Plans for a new garden development featuring almost half a million homes and a forest could become “Britain’s first new city in half a century”.
Businessmen Shiv Malik and Joseph Reeve are proposing to build ‘Forest City 1’ in Suffolk between Newmarket and Haverhill, on agricultural land east of Cambridge.
They claim the new metropolis could provide almost one million people with affordable homes, and even a potential answer to the housing crisis.
They hope to build 400,000 homes across 45,000 acres, alongside a 12,000-acre-long forest roughly the size of York, but they have yet to formalise the plans.
The idea has been lauded as “ridiculous” by West Suffolk Conservative MP Nick Timothy, who told the BBC that while new housing was needed, proposals should be "sensible".
But Mr Malik told The Independent : “Britain needs growth, truly affordable housing and also a massive reboot on infrastructure. My generation of millennials and younger have been utterly exasperated with all these issues for over a decade.
He added: “Our forest city project is a clear way to unlock £55bn in GDP whilst also providing world-class, four-bedroom homes for £350,000, replenishing nature with a new 12,000-acre forest and providing tens of billions in infrastructure for East Anglia and beyond.
“Putting so much of the development in one place means we can move fast and don’t have to annoy millions of other Britons who are fed up with private developers and the characterless box homes they create.”
The project still needs approval from parliament before it can begin creating a development corporation, similar to how the Canary Wharf and 2012 London Olympic sites were built.
Mr Malik said: “We’ll be lobbying the government to ensure they start planning for this with the same urgency they put into delivering the Olympics. If their new motto is ‘build baby build’, it’s time to commission Britain’s biggest and most ambitious project to date - our first new city in over 50 years.”
The measure for what qualifies as a new city is housing 200,000 people. The last city to be built from scratch was Milton Keynes 57 years ago - it was officially made a city in 2022 alongside seven other towns to mark the Platinum Jubilee.
The plans have piqued interest from residents not only in Suffolk but also in London and Cambridge.
Mr Timothy said: "It's not really credible; it's not proposed by any of the political parties. My job is to give the government a hard time, but the government hasn't proposed this... if it was proposed by anybody credible, then of course I'd oppose it emphatically."
Labour promised in its election manifesto a target of 1.5 million homes by the end of the decade, aiming to expand homeownership to more Britons and provide a much-needed boost to economic growth.
But Neil Jefferson, the chief executive of the Home Builders Federation, warned: “The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts for housing supply were ambitious. The numbers are only achievable in the right policy environment.”
MP Chris Curtis, chair of the Labour Growth Group, said his party is “at risk of not hitting our targets because reform has been too slow”.
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