New towns plan for England risks missing housing targets, Rayner told

Angela Rayner has been warned that the government could risk missing its housing targets by placing too much emphasis on creating new towns across England.

- Richard Partington

The deputy prime minister announced plans last month for the "largest housebuilding programme since the postwar period", kickstarted by the construction of a new generation of towns.

Designed to help meet the government's target to build 1.5m homes over the next five years, the plan is inspired by the creation of dozens of new communities in England after the second world war - including at Stevenage, Warrington and Milton Keynes.

However, analysis shared with the Guardian by the urban policy thinktank Centre for Cities shows the programme only accounted for 3.3% of all new housebuilding in the 40 years after the 1946 New Towns Act.

Between 1947 and 1991, the study found that new town development corporations in England oversaw the building of 307,000 homes - the same number the government will need to build on average each year up to 2029.