A Word to Our Neighbours

What Actually Happens When You Build a City

There's a reason Britain hasn't built a new city in over 50 years. It's expensive. It's complicated. It's disruptive. Few people want to do it.

But when you actually commit to building a proper city—not a housing estate, not a or edge of town "development," but a real place where a million people will live—something changes. Suddenly the financial maths works for things that never normally happen:

• Affordable homes that will be reserved specifically for you and your children to buy. Four-bedroom family houses for £350,000. And places to rent on a co-operative basis. Not luxury flats for millionaires.
• New schools. Not eventually. Not "phased in." Properly funded, properly staffed schools that open when families arrive.
• Hospitals. With brand new A&E facilities. Because a city of a million people needs several, and we're making sure they'll be there from the first phase of development.
• Public transport that works. Regular trains to Cambridge and London. Buses that run at least every 15 minutes. Because the passenger numbers finally justify the routes, and we're building the infrastructure to support it. Most especially from Haverhill.
• Real jobs. Everything from decades of construction work to cutting edge scientific research, and advanced manufacturing to family run restaurants. The kind of economic activity that creates opportunities for your kids without them having to leave.
• Twelve thousand acres of new native forest. More nature than existed here before, not less. West Suffolk already has less tree cover (~10%) than the English average (15%). Ancient woodland corridors, nature reserves, places your grandchildren will explore. We're committed to creating a place where nature thrives.

These things don't happen with normal housing developments. They can't. The numbers don't work. But they do work at city scale—and we're committing to building them.

This City Is for You Too

We're not building this next to you. We're building it with you.

• You're part of the design process. Your input shapes what this city becomes. The layout, the green spaces, the connections to existing communities—we want your voice and ideas in these decisions from the start.
• A significant lump-sum payment for those closest to the first phase of development. Because your life will change, and that should be compensated properly, not with token gestures.
• Infrastructure that serves you too. That new train line? You can use it. Those schools and hospitals? They're not just for newcomers. They're for everyone.
• Business opportunities. If you run a shop, a trade, a service—you'll suddenly have a million potential customers within the city.
• Your property value. A new city means new transport links, new amenities, new economic activity. That benefits everyone in the areas surrounding the city.
• Protection of what you love. We're not building on ancient woodland. We're not paving over what makes this place special. We're creating more protected green space than currently exists—because this should be a place you're proud to live near.

We want you to be excited about this city. We want your grandchildren to grow up thinking "this was built properly, this was done right." That only happens if you're genuinely part of it.

What Is Motivating Us to Do This?

Britain is broken. Most especially when it comes to housing. Young people can't afford to live here anymore. Families are trapped in overpriced rentals. The solution has been to stick a few hundred homes here, a few hundred there, with no infrastructure, no planning, no community.

We think that's the wrong way.

If you're going to build anyway—and Britain needs millions of homes—do it properly. Build a real place. With schools and hospitals and parks and jobs, and transport. Build somewhere people actually want to live, where nature thrives, where communities form naturally.

That's what cities do. That's what Milton Keynes did fifty years ago. But we've come a long way since then. That's what we're committing to now.

We Need to Hear From You

You know this area better than anyone. You know what works, what doesn't, what matters, what would be unforgivable to lose.

We're not just asking for feedback. We're asking you to help shape this from the ground up.

What are your concerns? What would make you excited about this? What are we missing? What are your red lines? What opportunities do you see that we haven't thought of?

This only works if it works for you. Your community becomes part of something bigger, and we want that to be something you're genuinely proud of.