As we highlighted when the Milton Keynes Strategy for 2050 was published in January, the document represented a dramatic scaling back of Milton Keynes Council’s ambitions for growth.
It is worth recapping the underpinning housing plans for the strategy and how it differs from the previous plans as it continues to be misrepresented by the Conservative Party as doubling the population of Milton Keynes without correction by much of the media.
The previous plans – the Borough of Milton Keynes population would have hit 500,000 by 2050 and the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes population would have hit at least 570,000 (and possibly as much as 650,000)
Prior to this year, Milton Keynes Council’s strategic objective was for the population of the Borough of Milton Keynes to reach 500,000 by 2050. This would represent an increase in Milton Keynes’ population of approximately 230,000 over the next 30 years or a population increase of approximately 85% (the ONS estimated that the population of Milton Keynes was 269,457 in July 2019).
Such a population increase would have required approximately 108,000 new houses to be built within the Borough of Milton Keynes (based on the assumptions within the Strategy for 2050 that a population increase of 185,000 within the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area would require an additional 87,000 houses i.e. population growth of 2.13 requires one new house).
This would have been in addition to substantial population growth within the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes area driven by Milton Keynes’ neighbouring local authorities: Aylesbury Vale District Council (now Buckinghamshire Council), Central Bedfordshire Council and South Northamptonshire Council. Existing local plans imply 10,000 new houses will be built on the borders of Milton Keynes over the next decade. Many of these new developments will be effectively part of Milton Keynes: they will form extensions of the urban area and their residents will work, play and use public services within Milton Keynes. Left unchecked, neighbouring authorities will continue to maximise the proportion of their statutory housing requirements met via new development on Milton Keynes’ borders in order to externalise the infrastructure, congestion and political costs of development. We can therefore expect there to be far more than 10,000 new houses built on our borders over the next 30 years if no action is taken: perhaps as many as 47,000 if all the sites in the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes area identified by the strategic study informing the Strategy for 2050 were to be developed by our neighbours.
Therefore, Milton Keynes Council’s previous objective combined with our neighbouring councils’ plans implied a minimum of 118,000 new houses would have been built in the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes area over the next 30 years and a 2050 population of at least 570,000 (growth of 80%). In the worst-case scenario where all the potentially suitable sites in the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes were to be developed, this would be 155,000 new houses and a population of almost 650,000 (more than doubling the size of Metropolitan Milton Keynes).
The revised plans – the Borough of Milton Keynes population hits, at most, 430,000 by 2050 and the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes population hits at most 500,000
The Strategy for 2050 has dramatically reduced planned growth over the next 30 years.
Including the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes area within the scope of the 500,000 objective has immediately cut the required population growth by 45,000 – the current population of the bits of Metropolitan Milton Keynes that are not within the Milton Keynes Council boundaries. This reduces the number of new houses required by around 21,000. Further, it allows the 10,000 new houses within the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area that are already within our neighbours’ local plans to be counted towards the objective.
This reduces the total number of new houses across the whole of the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area over the next 30 years to 87,000 and a total population of 500,000. While it is difficult to specify exact numbers due to it being impossible to say just how many new houses neighbouring authorities would build on Milton Keynes’ borders between 2030 and 2050 if left unchecked, we can say with certainty that the new plans would mean a reduction of at least 26% in the number of new homes in the wider Metropolitan Milton Keynes area compared with the previous plans.
It would also place a cap on the total number of houses that can be built in Metropolitan Milton Keynes, providing protection against the risk of “dumping” of new housing and the associated infrastructure and other costs by our neighbouring authorities. Little wonder they did not like the strategy!
Looking just at the Borough of Milton Keynes, the plan implies a worst-case scenario of 77,000 new houses over the next 30 years and as few as 40,000 – a reduction of between 30% and 60% from the 108,000 new houses required by the previous plan. It implies a within Borough of Milton Keynes population of between 354,000 and 433,000.
The overall strategy
The overall strategy implies that:
- The population of the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area will increase by 185,000 from 315,000 to 500,000 – an increase of 59%. This will involve 87,000 new houses between now and 2050.
- The population of the Borough of Milton Keynes will increase by 85,000-164,000 from the current 269,000 to reach 354,000-433,000 – an increase of between 30 and 60%. The precise amount of growth will depend on how many new houses are build in the parts of the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area not controlled by Milton Keynes Council.
It also – as well as providing a cap on the total number of new houses – means that future housing growth will be situated in the most appropriate sites across the Metropolitan Milton Keynes area rather than being forced into less suitable sites within the Borough of Milton Keynes – such as north of the River Great Ouse in Haversham and other parts of rural North Buckinghamshire – due to the combination of arbitrary administrative borders and statutory housing targets set by the Conservative government in Westminster. The Growth Options Assessment underpinning the Strategy for 2050 demonstrates this is a real win from a practical perspective given the issues with some of the potential development sites that MKC would be forced to look at to meet government housing targets (e.g. 20,000 new houses around Haversham looks extremely challenging) as well as good politics for Milton Keynes politicians.
It just seems bizarre for the local Conservative Party to not even attempt to consolidate and take credit for the Milton Keynes Council U-turn on future growth or to come in behind Labour’s Metropolitan Milton Keynes idea given the clear benefits in terms of ensuring sustainable growth, preventing continued housing dumping by neighbouring authorities (which the Tories acknowledge is a huge issue) and redirecting housing growth from rural North Bucks in the areas they represent to more suitable locations.
Bemusement about the local Conservatives’ failure to support the Metropolitan Milton Keynes concept is heightened by the fact that Milton Keynes South MP, Iain Stewart, used to support it, saying in 2015 that:
“These houses won’t be physically part of Milton Keynes, but everyone who lives there will use Milton Keynes roads and public services. It’s not just the money side of things which I agree is a problem, it’s not part of our core strategy and I think additional housing developments like this should only be considered as part of a Milton Keynes wide review. We shouldn’t add on bits and pieces here and there, without thinking through all the implications.”
Admittedly there are likely to be votes in pretending future growth is not required by not having a (non-statutory) long-term plan but it’s a short-sighted approach that is not good for the interests of those they represent and risks exacerbating the infrastructure crowding issues they claim to be concerned about via poorly-planned piecemeal development.
The View From Bradwell Common 