Business duo unveil plans for new garden city

The two businessmen want to build Forest City on Suffolk farmland

Plans for a new city that could house one million people in affordable homes have been revealed.

Businessmen Shiv Malik and Joseph Reeve want to build Forest City on agricultural land east of Cambridge, between Newmarket and Haverhill in Suffolk.

While no formal plans have been submitted, the men want to build 400,000 homes across 45,000 acres as well as 12,000 acres set aside for a new forest.

Nick Timothy, Conservative MP for West Suffolk, described the idea as "ridiculous".

Mr Malik said the idea for the city had come about to help build new homes and grow the UK economy.

"You need growth, you need infrastructure and you need housing," he told presenter Wayne Bavin on BBC Radio Suffolk.

"The single best way we think to deliver all that, is actually to stop annoying people with infrastructure developments here there and everywhere and put it in one place where we can agglomerate those benefits massively and generate huge amounts of growth and underlying GDP (gross domestic product)."

Shiv Malik and Joseph Reeve are behind the proposals for the new city

Mr Malik said he believed growth was needed in Suffolk and he had interest from prospective residents in the county as well as from London and nearby Cambridge.

He added the main goal was to create affordable homes with, for example, a "60% discount on current affordability, say, in Cambridge".

"So you could get a four-bedroom house for £350,000, which even if you live in Ipswich - that is still a huge reduction in price," he added.

The entrepreneurs said it would be the first new city to be created in England in more than 50 years and it could take several years before plans were submitted.

They said they would seek parliamentary approval to establish a development corporation "with compulsory purchase and planning powers".

This is how Canary Wharf and the 2012 Olympic site were delivered.

West Suffolk MP Nick Timothy said the proposals for the new city were not credible

The new city would be built in Timothy's constituency, but he said he did not believe the proposal would ever come to fruition.

"It's not really credible; it's not proposed by any of the political parties," he said.

"My job is to give the government a hard time, but the government hasn't proposed this... if it was proposed by anybody credible then of course I'd oppose it emphatically."

The MP agreed new housing was needed, but he said proposals needed to be "sensible".