Black Country garden city could boost local economy by £18m
A proposed Black Country Garden City will be the biggest, and fastest, housing scheme of its kind since the Second World War, it has been claimed.
Thirty one urban areas, from Aldridge to West Bromwich, will combine to form the city, with 45,000 new homes built over the next decade, under the plan being unveiled in France this week.
The idea of garden cities is for planned, self-contained communities surrounded by areas of greenbelt, such as parkland, with their own homes and industry. These are all linked together as one city. A series of new garden city schemes have been launched by the Government over the last two years in the South of England, but they are dwarfed by the ambitious Black Country scheme.
The development is being led by the Black Country LEP and the Homes and Communities Agency, with the support of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Representatives from the region are now seeking £6 billion in investment across 550 sites, and have set out their stall to potential investors at the annual MIPIM property festival in Cannes this week.
Thousands of potential investors are attending the event looking for projects that offer the chance of big returns, and a major housing project could be just what they are looking for.
The Black Country needs the homes to cater for the unprecedented levels of demand for homes and to sustain the record levels of private sector investment coming in to the region. If successful, it will transform the Black Country as a place to work and live.
The garden city's backers claim the Black Country is the fastest growing area within the Midlands – its economy expanded 4.5% in 2013 – and it attracted record levels of foreign business investment last year in what is Britain's most successful enterprise zone.
The Garden City would boost the local economy by £18 billion over ten years and could be a magnet for investment into its internationally established automotive, aerospace and construction sectors – which account for 60 per cent of UK automotive research & development; 20 per cent of the UK's total aerospace output; and through construction technologies contribute more than £1 billion to the UK economy.
The garden city will boost housing capacity for workers in those sectors, but is also a reaction to the surge in demand for housing triggered by record levels of business investment. House prices in nearby Wolverhampton grew more than eight per cent last year, and its population is swelling by 5.5 per cent every year.
Local leaders are determined to use the Garden City to attract skilled workers, and to retain graduates from the 10 West Midlands based universities, including the University of Wolverhampton in the Black Country. They believe the development will create a vibrant area for the arts, heritage, street food, performance and crafts, which will boost the region's credentials as a place to live.
Chris Handy, chief executive of the Accord Housing Group, is at MIPIM representing Black Country LEP – the joint body of civic and business leaders with the role of boosting jobs and investment in the area – of which he is a board member.
He said: "The Garden City is a vital part of the Black Country's growth plans and future success. It will increase the appeal of the region as a place to live and work, and will boost the local construction industry and its supply chain.
"It is close to skilled jobs and universities, a regional market of 5 million people, and is served by quality transport connections. Not the since the Second World War has a Garden City been built on this scale or at this speed. It's going to transform the perception of the Black Country and demonstrate to the rest of Britain that we are a region that is going places."
The new Garden City is part of a wider series of transformations happening across the West Midlands, in a region revitalised by private sector investment and emboldened by its devolution deal. The redevelopment of swathes of Birmingham's city centre finished last year, and the city has laid out plans to build 80,000 new homes by 2030. And Solihull has set out plans to regenerate the UK Central area around NEC and Birmingham Airport, which is expected to create 100,000 jobs and boost GDP by £19.5 billion by 2040.
The Black Country Garden City concept was originally developed by a group of local built environment professionals working with the regional design agency MADE.
