AI-enabled fridges and red cap selfies, Steve Reed updates on new towns

The housing secretary mused on the futuristic possibilities the new towns initiative could throw up and boasted about being asked for selfies by developers wearing the red ‘Build Baby Build’ caps that debuted at the Labour Party conference.

The government’s New Towns Taskforce has shortlisted 12 locations for up to 10,000 homes each in a bid to turbocharge housing delivery and address the housing crisis.

These include sites in Adlington, which has proved controversial, as well as Victoria North in Manchester, and Leeds South Bank.

Steve Reed was quizzed by the Built Environment Select Committee earlier this week but gave little away on how the final list of locations was shaping up.

However, he did suggest that locations that did not make the shortlist might still have a chance of being chosen. This could be good news for Liverpool and Sefton councils, whose bid for a new town failed to make the cut.

“We haven’t ruled out sites that were not in the original 12,” Reed said.

He reinforced the idea that new towns provide an opportunity to deviate from the norm.

“The sky is the limit”, he said.

“We are not just trying to build a load of houses in a desert. We are trying to build communities.”

Among the ideas for innovation is the possibility of an “AI-enabled” neighbourhood.

“How can we incorporate AI into the way we live, work, shop and learn and how can that be represented in the fabric of the buildings we live in and the way that those buildings are collected together in streets or in blocks?” he mused.

“How different would the way that you shop be if your fridge could order for itself and the food could be delivered by some AI-enabled means of transport?”

Reed added that each new town could be an exemplar in a specific field, be it AI, ageing, or health more generally.

“There are some really interesting questions here and rather than just answer them theoretically we could do something very exciting with a new town here that could see the UK leading the world,” he said.

Reed defended a lack of funding allocated to the programme, saying it was too early given that the final list of sites had not been selected.

“It would be like funding thin air,” he said, adding that specific funding could come forward at the next spending review.

When asked whether he thought the “machinery” of local government was in good enough shape to make good on the promise of a raft of new towns, Reed said that the planning and infrastructure act and the revised National Planning Policy Framework would grease the wheels of delivery.

When pressed for his view on the health of the housing market more generally, Reed, whose red ‘Build Baby, Build’ caps made headlines at the Labour party conference in September, was bullish.

“I was at a dinner with a load of developers on Monday night who were coming up to me and shaking my hand and asking for pictures with Build baby build hats on their heads telling me how much the market is moving,” he said.

“There is an enthusiasm there that wasn’t there six months ago.”