BRITAIN’S biggest pension fund company has begun talks with the government on pumping billions of pounds into building “garden cities” in the countryside.
The plan by Legal & General (L&G) to invest up to £5bn in five new towns over the next decade will give extra impetus to supporters of garden cities, who include Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister.
Clegg has been pushing the Conservatives to release a prospectus on the project, which they have been accused of suppressing.
The Tories are highly sensitive about the garden cities project because it would involve building thousands of homes in the party’s rural heartlands.
The two named locations are understood to be Yalding, in Kent, and Gerrards Cross, in Buckinghamshire.
L&G, which manages more than £433bn