What we lost was political will. Governments decided markets alone would do the job, ambition could be privatised and places like mine could be left to drift.