New towns in the United Kingdom


The new towns in the United Kingdom were planned under the powers of the New Towns Act 1946 and later acts to relocate people from poor or bombed-out housing following World War II. Designated new towns were placed under the supervision of a development corporation, and were developed in three waves. Later developments included the "expanded towns": existing towns which were substantially expanded to accommodate what was called the "overspill" population from densely populated areas of deprivation.

Historical precedents

Garden cities

The concept of the "garden city" was first envisaged by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, as an alternative to the pollution and overcrowding in Britain's growing urban areas. Taking inspiration from the model villages of Port Sunlight and Bournville, he saw garden cities as the "joyous union" of town and country, providing a much better quality of life for those who lived there.
Two garden cities were built, both in Hertfordshire Letchworth, founded in 1903, and Welwyn Garden City, founded in 1920.
The underlying principles of garden cities were influential in the development of the post-war new towns movement.

Overspill estates

An "overspill estate" is a housing estate planned and built for the housing of excess population in urban areas, both from the natural increase of population and often in order to rehouse people from decaying inner city areas, usually as part of the process of slum clearance. They were created on the outskirts of most large British towns and during most of the 20th century, with new towns being an alternative approach outside London after World War II. The objective of this was to bring more economic activity to these smaller communities, whilst relieving pressure on overpopulated areas of major cities.

England

First wave

The first wave of independent new towns was intended to help alleviate the housing shortages following the Second World War, beyond the green belt around London. Two sites in County Durham were also designated. These designations were made under the New Towns Act 1946.
The second wave was likewise initiated to alleviate housing shortfalls. Two of the locations below are near the West Midlands conurbation and were designed for Birmingham and Wolverhampton overspill; another two are near Merseyside and were intended as overspill for the city of Liverpool.
The third wave of new towns allowed for additional growth, chiefly further north from the previous London new towns, among them "Central Lancashire New Town" and Warrington. Dawley New Town was redesignated as Telford New Town, with a much larger area, as overspill for Birmingham and nearby towns including Wolverhampton. With a target population of 250,000 and a planning brief to become the first "new city", the largest of these was Milton Keynes at the northern edge of the South East, about halfway between Birmingham and London. In the East Midlands, the existing town of Northampton was expanded. The city of Peterborough was designated as a new town to accommodate overspill from London.
  • Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
  • Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
  • Northampton, Northamptonshire
  • Warrington, Cheshire, resulting in the Birchwood development
  • Telford, Shropshire
  • Central Lancashire New Town, Lancashire, which covered a conurbation focused on the towns of Preston, Chorley and Leyland, and expanded Clayton-le-Woods into a larger urban area with the Clayton Brook development. Its area also included what are today large towns or villages, albeit they were smaller at the time of the new town designation: Bamber Bridge, Coppull, Penwortham and Euxton. It was initially planned to adjoin these areas into one city, with the name Redrose suggested, but after years of dissatisfaction with its progress amongst locals and politicians, its Development Corporation was ultimately disbanded in 1985 by the Thatcher government. Central Lancashire was retrospectively described as "more akin to an Urban Development Corporation" and "never intended to be recognised as a new town in its own right".

    Yate and South Woodham Ferrers

in Gloucestershire and South Woodham Ferrers in Essex were developed between the 1950s and 1970s, coinciding with the creation of the above new towns, and Yate pointedly marketed itself as a "new town" during the 1960s. However, they differ in that they were not commissioned by any of the New Town Acts.

21st Century

The Labour government elected in 2024 established a New Towns Taskforce to identify a new generation of new towns in England. In 2025 the Taskforce recommended 12 locations including Crews Hill in Greater London, Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Marlcombe in Devon and Leeds South Bank.
These are the 12 locations designated in the plan:
Llanharan and Oakdale, though not designated new towns, owe their expansion from small villages to being targeted for housing developments in the 21st Century.

Scotland

Six new towns in Scotland were designated between 1947 and 1973, mostly for the overspill population of Glasgow.
The New Towns Act 1965 gave the Minister of Development of the Government of Northern Ireland the power to designate an area as a new town, and to appoint a development commission. An order could be made to transfer municipal functions of all or part of any existing local authorities to the commission, which took the additional title of urban district council, although unelected. This was done in the case of Craigavon.
The New Towns Amendment Act 1968 was passed to enable the establishment of the Londonderry Development Commission to replace the County Borough and rural district of Londonderry, and implement the Londonderry Area Plan. On 3 April 1969, the development commission took over the municipal functions of the two councils, the area becoming Londonderry Urban District.
During the same period as the new town scheme, several other towns underwent local authority led expansion as "overspills" to larger urban areas, but were not officially designated as new towns, among these were: