COMMENT On being commissioned by Homes England to make a film about the nation’s biggest new-build housing development, I felt the responsibility of being part of a grand tradition. The 30-year new town at Northstowe in Cambridgeshire, with 10,000 new homes for 30,000 residents, was first conceived as a “Healthy New Town” under the 2007-10 Gordon Brown government.
The British planning system being what it is, the first pioneers moved in during 2017, and real progress at Northstowe is only now being felt, with a further 1,800 homes in the early construction stage to add to the 1,500 occupied to date.
Preserved for posterity
The desire by Homes England to both record Northstowe’s evolution and communicate its purpose to everyone from its current community to potential future residents and external audiences is firmly within an 80-year heritage. After the Second World War, bombed-out cities led to the New Towns Act of 1946 and a building boom to develop the first wave of quick-construction communities in the South East, variously praised as modern-day utopias and dismissed as failed social experiments.
Encouraged by government, virtually all the development corporations recorded their towns’ development, often with a mix of documentary and promotional film.
They include Hemel Homestead (1957); Views of Hatfield (1952); Stevenage – the First New Town (1977); Basildon – Our Town (1974); Peterborough – a City Fit to Live In (1971) and Milton Keynes – a Village City (1973).
My film company, Paper Films, met residents at Northstowe Community Centre, where we saw people from all walks of life, many from immigrant communities, coming together, to play chess, ping-pong and mahjong, unsegregated by age and ethnic identity.
One scene has children of Indian heritage making Easter celebration cards guided by a local woman of British white origin, proceedings chivvied along by the volunteer local councillor who hails from Kerala, while a volunteer recently arrived from Hong Kong takes them orange juice and custard creams.
It was in the final stages of production, working to a July deadline, that the general election was called, bringing an added gravitas to preserving a moment in time at a point that diversity was at the heart of national debate.
Northstowe is blessed with attributes that many places would love to have – social housing provision, proximity to a buoyant job market, career opportunities and pathways for personal social improvement.
Residents include many Europeans working in Cambridge’s bustling science and tech industries. A police officer we spoke to said that the town had very little crime.
Yet there are significant challenges. Early media coverage focused on the lack of health and retail facilities, but in a new survey half of those quizzed said their health and wellbeing had improved since their move there.
That in-town health services have not yet been delivered represents the most common grievance we encountered when speaking to residents. We mentioned this in the film but decided not to focus disproportionately on it. The lack of GP and dentist provision in the UK is not unique to Northstowe.
A little, modern England
Our film shows the potential that placemaking brings and how people respond to their part in creating a new future. Paper Films uses film to communicate the breadth of things that councils do in their communities and for tenants, and to show what large-scale housebuilding involves.
The projects may be complicated and are often subject to criticism, but we start from the point that ultimately they are needed and are delivered by people and organisations that want to do the right thing. Our work for developers, architects, housebuilders and urban planners helps to cement relationships and understanding among wider, diverse audiences.
Northstowe’s ethnically diverse population is different from the surrounding rural villages and towns. This is a new town in every sense of the word, a little version of a modern England where the school kids grow up playing with children whose families hail from all over the world.
This is normality for the children and for their parents, who like the fact that the town is accepting of everyone. And in the UK’s big cities, diversity, especially for younger people, is normal.
Model for the future
With a new Labour government announcing a huge housebuilding programme, Reform’s vision of an England divided by immigration did not stack up here.
Of course, Northstowe is not a forgotten town, and jobs aplenty lend it an affluent feel. Perhaps this relegates extreme views to the sidelines. Any animosity was invisible to us as filmmakers, walking the streets and interviewing the townsfolk.
Could it be, then, that Northstowe is the new model town for England, proving that a good job market, a decent standard of living and mixed-tenure housing schemes can build communities that come together and thrive?
It is a process that will make for fascinating viewing as a test bed for the wave of new-build communities that the new government will be seeking to create.
Daniel Kennedy is founder of Paper Films
