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Metro
15 hours ago
- Business
- Metro
'Underrated' UK seaside town gets train to London for first time in 30 years
A beloved UK seaside town could finally be reconnected to the capital after decades of being cut off from direct rail links. For the first time since 1992, direct trains could soon be running from Cleethorpes to London, reconnecting the Lincolnshire seaside town to the capital after more than 30 years. The last time direct services were running between the two destinations, John Major was Prime Minister, Whitney Houston was topping the charts, and the first text messages were being sent. However, that could soon change as rail operator Grand Central submitted an application to reintroduce services back in March. It hopes to connect Cleethorpes, Grimsby, Habrough, and Scunthorpe with London King's Cross as early as December 2026. If approved, there would be four return services a day, creating more than 775,000 additional seats each year and potentially unlocking £30.1 million annually for the region. 'This isn't just about attracting future investment into our town, it's about addressing missed economic and social opportunities due to current poor connectivity,' said Melanie Onn, the MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes. After delays in getting plans underway, MPs met again in May to discuss the proposal, with Simon Lightwood, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, saying the Department's view will be passed on 'in due course'. Paul Hutchings, managing director responsible for Grand Central, previously commented on the plans: 'If approved, these services will play a pivotal role in driving regional growth by linking underserved communities to key commercial opportunities, benefiting both local businesses and passengers.' Nothing is set in stone just yet, and there's no confirmation on how much tickets will cost if the direct service is approved. However, Grand Central said it hopes to have the trains running by December 2026. At the moment, getting to Cleethorpes from London requires multiple changes. Passengers typically have to take the train from Cleethorpes to Scunthorpe, to Scunthorpe to Doncaster and from there to King's Cross. The journey takes just under four hours in total, and that's assuming all trains run on time. It will set you back around £25 for a one-way ticket on Trainline. There's plenty to explore once you get to the seaside town, and, of course, the top activity is the beach. Expect arcades and fish and chip shops along the promenade and a Victorian-era pier to stroll along. The beach has a four-star rating on TripAdvisor, based on hundreds of reviews. One user, 'Roger B', said: 'Cleethorpes is so underrated. The promenade is clean with a lovely waterfall.' Others described it as a 'beautiful beach', boasting that the sand was 'soft' and 'clean'. Cleethorpes boating lake is another main attraction. Visitors can hire pedal boats, feed the ducks or enjoy a stroll around the water. There are also lots of independent shops, cafes and beachfront pubs to explore. And, if all goes to plan, it may be easier for Londoners to make a day trip there. More Trending If you're after visiting another underrated UK seaside town, why not take a trip to Treardurr Bay, which was named the UK's best coastal gem earlier this year. The beach lies just south of Holyhead in Wales and has been praised as one of the 'most prestigious beaches in Anglesey'. Not only does it have 'crystal clear waters,' but it's relatively quiet, so you won't find yourself competing with hundreds of other beachgoers for a spot. The research, conducted by Insure4Boats, analysed Met Office data, local attractions and social media comments across more than 250 coastal towns. It described the bay as the 'perfect playground for water sports enthusiasts with kayak and paddleboard rental available.' Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: SXSW London: Five live performances, film showcases and talks you must see MORE: Rock legend, 78, wheeled off stage in coffin during bizarre exit MORE: 'SXSW London will be a love letter to the city – we ought to be here'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ebbsfleet: the ultimate commuter town that never was
On paper, Ebbsfleet should have been a huge success story: thousands of affordable homes built on a high-speed rail link into central London. But 30 years after the grand plan for 43,000 homes in north Kent was hatched, just 10pc have been built. Its huge train station, which Eurostar abandoned, is the 308th busiest in the country – little more than a ghost town even in peak commuting times. Trains take just 18 minutes to St Pancras. Snails-pace construction work at the so-called garden city, on the south side of the Thames estuary, has made it synonymous with Britain's failed planning system. While there have been improvements in recent years, the discovery of jumping spiders has slammed the brakes on part of the scheme. As the Government plots 12 new towns, how does it avoid another Ebbsfleet-style disaster? Plans were first mooted under John Major's government in 1994, with more than 40,000 homes suggested for the site. The initial idea was a utopia of avenues studded with trees, houseboats moored on the Thames and homes built among parkland. But output was incredibly slow for years, with the financial crash hurting builders' appetite, and concrete plans for Ebbsfleet failed to take off. Following years of stalled projects and revisions, that figure dwindled to 15,000 in 2014 under then-chancellor George Osborne, who christened it as Britain's first garden city for almost 100 years. At risk of the former quarry site becoming a gargantuan failure, an arm's-length body of central government, the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, took the reins a decade ago in an attempt to speed up delivery. Now acting as the planning authority for the 2,500-acre site rather than the local council, the corporation has managed to raise housebuilding numbers under its watch – yet Ebbsfleet is still a shadow of what it was hoped to be. 'Last year we delivered 648 homes, and we're at about 5,000 in total,' explains Ian Piper, the development corporation's chief executive. 'We're around a third of the way through now. Until fairly recently we always talked about 2035 for completion, but I think it will go beyond that now to complete the job.' In its first phases of construction, Ebbsfleet – like most new-build estates – came in for criticism for its ugliness. 'We are looking for a higher quality than the normal and what we are getting [so far] is the norm – standard off-the-peg stuff,' the former chairman of Dartford's planning committee complained in 2016. There are fears that Labour's housing drive will spark a flurry of 'rabbit hutch' houses scarring the landscape, but as for Ebbsfleet, Piper believes the aesthetic has improved. 'If you look at some of the earliest stuff, before the corporation had been set up, it's still good but you can definitely see the transition and improvement compared with the more recent stuff,' he says. Whatever the perception, there is demand from buyers, adds Piper. 'About 50pc come from within around 5km, so from Dartford and Gravesham boroughs, and then there's a good proportion that come from south London and outer London boroughs.' In 2007, Ebbsfleet International station was opened, bringing high-speed services to St Pancras, as well as Eurostar services to Europe. When it first became operational it was billed as 'the ultimate park and ride station', but many of the town's residents instead opted to use the nearby Swanscombe station because of its cheaper commute. The cost of commuting from Ebbsfleet is high: three of the five car parks cost £15.60 a day to use (or £13.60 in advance), while a train season ticket taking the 20 miles of track to St Pancras costs £6,124. The station's 5,000 parking spaces are never full. In contrast, a season ticket from Swanscombe to London Charing Cross costs £4,060. It's a longer commute time, but the cheaper price is favoured by most Ebbsfleet residents. The ultimate commuter location has its drawbacks. The station itself is severed from the town, meaning those opting to walk face a 20-minute slog uphill. On our trip to Ebbsfleet on a sunny afternoon, we saw just one other person making their way to the station. 'I think it's probably fair to say that the walking route from the station up here is not a great experience,' says Piper. 'But we're involved in significantly improving it to make it as attractive as possible.' There are also gripes about the lack of facilities. A recent survey of residents found that just one in four were satisfied with the bus services in the area. Piper says: 'I think 95pc of homes are within a five-minute walk of a bus. A bus route goes right through the heart of the community and that is being expanded.' And while respondents gave high praise for the area's sense of community, the majority said they found the lack of amenities an issue. A lack of health provision and sport facilities, bars and restaurants, and cultural centres featured heavily in the replies. There's certainly not much around: there are two small Co-ops, a coffee shop, a pharmacy, and a community centre. There are plans to open a large supermarket. 'Timing is everything when delivering facilities,' Piper says. 'For instance, nobody's going to take on a coffee shop if nobody's around to go there because you'll [close down] within six months. Getting the timing right is tricky, and that's one of our key challenges now. You need to get the facilities there when they are needed – not too soon and not too late.' Despite dissatisfaction with the facilities, Piper says Ebbsfleet retains its residents. 'You really don't see many 'for sale' signs around here compared with other places. There is a high level of community satisfaction.' It's not just slow building that has hit Ebbsfleet; the latest saga to stall development involves the discovery of a small colony of jumping spiders. Derelict land previously home to a cement works was bought for £34m by the corporation in 2019, with the intention to build densely on the 309-acre site around the station. Fast-forward to today and the building potential has been stripped down to just 86 acres after Natural England dropped an arachnid-shaped bombshell on the garden city. The presence of rare jumping spiders led to the scrubland being granted Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) status. Its designation meant building work had to be shelved, with the government-funded Natural England declaring that 'sustainable development and nature recovery must go hand in hand'. HS1 Ltd, the company which runs the high-speed train line, warned that the 'designation will in effect void the whole purpose behind the construction of Ebbsfleet's station', yet the battle to overturn the ruling was lost. Piper says: 'We objected quite strongly to the designation. But it was made clear there was no right of appeal, so we soon decided there was little we could do to change that. Some of the money was written down.' As a result of the SSSI designation, which effectively bans any future development, the land's value plummeted to £9m – and the sum of that lost government cash is a hefty £25.2m. It also means around 1,300 homes have been wiped from the Ebbsfleet masterplan, along with a vast entertainment resort planned to rival Disneyland. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer waded into the debate earlier this year when he lambasted the spider dilemma for blocking his party's housebuilding drive. 'The dream of home ownership for thousands of families is being held back by arachnids,' he wrote in a Telegraph column. 'It's nonsense. And we'll stop it,' he declared. Yet stripping land of its SSSI designation is easier said than done. The Government has pledged to build 12 new Ebbsfleets, of at least 10,000 homes in size. More than 100 proposals have been submitted to the Government's 'New Towns Taskforce', which will review options and announce winners in the summer. No specific locations of the bids have been announced, but most are from the South East, South West, East and London. How does it avoid these future garden cities from going the way of Ebbsfleet? It's not yet known if arm's-length development corporations will be set up for each location. They were used in post-war new towns like Milton Keynes, and by Lord Heseltine to successfully rejuvenate dilapidated parts of London, Liverpool and Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s. Writing for the Adam Smith Institute think tank, Labour MP Chris Curtis has urged the Government to 'cut through red tape, streamline planning and empower development corporations'. 'We have seen what can be achieved when bold action is taken – Milton Keynes and the London Docklands are a testament to that,' he said. 'Now we must apply that same determination again, ensuring that Britain embraces a spirit of ambition and gets building.' The new towns plan is part of Labour's manifesto pledge to ramp up housebuilding and deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament. The target, which the Government is falling shy of, is deemed unachievable by critics. Yet Piper backs the proposal. 'It's ambitious but I think you've got to have a target to aim for, otherwise you don't change behaviours,' he says. 'It's absolutely right to be highly ambitious. 'It's easy to deliver quality housing on small sites, working with niche builders and top-quality architects. The big challenge is getting volume housebuilders to produce that level of quality, which is obviously what the Government would want. 'I think we've done that successfully here, we have a mixture of housebuilders – Barratt, Persimmon, Redrow, for example – all delivering homes.' House prices in Ebbsfleet average £400,000 according to Rightmove, making it 'a relatively affordable place for the South East', according to Piper. Residents in neighbouring areas such Swanscombe and Greenhithe have complained of a strain on local services and traffic as a result of the emergence of Ebbsfleet. There have also been issues with local residents being unable to send their children to the town's new primary school as places were originally filled by those living further afield. Piper says: 'You need to build in your stewardship strategy right from the very beginning. We inherited a lot of things that were already in place, so we've had to do a lot retrospectively, which is 10 times harder. 'I also think in the very early days of the corporation the emphasis was almost exclusively on housing numbers. You can build houses but you're not actually building homes. You're certainly not building communities. We've therefore put a great emphasis on doing that.' But perhaps the biggest lesson from Ebbsfleet's fragmented creation and spider-gate for the Government's future garden cities is forming harmonious relationships between its own departments. After all, the Ministry of Housing (the department sponsoring Ebbsfleet's development corporation) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (the department sponsoring Natural England) work just metres away from each other in the same building in London's Marsham Street. 'Creating a place is dependent on a lot of other agencies and public bodies,' says Piper. 'There needs to be strong alignment at a national government level between different departments.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
2 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Ebbsfleet: the ultimate commuter town that never was
On paper, Ebbsfleet should have been a huge success story: thousands of affordable homes built on a high-speed rail link into central London. But 30 years after the grand plan for 43,000 homes in north Kent was hatched, just 10pc have been built. Its huge train station, which Eurostar abandoned, is the 308th busiest in the country – little more than a ghost town even in peak commuting times. Trains take just 18 minutes to St Pancras. Snails-pace construction work at the so-called garden city, on the south side of the Thames estuary, has made it synonymous with Britain's failed planning system. While there have been improvements in recent years, the discovery of jumping spiders has slammed the brakes on part of the scheme. As the Government plots 12 new towns, how does it avoid another Ebbsfleet-style disaster? A utopian vision Plans were first mooted under John Major's government in 1994, with more than 40,000 homes suggested for the site. The initial idea was a utopia of avenues studded with trees, houseboats moored on the Thames and homes built among parkland. But output was incredibly slow for years, with the financial crash hurting builders' appetite, and concrete plans for Ebbsfleet failed to take off. Following years of stalled projects and revisions, that figure dwindled to 15,000 in 2014 under then-chancellor George Osborne, who christened it as Britain's first garden city for almost 100 years. At risk of the former quarry site becoming a gargantuan failure, an arm's-length body of central government, the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, took the reins a decade ago in an attempt to speed up delivery. Now acting as the planning authority for the 2,500-acre site rather than the local council, the corporation has managed to raise housebuilding numbers under its watch – yet Ebbsfleet is still a shadow of what it was hoped to be. 'Last year we delivered 648 homes, and we're at about 5,000 in total,' explains Ian Piper, the development corporation's chief executive. 'We're around a third of the way through now. Until fairly recently we always talked about 2035 for completion, but I think it will go beyond that now to complete the job.' In its first phases of construction, Ebbsfleet – like most new-build estates – came in for criticism for its ugliness. 'We are looking for a higher quality than the normal and what we are getting [so far] is the norm – standard off-the-peg stuff,' the former chairman of Dartford's planning committee complained in 2016. There are fears that Labour's housing drive will spark a flurry of 'rabbit hutch' houses scarring the landscape, but as for Ebbsfleet, Piper believes the aesthetic has improved. 'If you look at some of the earliest stuff, before the corporation had been set up, it's still good but you can definitely see the transition and improvement compared with the more recent stuff,' he says. Whatever the perception, there is demand from buyers, adds Piper. 'About 50pc come from within around 5km, so from Dartford and Gravesham boroughs, and then there's a good proportion that come from south London and outer London boroughs.' Resident gripes In 2007, Ebbsfleet International station was opened, bringing high-speed services to St Pancras, as well as Eurostar services to Europe. When it first became operational it was billed as 'the ultimate park and ride station', but many of the town's residents instead opted to use the nearby Swanscombe station because of its cheaper commute. The cost of commuting from Ebbsfleet is high: three of the five car parks cost £15.60 a day to use (or £13.60 in advance), while a train season ticket taking the 20 miles of track to St Pancras costs £6,124. The station's 5,000 parking spaces are never full. In contrast, a season ticket from Swanscombe to London Charing Cross costs £4,060. It's a longer commute time, but the cheaper price is favoured by most Ebbsfleet residents. The ultimate commuter location has its drawbacks. The station itself is severed from the town, meaning those opting to walk face a 20-minute slog uphill. On our trip to Ebbsfleet on a sunny afternoon, we saw just one other person making their way to the station. 'I think it's probably fair to say that the walking route from the station up here is not a great experience,' says Piper. 'But we're involved in significantly improving it to make it as attractive as possible.' There are also gripes about the lack of facilities. A recent survey of residents found that just one in four were satisfied with the bus services in the area. Piper says: 'I think 95pc of homes are within a five-minute walk of a bus. A bus route goes right through the heart of the community and that is being expanded.' And while respondents gave high praise for the area's sense of community, the majority said they found the lack of amenities an issue. A lack of health provision and sport facilities, bars and restaurants, and cultural centres featured heavily in the replies. There's certainly not much around: there are two small Co-ops, a coffee shop, a pharmacy, and a community centre. There are plans to open a large supermarket. 'Timing is everything when delivering facilities,' Piper says. 'For instance, nobody's going to take on a coffee shop if nobody's around to go there because you'll [close down] within six months. Getting the timing right is tricky, and that's one of our key challenges now. You need to get the facilities there when they are needed – not too soon and not too late.' Despite dissatisfaction with the facilities, Piper says Ebbsfleet retains its residents. 'You really don't see many 'for sale' signs around here compared with other places. There is a high level of community satisfaction.' 'Held back by arachnids' It's not just slow building that has hit Ebbsfleet; the latest saga to stall development involves the discovery of a small colony of jumping spiders. Derelict land previously home to a cement works was bought for £34m by the corporation in 2019, with the intention to build densely on the 309-acre site around the station. Fast-forward to today and the building potential has been stripped down to just 86 acres after Natural England dropped an arachnid-shaped bombshell on the garden city. The presence of rare jumping spiders led to the scrubland being granted Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) status. Its designation meant building work had to be shelved, with the government-funded Natural England declaring that 'sustainable development and nature recovery must go hand in hand'. HS1 Ltd, the company which runs the high-speed train line, warned that the 'designation will in effect void the whole purpose behind the construction of Ebbsfleet's station', yet the battle to overturn the ruling was lost. Piper says: 'We objected quite strongly to the designation. But it was made clear there was no right of appeal, so we soon decided there was little we could do to change that. Some of the money was written down.' As a result of the SSSI designation, which effectively bans any future development, the land's value plummeted to £9m – and the sum of that lost government cash is a hefty £25.2m. It also means around 1,300 homes have been wiped from the Ebbsfleet masterplan, along with a vast entertainment resort planned to rival Disneyland. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer waded into the debate earlier this year when he lambasted the spider dilemma for blocking his party's housebuilding drive. 'The dream of home ownership for thousands of families is being held back by arachnids,' he wrote in a Telegraph column. 'It's nonsense. And we'll stop it,' he declared. Yet stripping land of its SSSI designation is easier said than done. Lessons for Labour The Government has pledged to build 12 new Ebbsfleets, of at least 10,000 homes in size. More than 100 proposals have been submitted to the Government's 'New Towns Taskforce', which will review options and announce winners in the summer. No specific locations of the bids have been announced, but most are from the South East, South West, East and London. How does it avoid these future garden cities from going the way of Ebbsfleet? It's not yet known if arm's-length development corporations will be set up for each location. They were used in post-war new towns like Milton Keynes, and by Lord Heseltine to successfully rejuvenate dilapidated parts of London, Liverpool and Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s. Writing for the Adam Smith Institute think tank, Labour MP Chris Curtis has urged the Government to 'cut through red tape, streamline planning and empower development corporations'. 'We have seen what can be achieved when bold action is taken – Milton Keynes and the London Docklands are a testament to that,' he said. 'Now we must apply that same determination again, ensuring that Britain embraces a spirit of ambition and gets building.' The new towns plan is part of Labour's manifesto pledge to ramp up housebuilding and deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament. The target, which the Government is falling shy of, is deemed unachievable by critics. Yet Piper backs the proposal. 'It's ambitious but I think you've got to have a target to aim for, otherwise you don't change behaviours,' he says. 'It's absolutely right to be highly ambitious. 'It's easy to deliver quality housing on small sites, working with niche builders and top-quality architects. The big challenge is getting volume housebuilders to produce that level of quality, which is obviously what the Government would want. 'I think we've done that successfully here, we have a mixture of housebuilders – Barratt, Persimmon, Redrow, for example – all delivering homes.' House prices in Ebbsfleet average £400,000 according to Rightmove, making it 'a relatively affordable place for the South East', according to Piper. Residents in neighbouring areas such Swanscombe and Greenhithe have complained of a strain on local services and traffic as a result of the emergence of Ebbsfleet. There have also been issues with local residents being unable to send their children to the town's new primary school as places were originally filled by those living further afield. Piper says: 'You need to build in your stewardship strategy right from the very beginning. We inherited a lot of things that were already in place, so we've had to do a lot retrospectively, which is 10 times harder. 'I also think in the very early days of the corporation the emphasis was almost exclusively on housing numbers. You can build houses but you're not actually building homes. You're certainly not building communities. We've therefore put a great emphasis on doing that.' But perhaps the biggest lesson from Ebbsfleet's fragmented creation and spider-gate for the Government's future garden cities is forming harmonious relationships between its own departments. After all, the Ministry of Housing (the department sponsoring Ebbsfleet's development corporation) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (the department sponsoring Natural England) work just metres away from each other in the same building in London's Marsham Street. 'Creating a place is dependent on a lot of other agencies and public bodies,' says Piper. 'There needs to be strong alignment at a national government level between different departments.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ebbsfleet: the ultimate commuter town that never was
On paper, Ebbsfleet should have been a huge success story: thousands of affordable homes built on a high-speed rail link into central London. But 30 years after the grand plan for 43,000 homes in north Kent was hatched, just 10pc have been built. Its huge train station, which Eurostar abandoned, is the 308th busiest in the country – little more than a ghost town even in peak commuting times. Trains take just 18 minutes to St Pancras. Snails-pace construction work at the so-called garden city, on the south side of the Thames estuary, has made it synonymous with Britain's failed planning system. While there have been improvements in recent years, the discovery of jumping spiders has slammed the brakes on part of the scheme. As the Government plots 12 new towns, how does it avoid another Ebbsfleet-style disaster? Plans were first mooted under John Major's government in 1994, with more than 40,000 homes suggested for the site. The initial idea was a utopia of avenues studded with trees, houseboats moored on the Thames and homes built among parkland. But output was incredibly slow for years, with the financial crash hurting builders' appetite, and concrete plans for Ebbsfleet failed to take off. Following years of stalled projects and revisions, that figure dwindled to 15,000 in 2014 under then-chancellor George Osborne, who christened it as Britain's first garden city for almost 100 years. At risk of the former quarry site becoming a gargantuan failure, an arm's-length body of central government, the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, took the reins a decade ago in an attempt to speed up delivery. Now acting as the planning authority for the 2,500-acre site rather than the local council, the corporation has managed to raise housebuilding numbers under its watch – yet Ebbsfleet is still a shadow of what it was hoped to be. 'Last year we delivered 648 homes, and we're at about 5,000 in total,' explains Ian Piper, the development corporation's chief executive. 'We're around a third of the way through now. Until fairly recently we always talked about 2035 for completion, but I think it will go beyond that now to complete the job.' In its first phases of construction, Ebbsfleet – like most new-build estates – came in for criticism for its ugliness. 'We are looking for a higher quality than the normal and what we are getting [so far] is the norm – standard off-the-peg stuff,' the former chairman of Dartford's planning committee complained in 2016. There are fears that Labour's housing drive will spark a flurry of 'rabbit hutch' houses scarring the landscape, but as for Ebbsfleet, Piper believes the aesthetic has improved. 'If you look at some of the earliest stuff, before the corporation had been set up, it's still good but you can definitely see the transition and improvement compared with the more recent stuff,' he says. Whatever the perception, there is demand from buyers, adds Piper. 'About 50pc come from within around 5km, so from Dartford and Gravesham boroughs, and then there's a good proportion that come from south London and outer London boroughs.' In 2007, Ebbsfleet International station was opened, bringing high-speed services to St Pancras, as well as Eurostar services to Europe. When it first became operational it was billed as 'the ultimate park and ride station', but many of the town's residents instead opted to use the nearby Swanscombe station because of its cheaper commute. The cost of commuting from Ebbsfleet is high: three of the five car parks cost £15.60 a day to use (or £13.60 in advance), while a train season ticket taking the 20 miles of track to St Pancras costs £6,124. The station's 5,000 parking spaces are never full. In contrast, a season ticket from Swanscombe to London Charing Cross costs £4,060. It's a longer commute time, but the cheaper price is favoured by most Ebbsfleet residents. The ultimate commuter location has its drawbacks. The station itself is severed from the town, meaning those opting to walk face a 20-minute slog uphill. On our trip to Ebbsfleet on a sunny afternoon, we saw just one other person making their way to the station. 'I think it's probably fair to say that the walking route from the station up here is not a great experience,' says Piper. 'But we're involved in significantly improving it to make it as attractive as possible.' There are also gripes about the lack of facilities. A recent survey of residents found that just one in four were satisfied with the bus services in the area. Piper says: 'I think 95pc of homes are within a five-minute walk of a bus. A bus route goes right through the heart of the community and that is being expanded.' And while respondents gave high praise for the area's sense of community, the majority said they found the lack of amenities an issue. A lack of health provision and sport facilities, bars and restaurants, and cultural centres featured heavily in the replies. There's certainly not much around: there are two small Co-ops, a coffee shop, a pharmacy, and a community centre. There are plans to open a large supermarket. 'Timing is everything when delivering facilities,' Piper says. 'For instance, nobody's going to take on a coffee shop if nobody's around to go there because you'll [close down] within six months. Getting the timing right is tricky, and that's one of our key challenges now. You need to get the facilities there when they are needed – not too soon and not too late.' Despite dissatisfaction with the facilities, Piper says Ebbsfleet retains its residents. 'You really don't see many 'for sale' signs around here compared with other places. There is a high level of community satisfaction.' It's not just slow building that has hit Ebbsfleet; the latest saga to stall development involves the discovery of a small colony of jumping spiders. Derelict land previously home to a cement works was bought for £34m by the corporation in 2019, with the intention to build densely on the 309-acre site around the station. Fast-forward to today and the building potential has been stripped down to just 86 acres after Natural England dropped an arachnid-shaped bombshell on the garden city. The presence of rare jumping spiders led to the scrubland being granted Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) status. Its designation meant building work had to be shelved, with the government-funded Natural England declaring that 'sustainable development and nature recovery must go hand in hand'. HS1 Ltd, the company which runs the high-speed train line, warned that the 'designation will in effect void the whole purpose behind the construction of Ebbsfleet's station', yet the battle to overturn the ruling was lost. Piper says: 'We objected quite strongly to the designation. But it was made clear there was no right of appeal, so we soon decided there was little we could do to change that. Some of the money was written down.' As a result of the SSSI designation, which effectively bans any future development, the land's value plummeted to £9m – and the sum of that lost government cash is a hefty £25.2m. It also means around 1,300 homes have been wiped from the Ebbsfleet masterplan, along with a vast entertainment resort planned to rival Disneyland. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer waded into the debate earlier this year when he lambasted the spider dilemma for blocking his party's housebuilding drive. 'The dream of home ownership for thousands of families is being held back by arachnids,' he wrote in a Telegraph column. 'It's nonsense. And we'll stop it,' he declared. Yet stripping land of its SSSI designation is easier said than done. The Government has pledged to build 12 new Ebbsfleets, of at least 10,000 homes in size. More than 100 proposals have been submitted to the Government's 'New Towns Taskforce', which will review options and announce winners in the summer. No specific locations of the bids have been announced, but most are from the South East, South West, East and London. How does it avoid these future garden cities from going the way of Ebbsfleet? It's not yet known if arm's-length development corporations will be set up for each location. They were used in post-war new towns like Milton Keynes, and by Lord Heseltine to successfully rejuvenate dilapidated parts of London, Liverpool and Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s. Writing for the Adam Smith Institute think tank, Labour MP Chris Curtis has urged the Government to 'cut through red tape, streamline planning and empower development corporations'. 'We have seen what can be achieved when bold action is taken – Milton Keynes and the London Docklands are a testament to that,' he said. 'Now we must apply that same determination again, ensuring that Britain embraces a spirit of ambition and gets building.' The new towns plan is part of Labour's manifesto pledge to ramp up housebuilding and deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament. The target, which the Government is falling shy of, is deemed unachievable by critics. Yet Piper backs the proposal. 'It's ambitious but I think you've got to have a target to aim for, otherwise you don't change behaviours,' he says. 'It's absolutely right to be highly ambitious. 'It's easy to deliver quality housing on small sites, working with niche builders and top-quality architects. The big challenge is getting volume housebuilders to produce that level of quality, which is obviously what the Government would want. 'I think we've done that successfully here, we have a mixture of housebuilders – Barratt, Persimmon, Redrow, for example – all delivering homes.' House prices in Ebbsfleet average £400,000 according to Rightmove, making it 'a relatively affordable place for the South East', according to Piper. Residents in neighbouring areas such Swanscombe and Greenhithe have complained of a strain on local services and traffic as a result of the emergence of Ebbsfleet. There have also been issues with local residents being unable to send their children to the town's new primary school as places were originally filled by those living further afield. Piper says: 'You need to build in your stewardship strategy right from the very beginning. We inherited a lot of things that were already in place, so we've had to do a lot retrospectively, which is 10 times harder. 'I also think in the very early days of the corporation the emphasis was almost exclusively on housing numbers. You can build houses but you're not actually building homes. You're certainly not building communities. We've therefore put a great emphasis on doing that.' But perhaps the biggest lesson from Ebbsfleet's fragmented creation and spider-gate for the Government's future garden cities is forming harmonious relationships between its own departments. After all, the Ministry of Housing (the department sponsoring Ebbsfleet's development corporation) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (the department sponsoring Natural England) work just metres away from each other in the same building in London's Marsham Street. 'Creating a place is dependent on a lot of other agencies and public bodies,' says Piper. 'There needs to be strong alignment at a national government level between different departments.'
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
SNP: Labour costing households in South Lanarkshire £165m
A spokesperson for South Lanarkshire Council defended the use of the funding model, saying it had allowed the authority to rebuild its entire school estate. Labour claimed the SNP were trying to deflect from their own record of local authority funding cuts. READ MORE: PFI contracts were introduced by John Major's Conservative government in the 1990s to fund infrastructure projects with private capital. The approach was later expanded by Tony Blair's Labour government and rebranded as PPP. Though hundreds of schools, hospitals and roads were built under these schemes, they have been criticised for long-term repayment costs far exceeding the original construction value. Since 2005, the Scottish Government has replaced PFI with non-profit distributing (NPD) and hub models, which aim to limit private profits by removing dividend payments. These alternatives have funded £3.3bn in infrastructure projects. The long-term financial burden of PFI was highlighted in a report by Audit Scotland last year, which found NHS Scotland is still less than halfway through repaying its PFI debts — more than 25 years after contracts were signed. BBC Scotland has also reported that at least 11 Scottish PFI schemes may require expensive buyouts at the end of their terms, including Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and University Hospital Wishaw. The council said PFI had allowed them rebuild every school in the regionSince Labour took control of South Lanarkshire Council in 2022, the local authority has paid — or is projected to pay — £165.29m in PFI and PPP repayments over four years: £39.81m in 2022/23, £40.80m in 2023/24, £41.82m in 2024/25, and £42.86m in this financial year. SNP MSP Collette Stevenson said the figures exposed the 'true price of Labour failure' and claimed the increasing costs were the result of 'decades-old policy decisions' that continue to drain local budgets. 'Labour's PFI and PPP failure is costing households across South Lanarkshire more and more every year — hitting this community with a bill of almost £43m this year,' she said. 'In government, the SNP has delivered for this community; scrapping PFI and PPP contracts and providing record funding for local authorities — much of which goes towards mitigating the impact of Labour decisions like PFI.' She added: 'Whether it is decades-old policy decisions like PFI, their decision to cut the Winter Fuel Payment or the council's decision to slash school bus provision, Labour in power is costing households dearly. 'Scotland has always been an afterthought to the Labour Party — but the SNP under John Swinney's leadership will always stand up for Scotland and be on the side of communities like South Lanarkshire.' A council spokesperson said: 'The council has utilised different financing options at different times in order to rebuild every single secondary and primary school in the area. "The result is a fantastic learning environment for every pupil in the area — and what many consider to be the best schools estate in the United Kingdom — including 127 new primary schools that were funded directly by the council. 'Part of the due diligence process undertaken for the secondary school contract was a comparison exercise signed off by Audit Scotland and the Scottish Government. 'In terms of secondary schools, funding is provided by the Scottish Government towards the costs of these contracts.' READ MORE Scottish Labour also hit back, with local government spokesperson Mark Griffin accusing the SNP of trying to 'deflect' from its own record. 'The SNP is the architect of austerity in Scotland's councils and this desperate attempt at deflection will not hide that,' he said. 'The SNP has raided over £480m from core South Lanarkshire Council budgets over recent years, undermining vital local services. 'Despite the SNP's relentless campaign of cuts, the Labour council has protected frontline services and delivered the lowest Council Tax increase in the country for local families.' The row comes as the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election enters it final week.
