Speeches by Pennycook.

“No decision has been made on this case.”

“I thank the shadow Minister for her questions. I am obviously not going to comment on speculation in the press. On the specific case before Ministers, at the application stage it was a matter for parties what information was put forward for consideration, and it was a matter for Tower Hamlets what information was put o…”

“That is just not the case, though, Mr Curtis.”

“Thank you very much, Chair.  ”

“I will bring Cathy in, who might add a bit more detail from an official point of view, but no, the precise funding offer will be made clear at the point that we make final decisions on the programme and make that public. Part of what we are doing through both the SEA and the wider scoping of the programme is determinin…”

“It depends entirely on the delivery vehicle, doesn’t it? If it is a mayoral development corporation that will have a particular planning process; if it is a centrally led one it will have a particular process. A public-private partnership, a joint venture, would go down in a sense the standard. I think what Cathy is tr…”

“All that I would add, Chair—and I appreciate Mr Cocking’s frustration—but I think the issue here is that your question is almost premised on us being at the end of the process rather than midway through it. The role of the taskforce was to come up with recommendations around the sites. It is now for Government to refin…”

“I understand why, but it is not accurate to say that there is no funding available to Government for new towns. There is no new towns funding pot but the new towns programme will be delivered with a combination of our existing grant funding pots. There is the £39 billion social and affordable housing programme. In the …”

“Yes.”

“Yes, and then I will come in.”

“I am not sure the opposition that has been stated in respect of Adlington is a function of how we did community engagement, if I am honest. Again, this goes back to what the New Towns Unit is doing. It is visiting local areas. It has made an offer to all political leaders to engage with them to further refine their evi…”

“I am looking for the correct form of wording. I think the precise political dynamics will partly depend on the delivery vehicle. If the delivery vehicle is a mayoral development corporation, the Mayor in question will have ownership of that delivery vehicle. There is probably a more acute risk to centrally led developm…”

“It is highly governed, I have to say, by what is fair to a local area in terms of this being a distinct delivery route. These are not just otherwise standard large sites, but what will ensure that there is the right balance of incentives that places want to bring them forward.”

“Cathy can give some further insight, but at the point that we have gone through the consultation and issue our final report in response to the Government taskforce, all the details about the programme will be known, including how we intend to take forward that interaction between LHN and new towns. I suppose I am shari…”

“Again, this comes back to the process of refining the scope of the programme. We were very clear that we agree with the taskforce’s recommendation that development corporations are the primary vehicle by which to take forward these sites, but we want to allow scope for other types of vehicle, from your simple joint ven…”

“That is in black and white in the Government’s initial response to the taskforce.”

“I am reluctant to sit here and pluck a number out of the air. I would like to get to at least 40% on all those sites. It is not that we can discount viability entirely, but again that comes back to looking at the funding we have available, particularly in this Parliament, in the spending review, those grant funding pot…”

“The commitment remains spades in the ground on at least three sites in this Parliament, hopefully more. As Cathy said, we are talking about large-scale new communities, in many cases tens of thousands of new homes. This is not something we can rush out in 12 months. The average time to set up a development corporation …”

“I think there are two things to say in response to that, Mr Dillon. First, in terms of the contribution that the new towns programme will make to our wider house-building targets, this allows me to touch on the issue of LHN and how we expect the new towns to interact with that. We have been very clear that our starting…”

“Not looking at using the SDO process to bring forward new towns. The SDO process has its place. Cathy could expand on this. It may look quick and efficient from the outside. It is incredibly resource intensive for the Department to essentially become the planning authority. It was warranted in this case and I agree we …”