New towns, innovation clusters and the Growth Corridor report part 1

Image: contributors to Future Cities Forum's ' New towns and the OxCam Growth Corridor' (from left to right) Anna Wai Partner, Price & Myers, Peter Seaborn, Partner at Mills & Reeve LLP, Paul Thomas, Director of Planning and Place at Milton Keynes Council, Leader of the Council, Cllr Pete Marland, Will Gallagher, Strategy Director, Eat West Rail, Naomi Green, CEO, England's Economic Heartland, Julia Foster, Managing Partner, David Lock Associates, Heather Fearfield, Co-founder Future Cities Forum, David Bell, Director, LDA Design, Dr Julia Cooke, Associate Dean External Affairs, The Open University, Nigel Hugill, CEO Urban&Civic, Michael Mitchell, Ridge & Partners, Millie Hitchens, Asset Manager and Tom Elviss, Fund Manager at Columbia Threadneedle investments.

Future Cities Forum returned a year on from its last discussion event to catch up with Milton Keynes Council on new town development, public versus private investment in the city, science and innovation expansion and funding for high streets and culture.

Milton Keynes has recently been officially longlisted to become the UK City of Culture 2029, securing £60,000 from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to develop its full application. Being longlisted is a significant moment for Milton Keynes and begins the next phase of the competition, with the city now having around four months to shape a detailed plan for a City of Culture year. The Council is leading the bid in partnership with organisations across the city including The Open University, Stadium MK and Milton Keynes Islamic Arts and Culture.

Milton Keynes City Council has also been praised for operating as “a well‑run authority” with “strong foundations for continued innovation” in an independent assessment from the Local Government Association.

At Future Cities Forum's discussion, among the contributors, developer Urban&Civic spoke about the disruptive approaches model for new house building and England's Economic Heartland discussed how East West Rail could leave an important legacy for the Corridor and the UK.

Leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Marland, began the conversation talking about his years in office, what has been achieved and his vision for the future:

'Well, I think the first thing to say is when I took over the council, there had been five leaders from three different political parties in the preceding three years. At one point, the council wasn't able to form a political administration. So the officers were taking emergency executive decisions on things like procurement. And it wasn't great. And I think that has sort of come through very, very slowly with very slow-burn development. But since, I think, planners David Lock have been involved it has been better. I think when we were first talking about Plan MK, quite a long time ago now, one of the challenges I was given for a place like Milton Keynes is, this is a local plan. And it talks about the next 10 years.

What's the overall vision for the city? I think what we did, and it was really important to me, in a changing place like Milton Keynes, that it wasn't a single person's or single party's political vision for a city. It needed to be the city's vision for the future of the city. And that's why we work with organisations like the Centre for Cities and brought in our own commissioners. We were the first council to do such a piece of work. And that basically came up with this idea that Milton Keynes needs to be successful, needs to continue to be successful, needs to continue to adapt, needs to continue to evolve.

'In the places where I grew up, in Liverpool, in Burnley, in the North West, you know, post-industrial times, it's not that long ago. It's literally just 70 years since the Second World War ended. Those places were globally significant and globally rich. Burnley was one of the highest income per capita in the world. Liverpool was the dock city of the world. And yet, within a generation, that had all gone. The city centres were collapsing. You know, places like Milton Keynes were needed. Not just because there was a housing shortage, because actually people didn't want to live in city centres.

But if you sort of cast that forward, there's no intrinsic reason why Milton Keynes should continue to be successful just because it is here. Everybody talks about our great links on the M1, on the West Coast Main Line, on the A5. But Crewe has all those things. Crewe is right next to the M6. Crewe is right next to the West Coast Main Line. But Crewe hasn't been able to change and evolve. And its reason for existing just ceased.

'So what we try to do in that commission is just plan ahead. Look to 2050. What are the six or seven big projects? What are the six or seven things that everybody could sign up to? It isn't just about housing growth. It is about jobs. It's about making sure that young people who were born and brought up in Milton Keynes have the same life chances as the people that moved to Milton Keynes and come to Milton Keynes.

'Just like this country, we cannot keep importing talent. We need to create our own talent. It's about making sure that we have the right skills to fulfil some world leading industries like Red Bull that we have here. But also within a 45 minute drive, some of the biggest and most successful F1 teams, Luton Airport, all of these things. So what can we do as a local authority but as a place to continue to grow, to continue to be successful.

Pete was asked about building a unique image for Milton Keynes, so that the city could continue to stand out alongside its successful neighbours such as Oxford and Cambridge?

He said:

'Sometimes I do wish the Chancellor, when announcing billions of pounds of investment in tech, could recognise that Milton Keynes has more tech jobs than Oxford and Cambridge combined. And people are astonished by that. But people are also astonished by the fact that we are now the 7th biggest city economy. So Milton Keynes, if you just take the place of Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes' economy is bigger than Liverpool's economy. You know, if you combine the combined authority area, Liverpool's city region is bigger. But Milton Keynes is bigger than Nottingham. Bigger than Sheffield. Bigger than Liverpool. Bigger than Liverpool in terms of size of our economy. And yet, obviously, and we understand this, the global brands of Oxford and Cambridge, and the fact, let's not pretend that there aren't people, generally who sit in the Treasury, who got on the grad fast track programme in the civil service, generally all went to an Oxford University, and ministers know those places and can pick up the phone, and no doubt vice-chancellors and people from those brilliant universities, world leading universities, can pick up the phone to somebody in Treasury and say, we just need this.

Image: Milton Keynes Central station square in March 2026

Pete was asked about building the visual brand of Milton Keynes, when other cities are doing just that with a tall buildings programme, despite concerns about heritage. Is it important that from the beginnings in the 1960s, Milton Keynes can evolve its physical status?

'I think you're right about the city centre. But what I would say about Manchester, Liverpool, and all those other great post-industrial cities that have had a renaissance in the last 20 years is, they are great at showing you what has been regenerated, they're not brilliant at showing you what hasn't been regenerated. And actually there are still huge projects in the pockets of Manchester, of Liverpool, of Leeds, of Sheffield, that haven't been regenerated. You talk about Steve Rotherham's vision for North Liverpool, actually a lot of that around Everton's new stadium, a lot of it is undeveloped and is still post-industrial.

'Milton Keynes has always had an image problem. If you talk to people about Milton Keynes, in the past they have said roundabouts, concrete cows, and I think particularly the concrete cows leads people to think that Milton Keynes is sort of brutalist and post-war and concrete and grey, and it's not like that at all. Sixty-per-cent of even the built-up area is parkland and green and canals. Milton Keynes has always had an image problem, but it's always overcome that image problem when making sure that we've done growth.

'And I can only contrast that with, for seven years running, Milton Keynes has beaten its housing targets. Our local plan that is currently, a huge consultation now, and we are likely to submit it in the next couple of weeks, has two-hundred houses a year above our minimum target number. Going back to that, why we have that vision and that commission, I don't see the government's targets as the number you should aim for, the maximum number you should just be able to get away with.

'Growth is all about making sure you secure what is best for your city. What is best for Milton Keynes is obviously regeneration of those areas, particularly the city centre, looking to build taller, looking to build more quality, but also around making sure that we secure in those big strategic urban extensions through the new town of MK North and MK East, making sure that it delivers the infrastructure. And people, even our colleagues at MHCLG and Homes England, see part of our problem that we do a lot of what other places see as amazing or completely sort of off-piste, as standard.

'Here in Milton Keynes, it's very difficult to articulate what the value added is, because the government will say to us, well, we do it anyway, so you can just put it there. You can just carry on and do it without our support. And just coming back to that in terms of delivery, the announcement today (on support for quantum computing), I don't begrudge Oxford or Cambridge or any other place getting the level of investment that they need and they deserve. What I would say is Milton Keynes does not get its fair share. It should get its fair share. I'm hoping that with the new town announcements and maybe other announcements to come forward about how that lot of money might be divided.

'What I would say is ten years ago, in 2017, the Oxford Growth Board were given £125m to deliver 100,000 houses by 2031. They've delivered zero with that money. In fact, they've gone backwards. They are actually now promising fewer houses for more money than was in that growth deal in 2017. And they've spent that money, and I would say to the Treasury, where did that money go? Whereas Milton Keynes has asked for 60,000 houses and beyond is essentially £200m. And we know, our colleagues know, we will deliver because we've got the history of delivering. We will deliver. And really, in terms of the investment to UKPLC, since 1967 and the birth of this town, for every pound that's been invested in Milton Keynes, we've returned fourteen to the Treasury.

'It is not the most complex sort of sum to be able to do, but we do suffer from an image problem. I do think that's changing. So when I started 12 years ago, people would laugh and say concrete cows, and now they're as likely, if not more likely, to say Milton Keynes robots, the home of tech, the home of Hanslope Park and, you know, the British security industry. And also, I think our image is changing. I don't think it's just about building, you know, taller buildings or having something like the Hilton that Manchester have to put on posters. I think most people in this country get Milton Keynes and get our worth. Our challenge, I genuinely think, our challenge is in the corridors of power in the Treasury to convince them that our investment is actually more worthwhile than the investment of the world.

Nigel Hugill, CEO of Urban&Civic commented:

'To that point, when you say an image problem, all of the surveys show that the problem, so-called, is much more in the eyes of people that don't live in Milton Keynes than people that do live in Milton Keynes. There's a very different perception. And lots of that which is treated as a problem outside of Milton Keynes is actually treated as a benefit for residents, you know.'

Nigel continued:

'Urban&Civic, set up now, fifteen years ago, to basically build large-scale new settlements, because it was perfectly clear that infill sites didn't and couldn't do those as they are. The New Towns Programme came in three tranches. It's broadly been successful. It's conspicuously successful if you include Milton Keynes. The figures on Milton Keynes are just so much higher than other places. And so, for us, we have a considerable number of, as you say, disruptive developments.

'The disrupting was in relation to the fact that the large-scale house builders were increasingly dominant within the market. And so we haven't been able to break that through a master development model. But, if you like, the master development that is supreme in this country in the last 50 years is Milton Keynes. It is head and shoulders above any of the others.'

Nigel was asked about the newly published Centre for Cities report comparing Cambridge with Oxford in terms of housing density and whether that has held back their economies, and how the investment in the Cowley Branch Line in Oxford could change things.

Nigel said:

'The Cowley branch line is a good case in point. The Cowley branch line is being funded predominantly on the back of Larry Ellison money that is going into the Oxford site. It has a housing impact, but the money's not coming from housing. It's coming from Larry Ellison.

'If we look to advantages that Milton Keynes has had, has enjoyed relatively to both Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford in particular has a very constrained city core, which is then surrounded by, if you like, a doughnut of other local authorities. And actually, I think in the case of Oxford, that's four. In Cambridge, there is one. South Cambridge is surrounded by quite a constrained city core. Milton Keynes doesn't have that. That's one of the core advantages that they've had in being able to plan over the years is that larger scale.'

Nigel then spoke about the use of greenbelt for new housing. He suggested:

'Where do I stand on the Greenbelt? I've always said that it's not possible to meet housing targets without some targeted releases from the Greenbelt because of the fact that I can take you to substantial areas in this country that you would not believe that they had that designation.'

Paul Thomas, Director of Planning and Place-making at Milton Keynes Council was asked about the important of creating the right places in new towns and supporting the heritage of the high street:

Paul commented:

'I mean, it's important to look at the towns which were here before Milton Keynes was here. And we support those. We recognise their challenges which are very different from kind of the rest of Milton Keynes. So Bletchley, we're doing works on the high street at the moment. We're improving the public realm. It's also home to two of the most deprived wards in the country. And they sit cheek by jowl with some of the most salubrious wards in the country. So there's a stark difference between living quality and life expectancy and between some of our older areas and the new areas. So we are doing work to support the high street.'

Milton Keynes City Council has announced new investment to support six traditional high streets across the city in Bletchley, Newport Pagnell, Olney, Stony Stratford, Woburn Sands and Wolverton.

It says:

'The city council is investing £30,000 into new community‑led activity in the local high streets, with up to £5,000 available for each area. Working alongside local partners, the funding is designed to spark initiatives that draw people in, champion independent businesses, and create vibrant, welcoming destinations. This could include pop‑up events, creative projects, seasonal attractions, or other standout ideas that celebrate the unique character of each high street.

'A further £10,000 will be invested in improving public spaces to make high street areas more inviting and enjoyable. This may involve eye‑catching planting, new seating, or other small but impactful enhancements that create cleaner, brighter, and more welcoming high streets where people want to spend more time.

'These six high streets play an important role in the local economy, with more than 700 businesses and over 4,600 employees between them. They are home to a high number of independent traders and continue to have lower vacancy rates than the national average. Like many high streets across the UK, they also face challenges and pressures on traditional street trading.'

Read more from Paul Thomas and Cllr Pete Marland in our report part two to be published shortly.