The Guardian: "Why the government sees Letchworth as a model community"

Link to The Guardian

"... His experience at Milton Keynes reinforces a belief that large-scale development proposals can deliver community facilities such as roads, schools, libraries and community centres without significant government funding. The so-called Milton Keynes tariff – dubbed a roof tax – involved builders putting cash into a community pot, initially calculated on the basis of £18,000 for each house completed:

"We created a whole investment vehicle able to put in infrastructure. It's still alive and a fantastic model, a brilliant way to get cash flowing into development and carrying the burden of some of these large infrastructure costs. We could say 'we know exactly what is being built, we can cost it, charge for it and guarantee the money is going to come back'. Basically you're giving certainty of development to the private sector. It meant we could put public money in, knowing it would come back."