The Government is sticking to its March 1988 deadline for winding up the new town development corporations in Washington, Aycliffe and Peterlee.
During consultations with the Department of the Environment last year, the corporations argued that their dissolution should be delayed. So far, the three have sold £45.8m worth of assets, mainly property. The Government confirmed that English Estates will buy any unsold industrial property, with the Commission for the New Towns taking over remaining assets and liabilities after next March.
The four remaining new towns — which include Milton Keynes, Telford and Peterborough — will be wound up between 1988 and 1992. Last year, the DOE revised the financial structure of the six remaining new town corporations and the CNT, writing off £1,688m of debt and suspending a further £249m of loans.
In a report reviewing this financial reconstruction, the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir Gordon Downey, has agreed that the deterioration in the new towns’ finances since the mid-1970s was due mainly to external factors. These included difficult economic conditions, and the less buoyant property market which prevailed during the development of the later towns.
However, the report also says that the DOE did not examine the role of internal factors in the towns’ financial performance. “National Audit Office examination identified features such as variations between corporations’ relative property management costs and in the extent of empty industrial property, which appeared to reflect variations in management performance as well as external factors,” it states.
The Commission for the New Towns is to sell Corby town centre to the private sector. Covering 23 acres, it is being offered in four lots or as a whole and includes the main body of High Street multiples — J Sainsbury, Boots, Mother-care, Burton, Littlewoods and Richard Shops. The town centre was built in two main phases. The first was completed in 1954 giving High Street shopping with a market square. This shopping core totals about 280,000 sq ft. In 1974, a 125,000-sq ft second phase was built next to Corporation Street and has 42 shops plus offices. No asking prices for the properties are being revealed.
