A key government adviser on eco-towns told a Labour conference fringe event this week that only two or three of the plans were good enough to be developed.
Sunand Prasad, the president of the RIBA and a member of the eco-towns challenge panel set up by the communities department to check the quality of the developments, said all eco-towns needed to allow residents to live low-carbon lifestyles. He said: “I’d be very happy to see just two or three eco towns. Ten would definitely be too many on the evidence we have before us.”
At last year’s Labour party conference, prime minister Gordon Brown pledged to build 10 eco-towns. In April the government shortlisted 15 locations, however a number of developers have since pulled out, and there has been much speculation that it will ultimately go forward with just two or three.
Responding to a question at the same fringe event, Iain Wright, the junior housing minister, said the government had not yet decided how many eco-towns there would be. He said: “There is no set number in our minds. What we are doing is asking if they meet very strict criteria; it’s not a done deal at all.”
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