Nicki Chapman Britain's Home Truths

Us Brits have a passion for property

and of course our national obsession is house prices.

-How much to buy?

-You're looking at about 1.7 million for an apartment like this.

But housing is about so much more than bricks and mortar.

Look at the smile on my face.

It's about who we are and how we choose to live.

75 years since the Beveridge report vowed to rebuild Britain's housing...

Slums must go.

..we are opening the doors to Britain's home truths...

From council houses...

..to suburban semis.

High rises...

..to country pads...

In fact, anywhere we call home.

..to find out if three-quarters of a century later,

we really have built a better place to live.

As the presenter of Escape To The Country and Wanted Down Under,

I have met loads of people who just wanted to run away

'and start a new life somewhere else.

'And I always know how they feel.

'But escaping for me isn't to a countryside pad,

'let alone a different continent.

'No, I find freedom by leaving the city

'and going back to my old home town of Herne Bay.'

I love this journey.

I commuted up to London every single day for about a year

and on the way home, after Gillingham, if you glimpse,

if you look out just past the hills,

you could actually see the sea and on a good day,

you could smell it and then I knew I was nearly home.

And this is what it looks like.

Now, to the outsider,

this place may look pretty traditional

and even a little bit old-fashioned,

but I want to show you how, in its day,

it was an example of revolutionary town planning

and was, in fact, one of Britain's early new towns.

'First, though, I have arrived.

'Yes, I'm home.'

MUSIC: Shang-A-Lang by Bay City Rollers

Every time I return to this place,

I get that sense of having escaped the stresses of my life in the city.

And it's not just me, it's done the same for generations of visitors.

Back in the late '60s and '70s,

traditional seaside towns like Herne Bay were still all the rage,

offering hard-working families the chance to get away from it all

for a week by the coast.

They were also where teenagers liked to hang out playing the amusements,

something I have never tired of.

Yes!

'For those of us who lived here full-time,

'you can imagine how this carefree spirit ran through us like a stick of rock.'

Look at the smile on my face.

This is my old road.

I moved in when I was three.

It is a cul-de-sac.

We used to play on this road all the time, no worries about cars.

One of my best friends lived there.

And ahead of us...

..is my old house. I haven't been here for years.

Up this road. And there she is.

And that's my parents' room up there.

And they extended it. They had two rooms and I was right at the end,

single room, as you do,

never would have had a double bed in a child's room.

Had all my posters up on the wall.

I loved this house.

It's got a certain innocence about it.

My parents paid just under £7,000 for this property.

Now what's it worth?

I don't know. 300, 350,000, it's got to be, hasn't it?

It's extraordinary.

MUSIC: Blue Monday by New Order

Not that I spent that much time at home.

I was more likely to be found on the promenade,

roller-skating with my friends or flirting with boys.

Little did I know at the time, of course,

but seaside towns like Herne Bay

were about to go into serious decline

as cheap foreign travel replaced the traditional family holiday.

And as the '70s gave way to the '80s,

a lot of younger people took the opportunity to seek their fortune

in the Big Smoke.

I should know - I was one of them.

I'd started a career in the music business,

eventually working with people like the Spice Girls and Simon Cowell.

But living in amongst the pollution,

noise and general chaos of the concrete jungle,

I learned to escape back to the simplicity of my little town

and the people whom I loved most,

like my sister, Shelley, and best friend, Krista.

While they get the kettle on,

I'm raiding Mum's attic for some old keepsakes to help jog our memories

of what it was like to live here.

Whereabouts is it? Is it with these old cards?

No. It's on the other side, it's in a blue box.

-Can you see it?

-Is it this one?

-That's the one.

-The memory bank.

-Oh, yes, I'll be careful with that then.

Now, Nana bought me this.

She did. Yes. Look.

I never looked like that whenever I did ballet.

You've kept these and I didn't realise I'd done it, actually.

All the exams.

Roller-skating, I got up to grade four.

I don't know whether she still works.

Shall we try?

MUSIC PLAYS

She does.

Look!

Oh!

-Makes me a bit emotional.

-Yes.

Aw!

We'll close her up.

I'm not the only one stepping down memory lane today.

I wonder what Krista and Shelley have dug up.

What are you two looking at there? Oh, dear.

Really bad photographs.

There you are.

It's the bubble perms that get me.

Bobby socks.

Growing up here was I think lovely.

-It was great.

-Looking back, did you enjoy it?

It was always sunny, I think.

That's what I always remember.

We were always at the beach.

Either at your beach hut or we were down at the sailing club.

Or roller-skating.

Early courting days.

You know I was always known as Nicki's sister.

And I would have been Nicki's friend.

-No!

-You were always very popular.

No, you were.

I think you're being a bit generous there.

I've been going around looking at other towns to see what makes a town.

Why do you think Herne Bay is so special?

Well, it's got history to it.

It's got a beautiful seafront.

We've got the promenade which you can walk all the way along.

We've still got our pier and it is still used

and it's beautiful now with the helter-skelter on it.

People don't like to move into London -

they want to stay here, I think.

We're close to the countryside as well.

We got the sea and the countryside, we're so lucky.

We were very lucky growing up here, weren't we?

-Definitely.

-The great thing is we all want to come back when we can

and most importantly, we're all friends.

Still to this day.

That will never change.

OK, so my home truth is of escape to a simpler,

healthier and yes, nostalgic way of life.

And that's something that the founders of Herne Bay

wouldn't have found surprising at all.

In fact, it's how this place was planned and designed,

to provide a retreat for workers,

wanting to escape their often-difficult lives in the industrial city.

In many ways, it was one of the country's first new towns.

Hi, Colleen.

-Hello, Nicki.

-Lovely to meet you.

Which is certainly the view of local historian,

Colleen Ashwin-Keen, whom I'm meeting at one

of my roller-skating haunts, the old bandstand.

So when did Herne Bay as I know it really come into its own?

People were starting to come to Herne Bay in the late 1700s

and there was a gentleman, Mr Burge,

who gathered together some speculators

and they decided to build a new town.

I must admit, I didn't realise that Herne Bay was a new town.

Yes, I have a plan which I can show you.

They planned it round three squares - Hanover Square,

Brunswick Square and Oxendon Square.

It sounds very posh, doesn't it?

They were trying to attract holiday-makers,

because a lot of the houses,

when you look at the old census returns, were boarding houses.

It was at the time when sea bathing was becoming very popular.

And Herne Bay was renowned for its healthy air.

Yes, absolutely.

It still is healthy today.

They also had a consortium and sold shares in the pier.

I think the development of the town, they were making money.

Certainly business-minded.

MUSIC: Enola Gay by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

And the story was the same across the land, from Blackpool to Bognor,

all offering workers and their families a chance to escape the industrial cities,

to a healthier, more relaxed place.

But seaside resorts are only the first chapter

in Britain's new town story.

Others were to follow,

including utopian social experiments,

bold government plans and even the town built by royalty.

MUSIC: Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode

I want to know more about the home truths of these places,

to see if they offer the same sense of escape

that I find in Herne Bay

and so I'm off on a road trip.

My first stop is the pretty little town of Letchworth in Hertfordshire.

With its quaint thatched cottages and tree-lined streets,

this place looks like it should be on the front of a chocolate box,

but actually when it comes to new town planning,

it's about as revolutionary as you can get.

Letchworth is Britain's first garden city.

Built at the beginning of the 20th century,

Letchworth was one man's radical plan of how people could escape

the slum conditions of the city.

His name was Ebenezer Howard,

but he was no Scrooge,

because unlike the businessmen who built Britain's seaside towns,

his plan wasn't to make money - oh no.

He was interested in a full-scale social experiment.

Now, he was so passionate about his idea,

he's written it all down in this book and just flicking through

his views on town hall and expenses of management, schools, sewage,

park and roads, interest,

all in here but one thing that really caught my eye,

and I'm going to paraphrase it, is this.

Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together,

as man and woman,

by their varied gifts and faculties supplement each other,

so should town and country.

Beautiful words, great idea, but what's it like to actually live here?

Well, back at the beginning,

it certainly would have been for a particular type of person,

that's for sure. For starters,

pubs and inns were banned from serving alcohol to the workers.

It built Britain's first roundabout, which is still here.

And community allotments were established

in the hope that people would

become self-sufficient, producing their own food to eat and distribute.

These are still going today.

That's why I've arranged to meet Victoria Axel

to tell me more about the early days of Letchworth.

One of the key reasons they chose Letchworth is because it was part

of the Great Northern Railway line

and they knew that they could bring factories up from London,

which is exactly what did happen.

It became a very successful industrial town.

It is very unique in terms of how it uses its finances,

the money raised through business interest,

farming and commercial interest

gets ploughed back into the community,

which makes it unique.

I am loving the green spaces, the leafiness, the allotments,

but as the community grows, how do you balance the countryside element?

Howard talked about having a limit to towns so the idea

would be that a town would grow

and when it reached its maximum size,

another town would be built nearby, but in the modern era,

that has become a lot more difficult for people to reproduce.

But it was incredibly influential and there are places that look very

similar to Letchworth throughout the globe - you can see them in Australia,

Finland, Germany and they all borrow an element of that garden city

element, that you see trees,

more space between houses and that has been amazingly successful as a town planning model.

Letchworth might not have been originally built to make money,

but if you wanted to live here today,

then it would certainly cost you a pretty penny.

The average price for a detached house is over half a million pounds,

which I guess goes to prove that utopia comes at a price.

What I really want to know is, what's it like to live here?

So I'm off to meet Diane, who has been a Letchworthian for 40 years.

Her house has been here even longer.

In fact, it was built right at the start of this new garden city's life.

Look at that door knocker.

So cute!

Hello.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Good, thanks.

-You have a splendid-looking home, don't you?

Thank you very much. Come on in.

I would love to take a look.

Thank you.

Aww. Now, this is beautiful.

How long have you lived here?

25 years.

-When was the house built?

-Have a seat.

-1907.

-It's gorgeous.

Gorgeous. So Diane, tell me,

why did you decide to move to Letchworth Garden City? What was the appeal?

I just came down here for a job that I'd been told about

and it sounded good, a teaching job in a boarding school,

only vegetarian boarding school in the country.

Really? That's very progressive.

Yeah, I loved it.

For the first three years, I was teaching there,

I lived on the premises,

which is why I managed to save up to buy a house, really.

This house dates back to when Letchworth was just first in

-development.

-Yes, it was within the first ten years of it beginning.

So, it must have been very different than.

It must have felt really spread out.

It still feels quite spread out.

The initial idea was plenty of garden space

so every single person could grow food to feed their family.

Do you think Ebenezer Howard - and we do love that name -

do you think he would be proud if he came back and saw what's happened

to Letchworth since he had these creative amazing ideas?

Yes. I think he would.

The big contention at the moment is the green belt.

With the modern government demands for new housing,

there's a real danger that we might lose that green belt,

especially in the North,

so Ebenezer Howard would not be pleased about that.

But I reckon he would be pretty pleased

about how his original vision has held up here in Letchworth.

Thanks to it, Diane and the residents

have found their escape in a beautiful corner of the country.

But garden cities were only ever going to accommodate a certain small

portion of Britain's ever-growing population.

If the chance to escape the overcrowded cities was to be expanded to all,

then a bigger, bolder plan was needed.

Especially in the wake of what happened next to Britain's housing.

AIR-RAID SIREN SOUNDS

-NEWSREEL:

-The spread of fire through the narrow streets

was helped by a strong south-west wind

and in places, the flames raced along as fast as a man could run.

The blitz of World War II

destroyed more than four million homes across the whole of the country,

from Belfast to Hull, Glasgow to Cardiff,

and of course London.

And yet, in its wake,

it gave the government an opportunity to rebuild and offer an escape route

from bomb-damaged slum-ridden cities.

The 1946 New Towns Act allowed areas to be designated for development

and teams of planners set about creating super-sized garden cities

for a modern generation.

My, this is a grand way to start the day.

Our town was going to be a good place to work in.

And a grand place to live in.

With plenty of open spaces.

Of course, there'd have to be an attractive town centre, too,

with plenty of room for folks to meet.

Good shops, a posh theatre, cinemas,

a concert hall, and a Civic Centre.

Stevenage was the first to be developed under the scheme

and over the coming decades, 28 new towns were built all over Britain.

We think we have much to be proud of,

having launched the boldest single experiment in national housing to be

undertaken anywhere on Earth since the end of the Second World War.

It was a time of great optimism.

It was felt if you got housing right,

you could fix many of society's problems.

When we first came, there were many couples setting up home,

starting their families, and there were children everywhere.

And the town has grown with the children.

It is a progress, with families and the town.

But it was the place I'm off to next on my road trip that was a real

tipping point for new towns, not that it was a town at all.

Oh, no, this was a new city.

A home of your own in Milton Keynes.

Given the green light in 1967,

Milton Keynes' original designers

declared proudly that no building would

be taller than the tallest tree.

For the moment, it's a muddy battle ground, peopled by bulldozers, graders,

navvies, carpenters and bricklayers, but gradually,

it will be coloured in by acres of spanking new houses and freshly

tarmacked streets.

One man who was here from near the start was urban planner David Locke.

That's a nice plan for sort of Tivoli gardens of Milton Keynes

that never quite happened.

David was one of the men who made sure Milton Keynes

really packed a punch.

The one that pushes the new town idea to its ultimate limits

is the new city of Milton Keynes.

It's the Muhammad Ali of the new towns.

This is the plan for Milton Keynes, which is a world-famous sort of icons.

Of what's called a lazy grid - it isn't a gridiron,

like you get in North America, it is following the topography.

You've got the north-south routes,

Watling Street, West Coast main line,

Grand Union Canal, M1, and they stitched them across,

so these are city roads but they are also wide enough to take trams,

so if some future generation ever want to put one in,

they've got all the main services down there.

Also, there was room to put planting

to keep the noise of traffic and air pollution out of where people live.

So the purples are factories, aren't they?

All spread out.

Yeah. The employment is spread all over the city,

so that there's no rush to work in the morning and a rush home at night.

But the planners of Milton Keynes weren't just concerned with the day-to-day running of things,

they also had their sights set on the future.

It calls itself the first new city.

It's got everything going for it,

from Coca-Cola and Volkswagen to the Open University.

There's even talk of having the Olympic Games before long.

The spirit that was very carefully engendered was that we were all in this together.

We were all in Milton Keynes.

It was a book to be written and we were part of the writing of the book.

There must have been such a sense of pride.

Every week, a new thing would happen, a new thing would open,

and it was often the biggest or the latest or the shiniest,

the first snow dome, the first multiplex cinema,

the first McDonald's outside London, whatever it was, you see,

and our concert bowl, the red balloon adverts on TV,

this was all part of this sense

that we were actually making something very, very special.

I so remember these ads.

Three, two, one.

Wouldn't it be nice if all cities were like Milton Keynes?

MUSIC: 2-4-6-8 Motorway by the Tom Robinson Band

After finding out some of the theory,

I'm off to see how this new town has worked in practice,

so I'm getting a tour with early resident pioneer Lee Scriven.

Can I just say, I don't know whether I'm going north, south, east...?

-Go right.

-I have no...

Yeah, you can get lost. Even I get lost.

-"Go left at the roundabout." Which one?

-Yeah, yeah.

Lee moved here as a teenager in 1974.

More than 40 years later, his family are still here.

# And it's 2-4-6-8, ain't never too late

# Me and my radio truckin' on through the night... #

So, Lee, what age were you when you moved to Milton Keynes?

14. I actually moved in the week of my birthday.

-Did you?

-I was quite excited...

-Were you?

-Yeah, I was actually going to be moving to this space-age city,

you know. You may recall at the time, you had Space 1999 on the telly,

Thunderbirds and Joe 90, and you really felt you were moving to a Gerry...

To a town built by Gerry Anderson.

You know, it was really exciting.

But it came as a bit of a shock when we finally got here in 1974,

I'd made it to Milton Keynes but Milton Keynes hadn't been made.

No! There was hardly anything here?

When we came here, them trees were about three foot to four foot high,

so it was just...

You did see everything and there was nothing really to see,

other than dust, mud of a building site, or farmland.

Compared to, you know, people have gone it's like the old Wild West,

frontier town, but believe me, in the early '70s, it really was.

There was dust... There was tumbleweeds going down the road because there

was nothing else, you know?

This road we are calling up now, left or right, basically,

it all went up within a five-year period.

-Did they?

-And that's a lot of houses.

And it wasn't just houses they were building up this time.

No, they were revolutionising how we shopped too.

So, this is the city centre that we are coming through.

-Is it?

-And this was the most important building really in Milton Keynes' history.

Sounds a bit sad that a shopping mall, as it is now,

would be one of the most important buildings...

-It's all glass.

-Yeah,

I think it's quite beautiful actually

but people might find that a bit sad.

But I actually love it, I love the steel and the glass.

Once that place opened,

you really felt that you'd moved to that space-age city.

Milton Keynes had something that nowhere else had got and boy,

did the locals like that.

Centre MK was opened in 1979 by newly-elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

It was designed to be a complete town centre under one roof

with 130 shops and six department stores.

Today, of course, all British towns have supersized malls like this,

but Milton Keynes broke the mould.

In the years since Lee and his family arrived here,

Milton Keynes has grown to the size of a city with a population of over a quarter of a million.

But for those early pioneers,

it must have been a giant leap of faith moving here,

with little more to welcome them than a gift from the development corporation.

The corporation give a tree voucher

to all new tenants when they move in, all right?

Take it along to any of the garden centres that are listed...

Suppose we wanted two, do we get another voucher?

No, you don't. I'm afraid, it's one voucher per house.

New job, new home, new life.

Lee's family also got a tree

and it's still in the back garden of his mum's house.

Well, Elsie and Lee, you must have been one of the first families

to move in here in Milton Keynes.

What year did you buy this house?

-1974.

-'74, and can I be a bit cheeky?

Can you remember what you paid for it?

-This house?

-Yeah.

-It was 12,500.

And what did you sell the one in Walthamstow for?

-10,000.

-So, it was quite a bit more, wasn't it?

Do you know what this might be worth now?

We think it might be in the region of 240, 250.

And Walthamstow?

About 450, 500.

I bet that caught in the back of your throat, didn't it?

But think how many happy years you've had here.

I have no regrets about that.

Worth remembering what we were moving from.

The house was damp, it was cold, it was old,

and I don't think my mum will mind,

there was rats at times and it was London.

We were working-class people and to be able to move into a house like

this, with central heating, showers, baths, I mean...

It was, you know, pretty phenomenal.

And even at the age of 14, I found it quite exciting.

Obviously, the early days, it wasn't what you expected,

but did you ever consider going back to London?

No, never. Never. Never thought of moving back.

-You just knew?

-No, no going back.

I don't think many... I don't know about you.

-No, I never thought it, no.

-And in the street,

I've got many friends and neighbours,

which is one of the reasons I sort of don't want to move

because I'm very close friends with several of them...

And in fact every week on a Thursday night,

about eight of us meet in someone's house.

Years ago, we used to do keep fit but we don't do that any more.

My mother's generation and perhaps my generation combined,

that made Milton Keynes.

-Yeah.

-You know, the architects laid the foundation,

but the residents made Milton Keynes what it is today.

OK, confession time.

I'm in two minds about Milton Keynes, if I'm totally honest.

Unlike Herne Bay or Letchworth,

the emphasis of this 1960s new town planning

was on the super-sized and futuristic, rather than the small and nostalgic.

Yes, trees and parks soften edges

but they are as much about hiding concrete as getting residents back to nature.

By the 1980s, others were thinking this too,

including one rather special VIP

with an interest in architecture

and he wasn't afraid of speaking his mind.

We've got so used over the last 40 or 50 years to looking at planning

and building and design, local urban design, in one particular way.

Like, you only build housing estates, which always have cul-de-sacs.

The point I feel we ought to re-examine again...

..is how to design on a traditional basis again.

MUSIC: Just Can't Get Enough by Depeche Mode

Prince Charles' vision of a community fit for the 21st century

is Poundbury. Built on 250 acres of Duchy farmland on the outskirts of

Dorchester, it's currently home to over 3,000 people.

Now, the houses may look like they are from the good old days

but they've actually all been built within the last 25 years.

Prince Charles was busy,

so my tour guide is a leading figure of Poundbury's Resident Association,

Fran Leaper.

Fran, lovely to meet you.

Hello, Nicki, and welcome to Poundbury.

This is my first time.

And first impressions are impressive.

I wasn't expecting to see a building like that.

It looks like it could be in Vienna.

It is gorgeous, isn't it?

We love the yellow and actually in the evening sun, it lights up.

It's illuminated.

It is impressive, it's on such a large scale,

it comes across as being very grand as well.

This is the centre of Poundbury, so this is grand.

Beyond it, and moving out to the north and the east,

you will have smaller-scale dwellings and indeed,

some of them will be village scale.

In fact, one of them planned...

There's a small development of thatched houses.

If Milton Keynes was offering people an escape into the future,

then there is no doubt about it,

Poundbury lets them escape into the past.

These are great. Every single property to me looks different.

-They are different.

-Look how clean everywhere is.

I'm pleased you think so.

-Yeah.

-Because people are passionate about making sure there's no litter.

So, Fran, what kind of person lives here?

We have a reputation in some places of being the toffs on the hill,

would you believe? But all sorts of people live here.

There's not only private houses and apartments,

there's a 35% of a mixture of social, which is subsidised housing,

and affordable housing,

which is a lot of shared ownership schemes coming up as well.

And along this road, you see examples of that very clearly.

But you cannot spot the difference.

-No.

-The whole point of Poundbury is it's pepper-potted

and the building standard is just the same.

So everybody is delighted at being here, from the build quality,

it's really, really super.

It seems Prince Charles might have pulled it off.

25 years ago...

..all this was a mere dream.

To most people, a completely mad dream.

Houses here get snapped up with an average price of £310,000.

But living under royal approval does have consequences.

It's not every one that can say Prince Charles is their landlord.

This is very true.

Poundbury is unique.

It is. It is.

Now, I'm sure there's some myths and rules that are attached to it.

Would I be allowed to live here?

-Even you, Nicki.

-Even me.

So, what's this?

This is a little booklet to tell people about some of the myths,

remind them of the rules, and about living in Poundbury.

Can I have a look? So, where are the rules?

They are in the back. There are 17 stipulations.

-Oh, here we go.

-Which everybody signed up to.

I like number one. Not without the consent of his Royal Highness

to paint or decorate the exterior of the property,

otherwise than in the same colour or colours as the property here

previously painted.

So, no pink door, then?

Surprisingly, there is one.

-Oh, is there?

-Yes.

Yes, the idea is that your new house

is part of a palette of colours and

you should ask permission before you paint your front door.

But people have varied it slightly

and so long as it's tasteful, it's OK.

-We don't mind.

-Even a pink door.

How about this one?

I'm not allowed... Oh, this is good.

I'm not allowed to hang my washing out in my back garden.

I never know where this idea came from,

but a lot of people seem to think

you are not allowed to put a washing line out. Of course you can.

We are very practical, and there is even an aerial picture

showing somebody with some washing out.

Myth... Myth busted.

-Myth busted, totally.

-Myth busted.

Satellite dishes, that's an interesting one.

FRAN INHALES SHARPLY

-I've touched a nerve.

-Absolutely not.

-No?

-No satellite dishes at all.

Because of maintaining the...

-Look.

-The look of the public realm.

You are so passionate about Poundbury, you must love living here.

I do love living here.

It's a fantastic community.

I'm the happiest I've been in my whole life, since I've come to live here.

It's a lovely, lovely community.

I mean, it has been so beautifully designed,

but it's also got to be about the people.

It is, but the people wouldn't have come if it hadn't been such a beautiful design.

'OK, well, let's meet'

some of those people.

I've decided to put in a shift at the local cafe, the Engine Room.

You need to put that underneath there...

'But before serving anyone, however,

'I'd better learn how to make a posh coffee.'

-And then a bit of froth?

-That's it.

'Something tells me that what they drink around here.'

Trying to do an artistic design, but it's not really working.

You know what, perhaps I'll just stick to cleaning tables.

Not bad for a first attempt, but I think I know my limitations.

BELL PINGS

'Right, time to meet the punters and find out more about the town

'created by royalty.'

Did the little one enjoy it?

Yeah, look at that smiley face.

So, Kelly, what's it like as a young person living here in Poundbury?

I've just graduated from university,

so I been living in Plymouth for the last three years,

so it's very much a change.

Poundbury is very quiet.

It's a very nice place, but for a 21-year-old,

there's not much to do here.

-There we are.

-Thank you very much.

Did it ever go through your mind or concern you that because it is

a new area, a new-build, there wouldn't be that community feel?

We were invited for drinks, weren't we?

As soon as we... As soon as we moved into our square,

we had a little thing through the door from people who had been there

recently and said come and join us, so there is a community spirit.

We haven't looked at it at any time and said we would want to live

anywhere else. We are really happy here.

I've got some puddings here.

-Here we go.

-That's mine.

-That one's yours. OK.

And then we have the honeycomb here.

Who is honeycomb? So, who are locals, who is residents here?

-We are.

-We live in Poundbury.

We are convincing them later as well.

-Are you? And how long have you lived here?

-16 months.

-So, new residents.

-Well, most people are, aren't they, really?

You could be here for ever and there is a cemetery the other side.

You know, it's just...

And I'd love to come back in 100 years' time and I think this whole vision

will have worked out.

Right, here's your tea.

Hello, boys.

-Hello.

-Hello.

Do you live locally?

Do you live in Poundbury?

Do you? With mummy?

How long has mummy been living here then?

We've lived here four and a half years now.

I see a lot of elderly,

but are there plenty of young families in the area?

Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, when I came here, I joined a mums' group.

I now help run the mums' group.

And every week, we have two or three new families moving in.

Local schools are on our doorstep.

And just really friendly, really.

Really nice place. Lovely neighbours.

Parks. So, for us, it works really well.

MUSIC: 2-4-6-8 Mororway by the Tom Robinson Band

I have to be honest, when I was thinking about new towns,

I probably was a little bit... A little bit sniffy about them.

My idea, my preconceived idea, was they were going to be quite clinical,

quite cold, everything thought out,

but was there going to be any heart,

any soul of the community?

And in actual fact, driving around and experiencing them first-hand,

I am impressed.

Lush, green.

People really embrace where they live.

They are very proud and let's all be honest,

we all want a little bit of Utopia, don't we?

MUSIC: Rocks by Primal Scream

So, what's the future of new towns?

Do they still offer that vision of escape or have they had their day?

Well, the answer to that is "absolutely not".

Because a brand-new garden city, the first in over 100 years,

is currently being constructed.

It's called Ebbsfleet.

Now, there's not much to look at

at the moment but the government has high hopes for this place

as the model for a new type of new town.

To find out more, I'm meeting Kevin McGeough and Paul Spooner,

two of the men in charge of building this new new town.

They've invited me to the top of Ebbsfleet Observatory

and I have to say, it provides a commanding view

of a new town rising from the quarries that

used to be here.

This is incredible.

I didn't realise just quite how large the whole site is.

It is the most impressive view,

the birth, the start of a new town.

So, in the UK over the last 250 years,

we've delivered some of the best new places in the world,

in terms of planning new communities and also some of the less successful places.

So, our job here at Ebbsfleet Garden City is to make sure we make

the best of the really good examples

in the UK and avoid some of the lessons of the worst.

It is a large area.

I mean, it's going to take 15,000 homes when it's completed.

That's around 40,000 people.

But if you look out there, you can see all the diggers on the site now,

we've got a range of houses being built.

In the far distance, a local housing association

is building affordable homes,

so those are homes that are shared ownership,

so if you have the ability to get a mortgage of about £100,000,

you can buy a share, a major share in that property

and you can actually get on the housing ladder in the garden city.

But I suppose in a way, it's getting the balance right, you know,

making sure the developers,

who are going to want to build as many homes as possible,

but balancing that with somewhere that people want to live.

Well, I think the important thing really is about having the quality green space,

so within the new garden city, we are going to have seven new city parks.

You can see just in the distance here is what will become the new city park, a massive park,

similar to Primrose Hill in London,

we almost see it as Central Park in New York.

So, what we are talking about here is having a city in a garden.

The similarities to both Herne Bay and old garden cities goes further.

As we've seen, they promised people the chance to escape

to a healthier place.

Well, Ebbsfleet has a twist on that same idea.

So, the NHS have come up with a new programme called the healthy new towns.

There are going to be ten pilots across the country.

And from those ten pilots, they want to learn about, you know,

what can we rethink a place, what can it be like to live here,

can we encourage people to have healthier lifestyles,

can we deliver health in a different way?

So, we are going to provide new tram-like buses that connect up

different parts of the garden city

and encourage people to take the bus,

rather than getting their cars. To walk to the station,

to cycle down beautiful new green corridors we are creating.

So, we are creating a place that is going to encourage that healthy living

but also discourage people from using the car.

Kevin, you are going to change people's lives, aren't you?

You are going to change the way they live their lives.

Are you feeling the pressure?

Do you have a sense of pride that you're involved with it?

Fantastically. I grew up in one of the last new towns, Craigavon in Northern Ireland,

and to have 50 years later an opportunity to help

build and shape a new place, Ebbsfleet garden city,

is to me the best job I could possibly have anywhere.

It's what I've always wanted to do.

It's a great opportunity and I want to make sure we make the most of it.

The exciting thing is to create the momentum around housing that we need

in this country but a really affordable mixed range of housing here for

everybody and secondly, to work on the whole place,

to create something that is really special.

I'm encouraged by the talk at Ebbsfleet.

It seems the vision of what created places like Letchworth, Milton Keynes,

and Poundbury are safe in the hands

of those building new towns in the future.

A lot has changed, of course.

The plans have become bigger,

more ambitious and more comprehensive than those I saw in my hometown.

And sometimes, they have come with rules that I certainly wouldn't be

happy with. Not to mention all those roundabouts.

Which one?

But what unites the people I've met living in these towns is that they

have all provided that sense of escape to a healthier and, I think, happier

way of life.

Sometimes of course you have to pay for it and so I'm ending my journey

doing something I never tire of,

getting shown round a fancy pad.

And it's back where I started, on the seafront of Herne Bay.

Giving me his sales patter is local estate agent Kieron Whiting.

I'm so keen.

It's lovely, isn't it?

Come on through.

Now, that is what I call a view.

Yeah, it certainly grabs you as soon as you walk in through the door.

It's a lovely site.

You actually completely forget about your accommodation.

That's the beauty of it. Ultimately, that is what you are paying for,

-isn't it?

-Open-plan living, which isn't the norm in Herne Bay, is it?

No, it's certainly a more modern approach to living

but certainly more popular now.

Particularly in properties like this is where you want to

maximise the view and also the light and airy accommodation,

you are not going to get that in a standard Herne Bay property.

This is really one of a kind.

Yeah.

Time for the tour.

OK, here we have the master suite.

Again, bifolding doors.

This is lovely. This is just like a second living room, in my opinion.

South-facing, so it's going to literally bask in sunshine throughout the day.

-It's lovely.

-Kieron, this is like role reversal.

You're taking me round,

rather than me taking you on showing you the houses.

It feels odd but I'm liking it. I'm liking it being on this site.

'Well, that's the tour over.

'Now for the bit you've all been waiting for.'

How much is this apartment on the market for?

This penthouse apartment is on the market for £495,000.

Is it? Just shy of half a million.

That's quite a lot of money.

So, how much would an average house be here?

Average house, terms of your typical 1930s three-bed semi, around 275, 300.

That's really good to hear.

Do people want to live in a seaside town all over again?

Definitely so. The market is incredibly buoyant at the moment.

-Is it?

-Particularly over the last 18 months to two years.

So, Kieron, if I could build eight of these along the seafront,

would you be able to sell them tomorrow?

Yes, I would be your best friend.

Would you?

This home is just so different from where I was brought up but in a way,

that's what you need.

You need towns to keep evolving with each generation,

looking forward rather than always looking back.

But you know what?

Sometimes it's also good to get nostalgic, so before I go,

I've asked my best friend Krista

and my big sister Shelley to meet me on the promenade.

I have a little surprise in store

that should bring the memories flooding back.

Right, girls. Fancy a quick roller-skate?

The pavilion is not even there any more.

-What's wrong with this?

-You're kidding.

Yeah. How many years since we last roller-skated?

30? Are you up for the challenge?

-Yeah.

-I don't think I've got much in the way of balance.

No, I'll be straight off.

Right. Try those.

Thank you.

-Come on then.

-Oh, no.

-We are going to have fun, aren't we?

Was this your idea, Nicki?

Yeah. Thought it be nice to reminisce down memory lane.

I feel like the Terminator.

All the gear, no idea.

Come on, then.

MUSIC: Modern Girl by Sheena Easton

This is going to be a long skate, isn't it?

This way? Hold on to me. Ready?

'Memories might be flooding back but the legs are definitely rusty.'

Oh, look, I've got the railing.

Look, I can do it.

'You know, looking at new towns has made me look deeper into what really

'matters to me about Herne Bay and it's this -

'towns are made by people

'and as long as planners remember that, we'll be OK.'

THEY CHEER