Eco-town UK – competition

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper

The UK Government has discreetly abandoned a proposed eco-town in Cambridgeshire at the same time as it rushed out plans for ten more eco-towns across the country, some of which will be off-grid.

The announcement of a competition to design Britain’s eco-towns has linked the plans to the previously separate battle for more affordable housing. Off-Grid editor Nick Rosen called for this link to be made in a Guardian article in July 2007, and said “I am delighted the government have seen the sense of linking low cost eco-homes with the drive for more affordable housing, especially in the countryside.

“Off-grid homes are by definition affordable homes,” said Rosen

Yvette Cooper, the Housing Minister, has just asked leading creative designers in urban and landscape architecture and transport planning around the world to share their suggestions for the towns of up to 20,000 homes. The first phase of the competition will focus on the overarching design principles of eco-towns, particularly innovative ideas for low and zero-carbon living. Thirty local authorities will team with architects and developers to submit plans.

The second phase, led by the successful local authorities, will focus on the design of each individual town once sites around the country have been determined.

Local people will be involved in the design process.

Ms Cooper said that her vision would involve a variety of different architectural styles and types of building within each town.She said that eco-towns should be the antithesis of the monolithic, identikit style that was too often associated with new housing. In June this year the government launched it’s Carbon Challenge competition – in which ‘housebuilders were invited to submit expressions of interest to build England’s first large scale development of zero carbon homes’.

The Carbon Challenge called on developers to achieve the highest level (Level 6) of the Government’s new Code for Sustainable Homes to demonstrate that zero carbon homes, combined with cutting edge building design, could be economically viable on a commercial scale.

According to the Challenge website, a part of the English Partnerships site, a number of develpers submitted designs and in August seven were shortlisted. Also in June at BRE’s Offsite exhibition, a number of ‘cutting edge’ designs for zero carbon housing were viewed and commented favourably on, by housing minister Cooper.

Ms Cooper has now pointed to new housing developments in Scandinavia and the Netherlands as inspiration for her type of approach but stressed that each new eco-town should draw on the local history and character of its surroundings.

The aims of the competition are to gather ideas from the best national and international thinkers in the fields of town planning, urban design, architecture, landscape design, transport and environmental planning.

The Government’s vision for eco-towns is large-scale free-standing new settlements that are exemplars of sustainable building and living, with the opportunity to design low and zero-carbon technology from the beginning.

The Government wants to ensure that the delivery of eco-towns makes as much use of the existing infrastructure as possible.

It is encouraged that some, or even many, of the initial bids have proposals for developers to invest towards rail provisions The Government said that it saw eco-towns providing a major contribution to the housing supply and increasing affordability, including up to 50 per cent of affordable housing.

The ideas and lessons gathered through the competition will be drawn together for use by the councils and developers who will take forward the eco-town proposals.

The Government said that each of the new towns should have its own strong identity, reflecting local character and appeal.

They will be well-designed, attractive places to live, with jobs and services and good links to existing nearby towns and cities.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced on Monday that the number of eco-towns was being doubled from five to ten.

Expressions of interest by councils and developers in bringing forward eco-towns should be made by the end of next month.

The Government expects to announce schemes which will be supported through the planning process in the first half of 2008, but observers are treting the announcement with caution as an ‘exemplar’ new settlement heralded as England’s first potential eco-town has been abandoned by the government.

In May, then-chancellor Gordon Brown pledged to build five zero-carbon eco-towns should he become Prime Minister. Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth on Monday, Brown doubled that pledge to 10 But it has emerged that Northstowe – a 9,500-home joint venture between English Partnerships and Gallagher Estates on the former Oakington Airfield just outside Cambridge – will not be one of them.

Brown had personally referred to Northstowe on the BBC’s Sunday AM TV programme in May, and Northstowe was identified by the government as one of two eco-town ‘prototypes’ in its Homes of the Future document published in July. The other is Cranbrook, outside Exeter in Devon.

But a spokesman from the Department of Communities and Local Government said: ‘We said that Northstowe would be an exemplar, but it will not be one of the 10 ecotowns. We will now be asking for expressions of interest for the new towns.’ The ‘expressions of interest’ take the form of up to 30 bids from developers and local authorities vying for eco-town status for their developments.

Gideon Amos, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), which is setting the zero-carbon criteria for ecotowns confirmed that a briefng session for the bidders would be held on 8 October, with applications due in by the end of October.

Two weeks ago, David Trippier, chairman of Cambridge Horizons – the body responsible for creating 50,000 new homes in Cambridge by 2016, wrote an open letter in Cambridge Evening News to housing minister Yvette Cooper asking her to clarify Northstowe’s status.

Neither English Partnerships or Gallagher Estates was available for comment, but a spokesman from Cambridge Horizons said there was a ‘general sense of disappointment’ about the government’s decision.