Garden villages are a good idea. Let’s get the bulldozers rolling

There are few terms in the English language as irritating as ‘eco-village’ – which is really just ‘housing estate’ dressed up to sound more acceptable to Nimbys. Nevertheless, today’s announcement of 14 such ‘garden villages’ should be welcomed. Concentrating new homes in purpose-built new towns, villages and suburbs, where services and infrastructure are built as part of the development, upsets people who live nearby but ultimately it is the least painful way of accommodating the new homes which are so desperately needed.

And this time, please, can we please get the bulldozers rolling. For years, George Osborne used to talk about new towns. But while they got stuck in the pipeline, something quite different happened: the government loosened the planning system so that developers – at least those with good lobbying skills, if not actual corruption — can cherry-pick sites wherever they fancy. The result has been little developments of executive homes springing up along country lanes which can’t cope with the traffic.