The Bedfordshire development will include a new station, hospital, town centre and 30,000 jobs, with building expected to start by 2029
Tempsford village in Bedfordshire.(Image: Getty)
A brand new town is planned for Bedfordshire; delivering up to 40,000 new homes, tens of thousands of jobs and fast rail links putting London within an hour.
Once completed, this brand new town will sit just 30 minutes by train from London, with Oxford and Cambridge also within easy commuting distance. The ambitious scheme promises up to 40,000 new homes, a new railway station, a hospital, a thriving town centre packed with shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs, plus a new country park. Government-appointed experts are backing the project, which forms part of the wider Oxford to Cambridge Corridor.
Spanning from the southern outskirts of St Neots in Cambridgeshire down to the northern fringes of Sandy in Bedfordshire, the development and maintenance of this new town is expected to generate more than 30,000 jobs.
The tiny village of Tempsford at the heart of a controversial ‘new town’ plan.(Image: Getty)
The planned railway station on the East Coast Main Line and East West Rail is set to deliver journey times to London in under an hour. Links to Cambridge are projected to take less than 30 minutes, with outstanding planning matters and additional funding expected to be resolved by 2026, paving the way for construction to start.
The proposed Tempsford New Town in Bedfordshire is being planned as a substantial, sustainable community with up to 40,000 homes. This “market town” will prioritise environmentally-friendly, integrated living, reports the Express.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has thrown her support behind the construction of Tempsford station in Bedfordshire, which would connect to the East Coast Main Line and East West Rail, as part of efforts to establish “Europe’s Silicon Valley” linking Oxford and Cambridge. However, not everyone is pleased.
Before Reeves unveiled plans to fast-track a “growth arc” between Oxford and Cambridge, the tiny village of Tempsford was relatively unknown.
Yet Tempsford boasts a remarkable history for such a modest settlement. It served as Boudicca’s rallying point against the Romans, witnessed early English monarchs repelling Danish invaders, and became Winston Churchill’s launch site for covert missions supporting resistance fighters against the Nazis.
The proposed new town, planned for up to 350,000 residents, encounters considerable development pressure and local resistance. Parish council chairman David Sutton revealed that villagers fear their community of roughly 600 inhabitants could be overwhelmed.
Mr Sutton, who also runs The Wheatsheaf village pub, explained that locals were “not against all development, but don’t want the village to turn into a city”.
“I actually think more people are coming round to development, but it is just about the scale of it. We don’t want tens of thousands of homes and no infrastructure.”
he said.
“It’s a very small rural community – they’ve either farmed here for generations or they’ve moved specifically to a rural community, they don’t want to live in a big city.”
He expressed additional worries about railway noise and construction impacts, particularly given Tempsford’s “worse and worse” annual winter flooding. East West Rail has revealed that the new interchange station at Tempsford, situated between Sandy and St Neots in Cambridgeshire, is now expected to be “delivered up to five years earlier than planned”, though no exact timeframe has been given.
Throughout 2026, major work on the scheme will centre on strategic environmental assessments, infrastructure planning, and closing funding shortfalls, with the government targeting a 2029 start date for construction.
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