Development Corporations: Are they the key to building the next generation of New Towns?

08 July 2025

As the UK government accelerates plans to deliver a new generation of New Towns in England, WSP residential development expert and Planning Director Sam Pullar examines one of the key focus areas to make this vision for place a practical reality, Development Corporations.

The UK Government has set an ambitious target to deliver 1.5 million new homes before 2030. This will be supported by a generation of New Towns that respond to housing needs and broader economic objectives over the long term through a combination of new settlements, urban extensions and brownfield sites over 10,000 homes.

The original New Towns programmes, delivered post-1945 in England and Scotland, saw the creation of towns like Milton Keynes, Bracknell, and Welwyn Garden City (Mark 1 & Mark 2 New Towns). Overall, 32 New Towns were created over 50 years and now provide homes for 2.8 million people. The delivery context of the Mark 1 and Mark 2 New Towns was, however, very different and characterised by a context of post war re-construction to address overspill from larger cities.

Why is delivering New Towns likely to be complex?

Unlike New Town’s predecessors, the future New Towns programme will need to be delivered by or in partnership with the private sector. They will need to be attractive to developers and institutional investors to finance and deliver them. They will need to resolve complex delivery issues including planning uncertainty, land assembly, infrastructure viability and coordination in a context of fiscal constraints around Government lending. Development Corporations could be part of the solution.

Development Corporations are organisations set up by local and national governments to deliver urban development. They are powerful delivery vehicles that have powers and funding to deliver infrastructure, resolve land assembly issues through compulsory purchase powers, prepare plans and grant planning permission. The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) set up after the 2012 Olympic Games and the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation in Kent are two well-known examples.

But for Development Corporations to be effective, the public and private sectors will need to work together to focus their energy on learnings and lessons from other recent new settlement programmes including Eco Towns and Garden Communities. This means addressing concerns around their ability to deliver in the context of today’s housing market, address development and infrastructure barriers and speed up delivery.

Related themes and tags

Here are four key considerations if Development Corporations are to be part of the solution.

1. Stewardship: Baking in long-term development legacy

Development Corporations are short term delivery bodies to deliver housing and other development and the necessary infrastructure. Powers given to them are designed to be handed back to local authorities once they have been completed.

But for New Towns success to be sustained, Development Corporations must also consider the long-term operational viability of social infrastructure and the community assets in New Towns.

This highlights the importance of enshrining stewardship in each project. The easiest way to do this is the long-term incorporation of stewardship vehicles as part of the setup phase of each New Town with sufficient assets endowed to ensure they can operate with a financial surplus.

2. Planning: Cracking the planning puzzle

The current Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA) system, where strategic sites are designated through local plans and consented by local authorities, creates uncertainty and delay in the system. Our Town Planning and Planning Consultancy experts know that securing successful allocations are impacted by cross boundary issues and local election cycles as well as capacity of local planning authority teams. This undermines the certainty required for public and private sector investment. Where successful, the process takes between five and seven years.

Fortunately, New Town & Mayoral Development Corporations possess combined plan making and development management powers, which provide a basis for improving planning delivery. The devolution agenda and the role of Mayoral Authorities in preparing Spatial Development Strategies provide an opportunity for Mayoral Development Corporations in planning at a strategic scale, including coordination of the necessary infrastructure required to unlock New Town potential.

3. Land Assembly: Piecing together the land jigsaw

New towns often face complicated issues with private sector land ownership. These complexities make it challenging to equally distribute infrastructure costs and deliver land value capture, especially when land is sold on the open market. This is crucial to cover initial costs, such as those for building new roads or utilities.

The biggest opportunity with Development Corporations is to endow them with land from the outset to provide a basis for direct delivery, securing borrowing and reducing reliance on statutory processes. This will reduce lengthy and uncertain third-party processes to deliver necessary infrastructure and development that is unviable and the private sector is unable to deliver.

4. Infrastructure: Building the backbone for development

New Towns will have complex infrastructure barriers ranging from grid connectivity. In our experience across complex residential sites, this includes links into transport networks and environmental conditions like flood risk, remediation needs, or mitigating impact on protected natural environments. This upfront infrastructure investment is one of the largest barriers to New Towns. This includes the investment required and who pays for it, but also multi layered regulatory restrictions such as the forward planning of electricity networks where there is competition for grid connectivity.

Development Corporations will likely benefit from planned new direct infrastructure powers and step in rights, to overcome barriers to infrastructure delivery. The upfront investment required needs to be supported through a long-term funding settlement and sustainable cost recovery to enable Development Corporations to plan and deliver capital programmes effectively over the lifetime of the project.

So are Development Corporations the answer?

Development Corporations serve as highly effective delivery vehicles if granted the appropriate authority and sufficient funding. It is important, however, to ensure they are market-facing and provide an effective basis for facilitating private sector delivery. They should not be considered a panacea but as part of a package of delivery vehicles that embrace innovation in the market, including institutionally financed private sector master developer models, where patient capital is in place. They should come forward alongside wider measures to address brakes on the delivery of strategic sites in the current market. Other measures could include packages to address the impact of withdrawal of Help to Buy and demand-side incentives and viability challenges in the S106 affordable housing market. Development Corporations will be an important part of the answer!

Sam Pullar is a Planning Director in WSP’s Planning Consultancy business that provide clients and partners in both the public and private sector with clear and pragmatic planning advice to support the viability of development and infrastructure.

Placemaking development and urban regeneration

Our placemaking, regeneration and development specialists helped turn our client’s vision for place into a practical reality, futureproofing our cities and environment.

Residential Buildings, Housing and Strategic Land

Our interdisciplinary teams of experts support public and private sector landowners, developers and managers to acquire, promote, plan, design, deliver, value and manage residential, housing and strategic land development.