The Bank of England has already warned that the housing market is the biggest threat to the financial system in the UK and without serious efforts to tackle the housing shortfall the UK’s economy could further lead us to a position of economic decline. We look at whether the current push for New Towns and Garden Cities are the answer to this question.

The only garden city to be confirmed by the Government is Ebbsfleet, this is the first garden city to be built in over 100 years but let’s be honest and realistic about this, 15,000 new homes represents less than 1% of the required yearly homes. That means we would have to build 16 new garden cities each year over the next 15 years, (around 3.75 million new homes from household formation and a further a 1 million from the backlog), just to keep up with demand, but is 16 new garden cities realistic and is there the political will power to make this work?

According to Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the LSE undersupply of housing risks “more volatility in the economy”, going on to say: “downswings will become more violent, as well as the upswings,” with mortgages becoming an ever increasingly large “part of the assets of banks, as well as a huge part of personal debt”.

Other proposals are out there, one put forward by Town Planner David Rudlin is to expand 40 cities around the country, doubling them in size over the next 30 years. Even Princess Anne made a contribution to the discussion with the suggestion that many of the country’s 10,000 villages could take up the strain of new additional housing having the infrastructure already in place to accommodate some of the required growth.

It’s fair to say that there is always a place for garden cities in the housing strategy, we're always going to be looking for new undeveloped sites, for example the proposed scheme off junction 22 of the M62 could create huge infrastructure benefits for both Manchester and Leeds whilst being just further out that ideally envisaged in Rudlin's plans. But these garden cities alone will not solve our problems and the construction industry has to play a positive part in driving forward where, when and what should be built for the benefit of our industry and for the country more broadly.