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A practitioner’s playbook for financing, designing and delivering places
As of earlier this year, new towns are back, with the government announcing it plans to progress work across 12 locations identified for large-scale, integrated development.
However, if the 12 new towns are to become functioning places rather than expensive entries in the planning register, we must be brutally honest about the technical work that comes next.
Long-term thinking
The original post-war experiment of new towns tested a clear idea at national scale: whole settlements are not a roll up of housing parcels but an integrated set of public goods and markets. That remains the point. New towns require sequencing, patient capital, governance that can act at scale, and procurement that enforces place quality.
At AMION, new towns are in our DNA. We have people who worked at English Partnerships, and we have led Green Book business cases and delivery design on modern new town programmes. That lived experience matters because building a town is not a thought experiment. It is a long sequence of transactions that must be staged, funded and governed.
Finance comes first
Strategic spine infrastructure such as rail, motorway junctions and utility corridors arrives early and costs a lot. It cannot sensibly be left to a single developer’s cashflow.
A viable finance model for ventures such as new towns, needs three things. First, patient public enabling capital for the strategic layer, because without it the rest will not assemble. Second, credible value capture arrangements to uplift funding for social and civic infrastructure rather than developer profit. Tax Increment Finance and special taxing districts are proven tools to do this at scale. Third, long dated private capital for housing and commercial assets. Institutional investors will come, but only when Green Book compliant business cases demonstrate clear cashflow phasing and sensible risk allocation.
These are not exotic recommendations. They are the plumbing that makes large scale delivery affordable.
Design as economic policy
We no longer have the luxury of treating design as a virtue case. AMION’s research over many years demonstrates that design quality translates into price premia. Construction quality, walkability, architectural resolution, street connectivity and mixed urban form all contribute to measurable uplift. The magnitude of that uplift varies by context, but the implication is universal. Design is a commercial input. If better design creates value, it can be financed, procured and enforced.
Practically, that means specifying design outcomes, measuring them with objective metrics, testing them with economic models and writing them into developer agreements so the uplift can be captured and recycled into the public goods that created it.
Sustainability as a capital decision
New towns are the scale at which district energy, meaningful biodiversity gains and blue/green infrastructure become practical. These systems reduce operating costs and lower future liabilities for taxpayers, but they normally require higher up front capital and procurement that prizes low embodied carbon, circular construction and off-site manufacture. Where private cashflows cannot carry that premium, public enabling finance should step in with long term revenue models to recover value.
In plain terms: pay for the green infrastructure now so running costs and climate risk are lower for residents and for the public purse later.
Deliverability is governance
A single accountable delivery body with statutory powers to assemble land, coordinate the spine and manage early risk enhances everything. Fragmented governance is perhaps the most frequent cause of delay and cost escalation.
Commercial innovation also matters. Early contractor involvement, outcomes-based contracts, performance bonds, escrow for developer obligations and phased procurement all reduce uncertainty and the overlapping capital calls that halt many projects.
Crucially, plan the supply chain and the workforce now. New towns create demand for skills and materials that you must grow and procure, not hope to appear.
The political clock
New towns live and die by windows of political attention. A programme that can demonstrate planning consents, delivery of enabling works and contractors mobilised will survive ministerial change far better than a programme that remains mostly on paper. Spades in the ground is not a photo opportunity. It is political proof that consents, funding and contracts are aligned and irreversible.
Ebbsfleet is instructive
AMION is Ebbsfleet Development Corporation’s sole business case adviser. It is a contemporary large-scale new town in which staged enabling finance and auditable Green Book business cases have made investors comfortable taking the long view. That combination of appraisal discipline, delivery structure and visible mobilisation is the template we should be copying.
AMION’s four tests before you scale the masterplan
If you’re set to be working on new towns, insist on these four tests.
If the answer to any of these is no, pause and fix the mechanics before taking the next step in your new town journey.
Graham Russell is Chief Executive at AMION Consulting, and a member of the iED.
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