We’ll make sure the green belt doesn’t block our housebuilding plans

Indeed, based on the reflections of the previous points, one can surmise that future towns in Britain will rise from the ashes of the past. The future for new towns across England of the next generation is one where people will actually yearn to live in those towns because they have been planned so well. 
 
This borrows from garden Cities which were Letchworth and Welwyn; where families fled overcrowding as well as pollution. On areas of park like Hale in Manchester and Roundhay in Leeds which comprises family parks and play grounds. And on Labour’s record of one million new post war homes built in the post-war period Other. 
 
It is quite an opposite but it is so befitting because the legacy that we have inherited is nothing like this, it is a legacy of death, of despair, of hopelessness. For each and every year of the last government the target for housing was completely missed out. The inability to construct sufficient numbers of houses, further fueled by the recent abolition of minimum housing requirements, led to the skyrocketing of rents as well as the disappearance of homeownership from the horizon of the realm of possibility for many individuals. 
 
Twenty-five years ago the House price to earnings ratio in England was 4, so the average home was four times more expensive than the average wage. Today you have to earn more than eight times the average wage’. 
 
On one side of the spectrum, that means adult children living in the basement, too immobile to establish themselves on their own; on the other, more people becoming homeless. 
 
In addition to the loss of human life, the country has suffered high results in its economic status. New homes build new infrastructures and these have to be funded and this is what fuels the continuing growth in Britain. This Government shall not follow this folly of the previous government as this nation needs real change. 
 
New towns will each provide at least 10,000 new homes. However, many will be substantially larger. Not all will be “standalone” communities: Our vision is also steering extensions to existing towns and regeneration of those towns as well. 
 
Hence, I am launching an independent New Towns Taskforce; able and willing local representatives who know their areas to the top of their heads. We have brought back mandatory housing targets and have increased them. Throughout the years, a debate has been held over the green belt – that the strategy should fulfill its primary intention, yet not stand in the way of the new housing that is required. We will prefer using ‘greybelt’ land, which is of a comparatively low quality for the construction of infrastructure. 
 
The new towns will contain a greater volume of social rent and affordable homes, a gold standard of being at 40per cent. New buildings with homes need to be of good quality, environmentally friendly, but in harmony with the history of the nation. 
 
Still, I am aware that others will have criticism on these plans. Some will resent, ‘Britain is too crowded as it is!’ or ‘There is no green field left – it has all been cemented over!’ The population surveys show that half of the people in England think half of the country is densely populated. 
 
Perhaps I could softly tell them so. Or, more likely, I can just say: “I do not agree with that idea which is nonsense. ” An estimated 10 per cent of our country comprises built up area. By far most of England is still quite rural and shall remain so. Together we are able to give and offer 1. 5 million homes we have promised in the next five years and also protect the nature. 
 
And so, because getting building right is not our principal goal, but building better, we are not interested in building at any cost. That will be our proud achievement from this decade of renewal for the people of this country.