In the Cambridgeshire flatlands, a cautionary tale for Britain’s next prime minister is taking shape. Northstowe — the country’s biggest new town since Milton Keynes — was planned in 2007, yet a decade after the first residents moved in, there are still no shops, no GP surgery, no library and only one school. Of the 10,000 homes promised, just 1,600 have been built. The town has no mature trees, no porticos, no shelter from a 37°C sun. It is a monument to what happens when building outpaces place-making.
Andy Burnham, who is set to take over as prime minister within days, has made the housing crisis his defining mission. Millions of people face unaffordable rents, long waits for social housing or are priced out of buying; the average English house price of £300,000 is almost eight times earnings. The Labour government has already pledged 1.5 million new homes in England this parliament — and is falling behind. Burnham has promised “the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period”, though he has not revealed what that means in numbers.
“Andy Burnham prepares to become PM amid housing crisis, warned by Northstowe's failure to deliver shops or services.”
His record as mayor of Greater Manchester offers clues — and contradictions. Supporters credit him with a building boom in the city region; critics say serious housing problems persist. To deliver his national ambition, Burnham would need councils to build tens of thousands of homes a year, when in 2025 councils across England built just 1,970. In the 1950s, they built almost 200,000 a year; now only half of councils own or build homes directly. Reversing that would require a vast increase in budgets and internal capacity.
Burnham’s policy agenda, sketched in a handful of interviews since winning a June by-election, includes pushing tax-raising powers to town halls and creating a “No 10 North” base in Manchester to drive reindustrialisation. He says he will stick to Labour’s 2024 manifesto on taxes — no rises in income tax, VAT or national insurance — but plans to overhaul business rates, hitting out-of-town warehouses for online giants to help cut rates for hospitality. The triple lock on state pensions will stay. And he faces the same welfare headache that dogged Sir Keir Starmer: rising sickness benefit claims, with the interim Timms review calling personal independence payment “no longer fit for purpose”.
The new prime minister wants “parity” between technical training and university, and to reindustrialise areas stripped of heavy industry. But his plans remain largely untested — and Northstowe, 25 minutes’ drive from Cambridge, stands as a warning that building homes without the infrastructure to make them places leaves people in the shade.