Forest City
A lot gets said about Forest City — in Parliament, in the press, in village Facebook groups. Some of it is fair criticism, and where it is, we say so. Some of it is out of date. Some of it is simply wrong.
This page collects the claims we hear most often and answers each one, with sources. We’re not neutral — we’re the people proposing the city, and you should read everything here knowing that. But every fact on this page is checkable, and when a claim has a point, we concede it. If you’ve heard something about Forest City that isn’t answered here, ask us and we’ll add it.
What actually happened is stranger, and rather more flattering: we never applied.
Forest City was included in the New Towns programme's public review without our asking — a pleasant surprise, since it meant the proposal was already being taken seriously enough to assess. But it also meant our very initial research was measured against criteria built for a different kind of project — sites of around 10,000 homes, ready to deliver quickly through existing mechanisms — years before we would put Forest City forward for any review.
Measured that way, the findings were unsurprising: funding not yet committed, delivery structure not yet built, land agreements not yet complete. All true. They are also phases two and three of our published plan, and at the time we were in phase one. Judging Forest City on shovel-readiness today is judging an Olympic bid by whether the stadium is already built.
The route hasn't changed and was never the New Towns programme: £250 million of private masterplanning, then public examination through the Government's Strategic Planning process, and then — only then — a decision on a development corporation. When Forest City is ready to be judged, we'll be the ones asking for it.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Has the Government rejected Forest City? →
No — and notice that the number keeps changing while the method stays the same.
The method: take the difference between Forest City’s ~£350,000 home price and what a private developer would charge for a similar home, multiply by 400,000 homes, and call the result a "gap" someone must pay. But that gap isn’t a cost — it’s the markup that expensive land and restricted supply currently let developers charge. Forest City removes the expensive land (bought at close to farmland prices through voluntary options, before city status inflates values). Remove the land speculation and the markup disappears. Nobody pays for something that no longer exists.
On current costings the sale price of each home covers the land, groundworks, utilities and build — and housing sales still return around £13 billion of surplus to the development corporation. A project that returns £13 billion does not contain a £100 billion hole, at any of the hole’s advertised sizes.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Is there a black hole in the finances? →
No. This one is a double count.
Forest City's water infrastructure — the 1,600-acre reservoir near Great Bradley, treatment works, and strategic pipeline connections — is costed at up to £4.5 billion inside the £45 billion infrastructure budget. The claim made in Parliament added roughly £4 billion of water costs on top of that budget. Counting the same reservoir twice doesn't reveal a black hole; it reveals a double count.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: The water plan →
Nobody will be displaced. This is the plan's most checkable false claim.
Forest City demolishes no homes and removes no residents. Every existing village within the area — Cowlinge, Great Thurlow, Withersfield and the rest — is retained, protected, and integrated, the way Hampstead was absorbed into London and Grantchester sits within Cambridge’s orbit.
The figure appears to count everyone currently living within the proposed area and label them "displaced." By that logic, every resident of every village near any development in Britain has been displaced. They haven’t; they’ll live in the same houses, on the same streets, with a train station and a hospital rather more nearby than before.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: What happens to the villages? →
The opposite is in the plan, in writing.
No home needs to be destroyed for Forest City. The villages named in this claim keep their buildings, their churches, their greens, their names and their parish identities — surrounded by trees, with legally protected settings for listed buildings (a development corporation has no power to override listing, and we wouldn’t want one that did).
"Erased" is a strong word for "given a nature reserve, a hospital and a railway station within a few miles."
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Villages within a city →
We have — and Anglian Water has told us the plans are technically possible.
Our Water Expert Working Group designed Forest City's supply — the Great Bradley reservoir, treatment works, and connections into the strategic network including the Cambridge–Rede pipeline — for integration with Anglian Water's system from the start. We have discussed the plans with Anglian Water directly, and their view is that they are technically possible.
Anyone still repeating the claim that we never made contact is repeating something that simply isn’t true.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: The water plan →
Water is the most legitimate constraint on growth in East Anglia — which is exactly why it's the most planned-for element of Forest City.
The supply plan, built by our Water Expert Working Group and tested against dry-year scenarios: a new 1,600-acre reservoir (Britain's first major one in over 30 years) providing over half the city's needs; pipeline connections into the strategic grid, including Anglian Water's Cambridge–Rede line; a modern treatment works; and an advanced recycling centre supplying industry and irrigation with treated wastewater so drinking water isn't spent on uses that don't need it. Homes are designed for 60–80 litres per person per day — roughly half the current UK average — with efficiency built in from day one. Together, supply exceeds projected peak demand with around 40% headroom.
And the comparison that matters: the alternative to Forest City is not "no development." It’s 340,000 homes scattered across the region as village extensions, each drawing on the same strained rivers and chalk aquifers, with no developer responsible for building any new supply at all.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: The water plan →
The figure did change from 80 to 160 acres — and we’ll say plainly why.
ACDC's return for risking around £280 million of private capital on masterplanning and land options is 160 acres of commercial land in the city's business district — disclosed in our published report, discussed openly in press interviews, and explained on this site.
It did start lower, at 80 acres. We increased it to 160 as the feasibility work progressed: the study taught us more about what the project would actually require, and the larger commercial allocation is what makes the financing work for the investors putting real money at risk years before there is any prospect of a return.
For scale: 160 acres is around 0.35% of the site, none of it housing. Our returns are deliberately tied to commercial land rather than homes — if the city fails to attract employers, we lose. That's the alignment, and it's the same structure that built Canary Wharf.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Who profits from Forest City? →
The claim confuses the advisory board with the people doing the technical work.
The advisory board exists for governance, economics and delivery experience — it includes the former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a former Secretary of State, an economic adviser to two Chancellors, and the masterplanner of King's Cross and the Olympic Park. The technical work sits with the expert working groups: more than forty architects, engineers, hydrologists, transport planners and housing lawyers contributing pro bono.
And here’s the part the claim misses: more than forty chartered professionals are giving their time to Forest City for free, because they think Britain should build again. That is a strange shape for a "developer land grab" — developers pay their consultants.
And the construction industry has examined the plan itself: the National Federation of Builders — the trade body for the people who actually build Britain — publicly backs Forest City. It would be an odd "no construction expertise" project that had the builders’ federation behind it.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Who is behind Forest City? →
There is, and it's growing — on the record, with names attached.
Landowners within the corridor have publicly backed the plan, including Henry D'Abo of West Wratting. Land is being secured through voluntary options — agreements landowners enter freely and are paid well above agricultural value for. In Haverhill, our co-design sessions are shaping the plan with residents directly. More than forty regional and national experts have given their time unpaid. And a growing number of people have signed the pledge supporting the city.
Is there local opposition too? Of course — there is to every proposal of consequence, and the opposing campaign is well organised and well publicised. But "no evidence of support" was never accurate, and it’s less accurate every month.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Supporters →
The area is published; the final boundary doesn't exist yet, because that's how planning works.
The proposed area — around 45,000 acres between Haverhill and Newmarket, east of Cambridge — is set out in our report, including a detailed map. The precise final boundary will be defined through masterplanning and examined publicly through the Government’s Strategic Planning process, which is the stage at which any project’s boundary becomes fixed.
What we can already say: Newmarket, the Heath, the gallops and the stud land sit outside the area; Haverhill sits at its edge as the gateway town; and every existing village within it is retained.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Where will Forest City be built? →
Half fair. Let's separate the halves.
£350,000 for a 1,720 sq ft four-bed is not affordable to everyone — we’ve never claimed otherwise, which is why around 30% of homes will be for rent through a rental cooperative, alongside three-beds around £230,000 and two-beds around £180,000. For comparison, the average Cambridge terraced house — 22 minutes away by rail — costs £494,000, and the equivalent family home over £1 million.
On "unproven": the mechanism is cheap land (bought at near-farmland prices through voluntary options) plus build-at-scale economics, with the Community Land Trust preventing the discount being flipped for profit. CLT homes are mortgaged in Britain today and the model has run for decades — though never at this scale, which is a fair challenge.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: The £350k home →
It would build on farmland — and reduce the region's total farmland loss while doing it.
The honest version first: the built footprint is around 31,500 acres once the nature reserve and lake are subtracted, and some of the land is good agricultural grade. Now the context: the region is already required to build 340,000 homes over 25 years. Built the default way — village extensions at 15 dwellings per hectare — that consumes at least 56,000 acres of greenfield, spread across dozens of communities.
Forest City delivers the same homes using three times less land per home, saving the East of England around 21,500 acres of farmland versus the sprawl that is otherwise coming. In national terms the footprint is a small fraction of one per cent of UK farmland. Opposing Forest City doesn’t save this farmland; it redistributes the loss, larger, across the whole region, with no reservoir and no reserve attached.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Will Forest City destroy Suffolk farmland? →
Some did. Some changed their minds when they read the plan.
Scepticism is the correct starting position for a proposal this size — we'd be sceptical too. What we'd point to: Jackie Sadek, one of the UK's most experienced regeneration figures, publicly called the plan not credible — then examined it, challenged us on what would need to be true, and joined the advisory board.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies' former director backs it. The National Federation of Builders backs it. The pattern we keep seeing is that distance breeds dismissal and detail changes minds — which is why the full report is public, and why this page exists.
Last checked: July 2026 · More: Who supports Forest City? →
Different continent, different model, different everything.
The Forest City in Johor, Malaysia is a $100 billion development best known for standing largely empty — homes built as investment products, far from demand. Ours starts from the opposite premise: it’s placed beside the most supply-starved labour market in Britain so the homes are lived in, and the Community Land Trust makes buying-to-leave-empty pointless, since homes can’t be flipped for profit. The only thing the two share is a name.
Last checked: July 2026
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