The Town and Country Planning Association defines a garden city as a “holistically planned new settlement” that enhances the natural environment while offering high-quality affordable housing.
Matthew Pennycook, the housing and planning minister, said: “A failure to ensure the development system is working properly has held back the delivery of tens of thousands of new homes over recent years and this Government will work in partnership with all those who are focused on turning things around.
“The landmark new partnership announced today will support our commitment to ramp up housing supply and boost economic growth by developing more large-scale, attractive and sustainable places across the country with the homes, jobs and infrastructure that communities need to thrive.”
Alongside new homes, the partnership will also look to develop retail and leisure space and large commercial sites such as offices or industrial facilities.
Barratt, which is the UK’s largest housebuilder and listed on the FTSE 100, experienced a plunge in its profits last year as total home completions dropped by almost a fifth to 14,000.
The company blamed high interest rates and inflation for the declines and warned completions will drop further in the current financial year.
Barratt, which bought rival Redrow for £2.5bn this year, said it was expecting a boost to housebuilding from 2026 as Labour’s planning reforms come into effect.
David Thomas, the chief executive of Barratt, said: “We are committed to playing our part in delivering the millions of new homes the country needs over the next 10 to 20 years. To help us achieve this goal, we need to deliver more large developments.
“Through the Made Partnership, we are creating a master developer which can manage the infrastructure and placemaking that is needed to deliver at scale, whilst consistently achieving the high-quality and sustainability standards that Barratt is known for.”
Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, said: “Our pioneering Made Partnership between Lloyds Banking Group, Homes England and Barratt Developments has created a master developer – enabling the largest-scale projects and place-based solutions to be achieved, and helping to deliver tens of thousands of new homes which are so urgently required. This is the cross-sector collaboration we need, at significant ambition and scale.”