Government criticised for leaving villagers in dark over potential new town

A parish council chairman whose countryside village has been identified as a likely site for the construction of a new town has criticised the Government for leaving residents in the dark, saying: “Nobody’s come to talk to us at all.”

It comes as the Housing Secretary is set to pledge that the construction of three new towns will begin before the next election at Labour’s party conference – with Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds South Bank, and Crews Hill, north London, described as the “most promising sites”.

The chairman of the parish council in Tempsford, which is home to 600 people and 300 houses, said residents have no idea what to expect or prepare for.

David Sutton told the PA news agency: “The biggest problem we’ve got at the moment is that even today, as an announcement’s being made, we’ve been given no idea whatsoever of the scale of what we’re being asked to live amongst.”

Earlier this year the Government confirmed plans to build a new train station at Tempsford to provide connections between the East Coast Main Line and East West Rail.

“Nobody’s come to talk to us at all,” Mr Sutton said. “Nobody’s given us any indication whether it’s the rumoured 10,000 houses from before, 20,000, 40,000 was heard a couple of years ago, and last year 125,000, so what is it?”

The 52-year-old said some residents are “a lot more anti” the prospect of major building than he is, adding that he is “up for some sustainable development” in the village which has “no phone signal, no shop, no gas, no schools, no nothing”.

“There’s a reason there’s no other houses here at the moment, because we haven’t got anything,” Mr Sutton explained.

“We’ve got horrific flooding problems where every single year for the last 20 years people in our village have had sewage in their front rooms at Christmas.

“We need some help before we need to be the ones helping everybody else out with somewhere to live.”

Mr Sutton, who is also the landlord of the village’s pub, said The Wheatsheaf is “the only business in the whole village that’s open every day of the week”.

Among the steps Labour plans to take to speed up housing development is a “new towns unit”, aimed at pumping both private and public cash into transport links, GP surgeries, schools and open green spaces in its new settlements.

Mr Sutton told PA: “Of course (the Government) will say that but will they?

“If they’re not even talking to us at all, how can we be sure that when they’re promising they’re going to build stuff, how do we know they even know what we need?”

The parish councillor also said the green spaces that could be built upon, including Tempsford’s historic airfield, are important to residents.

Adam Hart, whose great-grandfather flew from the secret wartime base RAF Tempsford, said losing the airfield would amount to “losing a unique piece of British history”.

The 25-year-old historian and author, who lives in west London, told PA: “Not only would it be a huge shame to lose what’s left of RAF Tempsford, it would also deprive my generation of the chance to learn about this incredible piece of history and the bravery of the men and women who served at Tempsford.

“Disguised as a working farm, Tempsford was the airfield from which many of Britain’s bravest spies departed for their secret missions in Nazi-occupied Europe.

“Having visited Tempsford and researched the airfield, it seems to have taken its secrecy so seriously that still today no one seems to know about it.

“By building over the old runways and demolishing what’s left of the buildings, future generations will not have the chance to visit and learn and be less inclined to learn about something that no longer exists.

“Losing RAF Tempsford is not just losing a unique piece of British history, I think it will also contribute to future generations increasingly not engaging with the Second World War, which in my opinion should be avoided at all costs, particularly with a war raging in Europe as we speak.

“And I say all this as a young person paying extortionate rent who would benefit from building more houses.”

Work on 12 new towns will be taken forward, Housing Secretary Steve Reed is to announce, as recommended by a report from the Government’s New Towns Taskforce, published on Sunday morning.

Among the dozen locations are sites in Cheshire, Manchester, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Plymouth and London.

Each will have at least 10,000 homes, and could collectively result in 300,000 houses being built across England.

In its manifesto, Labour pledged to begin work on 1.5 million new homes over the course of the Parliament, to expand homeownership to more Britons.