Old ideas and new towns in Labour’s housing plan | Letters

Wendy Shillam and Prof Roger Brown reflect on the party’s proposals to tackle the housing crisis

I enjoy the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast series as it gives a bit more air to issues of immediate importance. The episode on Labour’s housing plan (24 June) got me thinking. I used to work on Gordon Brown’s eco-towns project and found that the biggest objection was that new towns had failed in the past. We need to convince people that this programme signals change. This time, we need to do better.

Surely the best way is to use the new new towns to repair some of the less successful old new towns. Take Livingston, near Glasgow – not a disaster, but a “could do better”.

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