England First wave about post-war new towns and their planning The first wave of independent new towns was intended to help alleviate the housing shortages following the Second World War, beyond the green belt around London. Two sites in
County Durham were also designated. These designations were made under the
New Towns Act 1946 (
9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68). •
Stevenage, Hertfordshire (designated 11 November 1946) •
Crawley, Sussex (designated 9 January 1947) •
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire (designated 4 February 1947) •
Harlow, Essex (designated 25 March 1947) •
Newton Aycliffe, County Durham (designated 19 April 1947 as Aycliffe New Town) •
Peterlee, County Durham (designated 10 March 1948, as Easington New Town) •
Welwyn Garden City and
Hatfield, Hertfordshire (both designated 20 May 1948) •
Basildon, Essex (designated 4 January 1949) •
Bracknell, Berkshire (designated 17 June 1949) •
Corby, Northamptonshire (designated 1 April 1950)
Second wave (formerly Dawley New Town) was created from a number of towns which were joined around a central service area. The second wave (1961–1964) was likewise initiated to alleviate housing shortfalls. Two of the locations below (Redditch and Dawley New Townlater renamed
Telford) are near the
West Midlands conurbation and were designed for Birmingham and
Wolverhampton overspill; another two (Runcorn and Skelmersdale) are near
Merseyside and were intended as overspill for the city of
Liverpool. •
Skelmersdale, Lancashire (designated 9 October 1961) •
Dawley New Town, Shropshire (designated 16 January 1963) •
Redditch, Worcestershire (designated 10 April 1964) •
Runcorn, Cheshire (designated 10 April 1964) •
Washington, Tyne and Wear (designated 24 July 1964)
Third wave The third wave of new towns (1967–1970) allowed for additional growth, chiefly further north from the previous London new towns, among them "
Central Lancashire New Town" and
Warrington. Dawley New Town was redesignated as Telford New Town, with a much larger area, as overspill for Birmingham and nearby towns including
Wolverhampton. With a target population of 250,000 and a planning brief to become the first "new city", the largest of these was
Milton Keynes at the northern edge of
the South East, about halfway between Birmingham and London. In the
East Midlands, the existing town of
Northampton was expanded. The city of
Peterborough was designated as a new town to accommodate overspill from London. •
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire (designated 23 January 1967) •
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (designated 21 July 1967) •
Northampton, Northamptonshire (designated 14 February 1968) •
Warrington, Cheshire (designated 26 April 1968), resulting in the
Birchwood development •
Telford, Shropshire (designated 29 November 1968) •
Central Lancashire New Town, Lancashire (designated 26 March 1970), which covered a conurbation focused on the towns of
Preston,
Chorley and
Leyland, and expanded
Clayton-le-Woods into a larger urban area with the
Clayton Brook development. Its area also included what are today large towns or villages, albeit they were smaller at the time of the new town designation:
Bamber Bridge,
Coppull,
Penwortham and
Euxton. It was initially planned to adjoin these areas into one city, with the name Redrose suggested, but after years of dissatisfaction with its progress amongst locals and politicians, its Development Corporation was ultimately disbanded in 1985 by the Thatcher government. Central Lancashire was retrospectively described as "more akin to an Urban Development Corporation" and "never intended to be recognised as a new town in its own right". coinciding with the creation of the above new towns, and Yate pointedly marketed itself as a "new town" during the 1960s. However, they differ in that they were not commissioned by any of the New Town Acts.
21st Century In September 2024, the
new Labour government established a New Towns Taskforce to identify a new generation of new towns in England. A year later, the Taskforce recommended 12 locations: •
Adlington,
Cheshire •
Brabazon,
South Gloucestershire •
Crews Hill, Enfield •
RAF Upper Heyford at
Heyford Park in
Cherwell, Oxfordshire •
Leeds South Bank •
Victoria North on the edge of
Manchester city centre •
Marlcombe, East Devon •
Milton Keynes •
Plymouth •
Tempsford, Bedfordshire •
Thamesmead, south-east London •
Worcestershire Parkway train station In March 2026, the government announced that list was being reduced to seven, with Adlington, Heyford Park, Marlcombe, Plymouth and Wychavon being dropped from the list.
Wales •
Cwmbran, Torfaen (designated 4 November 1949) •
Newtown, Powys (designated 18 December 1967) •
Coedffranc (Currently expanding)
Llanharan and
Oakdale, though not designated new towns, owe their expansion from small villages to being targeted for housing developments in the 21st Century.
Scotland Six new towns in Scotland were designated between 1947 and 1973, mostly for the overspill population of
Glasgow. •
East Kilbride (designated 6 May 1947) •
Glenrothes (designated 30 June 1948) •
Cumbernauld (designated 9 December 1955, extended 19 March 1973) •
Livingston (designated 16 April 1962) •
Irvine (designated 9 November 1966, and encompassing the existing settlement of
Kilwinning) •
Stonehouse (designated 17 July 1973, de-designated in 1976 after fewer than 100 houses had been built)
Subsequent developments •
Blindwells: new settlement under construction between
Tranent and
Port Seton in
East Lothian •
Chapelton of Elsick (in progress) •
Countesswells: partially constructed new settlement west of
Aberdeen between
Cults and
Kingswells •
Dalgety Bay: a new town developed in the 1970s and 1980s in
Fife • Dargavel: new town being built on former BAE munitions works site adjacent to
Bishopton in
Renfrewshire •
Erskine and
Inchinnan, new town developed in the 1970s and 1980s in Renfrewshire, initially by the Scottish Special Housing Association •
Ravenscraig: former steelworks site in
North Lanarkshire (in progress) •
Shawfair: new settlement under construction in south-east
Edinburgh spanning the City of Edinburgh Council and Midlothian Council administrative boundaries •
Tornagrain: a new town near
Inverness (in progress) •
Tweedbank: village built in the 1970s on a greenfield site in the central
Scottish Borders, initially by a government body, the Scottish Special Housing Association •
Winchburgh, West Lothian. Expansion from village to a new town.
Future developments •
Forestmill: new settlement proposed in Clackmannanshire in close proximity to the Fife Council administrative boundary •
Owenstown: new settlement proposed in the South Lanarkshire area to the south of Lanark
Northern Ireland The
New Towns Act (Northern Ireland) 1965 gave the Minister of Development of the
Government of Northern Ireland the power to designate an area as a new town, and to appoint a development commission. An order could be made to transfer municipal functions of all or part of any existing local authorities to the commission, which took the additional title of
urban district council, although unelected. This was done in the case of Craigavon. The New Towns Amendment Act 1968 was passed to enable the establishment of the Londonderry Development Commission to replace the
County Borough and rural district of Londonderry, and implement the Londonderry Area Plan. On 3 April 1969, the development commission took over the municipal functions of the two councils, the area becoming Londonderry Urban District. •
Craigavon (designated 26 July 1965) •
Antrim (designated 1966) •
Ballymena (designated 1967) •
Derry (designated 5 February 1969) is part of the Kartographer extension, enabled on en.wikipedia. • The block contains a single GeoJSON FeatureCollection with one Point per officially designated new town. • Each marker's "title" is a wikilink, so clicking it opens the town's article in the same way any
wikilink does. • "marker-color" is colour-coded by wave / region: First wave (England) #d62728 red Second wave (England) #ff7f0e orange Third wave (England) #2ca02c green Wales #9467bd purple Scotland #1f77b4 blue Northern Ireland #17becf cyan Proposed (Taskforce) #888888 grey
Map of designated new towns The map below shows all new towns designated under the
New Towns Act 1946 and its successors, plus the seven sites confirmed by the
New Towns Taskforce in March 2026. Markers are colour-coded by designation wave (England), constituent country, or as proposed (grey), and clicking a marker opens that town's article. { "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Stevenage", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 11 November 1946", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.2025, 51.9026] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Crawley", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 9 January 1947", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.1872, 51.1092] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Hemel Hempstead", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 4 February 1947", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.4691, 51.7526] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Harlow", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 25 March 1947", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [0.1095, 51.7717] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Newton Aycliffe", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 19 April 1947", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-1.5717, 54.6207] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Peterlee", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 10 March 1948", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-1.3326, 54.7607] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Welwyn Garden City", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 20 May 1948", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.2089, 51.8016] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Hatfield", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 20 May 1948", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.2249, 51.7634] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Basildon", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 4 January 1949", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [0.4886, 51.5762] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Bracknell", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 17 June 1949", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.7506, 51.4136] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Corby", "description": "First wave (England) — designated 1 April 1950", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#d62728" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.6932, 52.4866] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Skelmersdale", "description": "Second wave (England) — designated 9 October 1961", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#ff7f0e" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.7740, 53.5547] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Telford", "description": "Second wave (England) — designated 16 January 1963 as Dawley New Town; redesignated as Telford 29 November 1968", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#ff7f0e" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.4453, 52.6784] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Redditch", "description": "Second wave (England) — designated 10 April 1964", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#ff7f0e" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-1.9450, 52.3068] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Runcorn", "description": "Second wave (England) — designated 10 April 1964", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#ff7f0e" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.7300, 53.3416] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Washington", "description": "Second wave (England) — designated 24 July 1964", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#ff7f0e" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-1.5167, 54.9000] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Milton Keynes", "description": "Third wave (England) — designated 23 January 1967; also selected by the New Towns Taskforce in 2025 for further expansion", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#2ca02c" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.7594, 52.0406] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Peterborough", "description": "Third wave (England) — designated 21 July 1967", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#2ca02c" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.2405, 52.5695] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Northampton", "description": "Third wave (England) — designated 14 February 1968", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#2ca02c" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.9027, 52.2405] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Warrington", "description": "Third wave (England) — designated 26 April 1968", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#2ca02c" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.5970, 53.3900] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Central Lancashire", "description": "Third wave (England) — designated 26 March 1970 (Preston / Chorley / Leyland)", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#2ca02c" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.7031, 53.7632] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Cwmbran", "description": "Wales — designated 4 November 1949", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#9467bd" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-3.0207, 51.6539] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Newtown", "description": "Wales — designated 18 December 1967", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#9467bd" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-3.3133, 52.5145] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
East Kilbride", "description": "Scotland — designated 6 May 1947", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-4.1769, 55.7644] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Glenrothes", "description": "Scotland — designated 30 June 1948", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-3.1762, 56.1959] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Cumbernauld", "description": "Scotland — designated 9 December 1955", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-3.9919, 55.9469] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Livingston", "description": "Scotland — designated 16 April 1962", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-3.5226, 55.9027] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Irvine", "description": "Scotland — designated 9 November 1966", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-4.6595, 55.6195] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Stonehouse", "description": "Scotland — designated 17 July 1973 (de-designated 1976)", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#1f77b4" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-4.0192, 55.6952] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Craigavon", "description": "Northern Ireland — designated 26 July 1965", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#17becf" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-6.3877, 54.4475] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Antrim", "description": "Northern Ireland — designated 1966", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#17becf" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-6.2068, 54.7136] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Ballymena", "description": "Northern Ireland — designated 1967", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#17becf" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-6.2789, 54.8642] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Derry", "description": "Northern Ireland — designated 5 February 1969", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#17becf" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-7.3086, 54.9966] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Brabazon", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), South Gloucestershire", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.5790, 51.5202] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Crews Hill", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), Enfield", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.1147, 51.6792] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Leeds South Bank", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), Leeds", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-1.5481, 53.7884] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Victoria North", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), Manchester", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-2.2310, 53.4954] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Tempsford", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), Bedfordshire", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [-0.2940, 52.1683] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": { "title": "
Thamesmead", "description": "Proposed — New Towns Taskforce (March 2026), south-east London", "marker-symbol": "town-hall", "marker-size": "medium", "marker-color": "#888888" }, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [0.1184, 51.4900] } } ] } Designated new towns in the United Kingdom — click a marker to open its article. ==Other "overspill" developments==