{"id":416664,"date":"2026-02-09T19:33:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/416664\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T19:33:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:33:48","slug":"a-new-town-for-the-21st-century-seven-village-build-to-begin-after-20-year-journey-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/416664\/","title":{"rendered":"A new town for the 21st century? Seven-village build to begin after 20-year journey | Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

After two decades of legal wrangling and planning bottlenecks, the first bricks will finally be laid on a project being hailed by developers as the blueprint for the future of community building in Britain.<\/p>\n

Gilston in east Hertfordshire<\/a> will be transformed into a network of seven interconnected villages, comprising 10,000 new homes nestled within a sprawling 660-hectare (1,630-acre) landscape of country parks and woodland.<\/p>\n

\"GregGreg Reed of Places for People said the aim was to create rural communities with social housing. Photograph: Places for People<\/p>\n

Greg Reed, the chief executive of Places for People<\/a> (PfP), the social enterprise leading the development, said the timeline of the project served as a reminder of the sluggishness of the UK planning system.<\/p>\n

\u201cPfP\u2019s journey with Gilston started at the same time my 20-year-old son was born,\u201d Reed says. \u201cI was thinking about all the things that have happened in his life \u2026 and it\u2019s a bit depressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Built on a former green belt site, the project\u2019s acceleration followed a court of appeal ruling that dismissed a longstanding legal challenge from a landowner. With the judicial hurdles cleared, Gilston is being positioned not just as a housing development but as a rebuke to cookie-cutter estates that have dominated Britain\u2019s suburban fringes.<\/p>\n

The vision for Gilston is rooted in the garden town philosophy<\/a> \u2013 a modern extension of Harlow in Essex, one of Britain\u2019s original postwar new towns. Unlike traditional developments where infrastructure often follows housing as an afterthought, Gilston\u2019s \u00a31bn infrastructure budget is front-loaded.<\/p>\n

The Gilston design rejects the car-centric model of the late-20th century. Photograph: Places for People<\/p>\n

Plans include two secondary schools, seven primary schools, health centres and leisure facilities. Crucially, the design rejects the car-centric model of the late 20th century. \u201cWe put the schools in the villages so that people can walk their kids or ride their bikes,\u201d Reed says. \u201cI love that space aspect. I live in Edinburgh, and whenever anything\u2019s built, every square inch is built on. There\u2019s no space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale of the project is immense. Each village will consist of between 800 and 1,800 homes, linked by 5 sq km (1.9 sq miles) of parks. PfP will deliver 8,500 of these homes, while Taylor Wimpey<\/a> will construct the final 1,500 in the seventh village.<\/p>\n

Plans include two secondary schools, seven primary schools, health centres and leisure facilities. Photograph: Places for People<\/p>\n

The project arrives at a critical moment for the UK government, which has promised to build 1.5m homes by 2029. While Gilston is not officially one of the government\u2019s recently announced \u201c12 new towns\u201d, PfP says it serves as a live proof of concept for the model.<\/p>\n

Reed is vocal about the need for national pressure to overcome local inertia. \u201cIn the past, when those sort of targets didn\u2019t have any teeth, or were watered down, then everything kind of came to a halt because it\u2019s very hard and very contentious,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He dismisses cynicism surrounding the government\u2019s targets, comparing the housing crisis to a public health emergency: \u201cIf we said: \u2018Hey, let\u2019s try to cure cancer in five years\u2019, would everyone be like: \u2018Whoa. No way. Tell us you\u2019re wrong\u2019? Let\u2019s go, let\u2019s fund it, and let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilston will be a \u201cmixed tenure\u201d format: of the initial 10,000 homes, at least 2,300 are designated as affordable. However, Reed emphasises that as a social enterprise, PfP intends to push that number higher as the project evolves over its projected 30-year build time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to create rural communities where there\u2019s social housing, affordable housing, shared ownership and outright sales,\u201d Reed says. He would like to see \u201ctenure blind\u201d design, where social housing is indistinguishable from private property. \u201cIn some communities, you can tell by the front doors what kind of housing it is. We\u2019re painting them all the same colour. The idea is for no one to have any idea, and for everyone just to get on with their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with planning and land secured, there is a shortage of skilled labour so PfP is launching a training academy to fast-track tradespeople and planners. Illustration: Nicola Whiting\/Places for People<\/p>\n

While people will start to move into the site within the next few years, the whole project is likely to be completed in about 2050. \u201cI will not be here when it\u2019s finished,\u201d Reed says. \u201cBut we\u2019re sort of caretakers for these things. We\u2019re going to be in that community \u2026 as a steward for decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with planning and land secured, the industry faces a shortage of skilled labour. In response, PfP has launched a national training academy to fast-track tradespeople and planners. \u201cPeople say: \u2018Even if we had the money and the planning, we don\u2019t have the skills.\u2019 Well, so what? Get the skills,\u201d Reed says.<\/p>\n

As work at Gilston begins, it represents a \u00a36bn boost to the UK economy and the creation of more than 2,000 permanent jobs. For a country mired in a housing shortage that has left 170,000 children in temporary accommodation, Gilston is more than just a construction site \u2013 it is a test of whether Britain can still build communities that last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After two decades of legal wrangling and planning bottlenecks, the first bricks will finally be laid on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-416664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}