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'Garden city' plans for Bichester announced with 13,000 new homes

The town of Bicester, Oxfordshire, has been chosen as the site for the coalition’s second new garden city, the government has confirmed, according to the BBC.

Up to 13,000 new homes are due to be built on the edge of the town, as part of the coalition’s plans to deal with the UK’s housing shortage.

The measure was announced as part of a National Infrastructure Plan.

Chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, believes that a government agency could plan, build and sell tens of thousands of homes on public sector land.

He suggested that building projects of this nature could go some way to supplying the 250,000 houses that need to be built every year to meet the current housing shortfall, rather than selling land to private sector house builders who did nothing with the land.

A pilot project is already under way at Northstowe, a former RAF base in Cambridgeshire, with the capacity for 10,000 houses, making it the largest planned town since Milton Keynes.

Bicester is expected to get a new railway station to serve the expanded population as part of plans previously detailed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Danny Alexander said: “New houses support economic growth and are a crucial element of a fair society, so I’ve prioritised the investment of almost £2bn to ensure we can build on average 55,000 new homes a year until 2020,”

“Combined with the other measures we are announcing today, we will vastly increase supply by providing funding certainty, unlocking capacity in housing associations and kick starting stalled regeneration projects.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .