“It is a tremendous opportunity”, says Jas Bhalla, principal at architect Jas Bhalla Works. “You very, very, rarely see this scale of opportunity where different elements come together.”

Bhalla is discussing the potential for building a new town at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, currently a one-road village of fewer than 600 people, surrounded by low-lying boggy fields draining into the nearby Great Ouse, and centred on the Wheatsheaf pub.

Bhalla’s practice drew up a masterplan for the 15,000-home development of the area prior to the covid-19 pandemic. Now, it has been named as a potential location for a 40,000-home new town, with the government already picking it as one of its three most “promising” sites.

But it could even go bigger. A report by think tank UK Day One in 2024 said there was scope to create a city “larger than Oxford or Cambridge” on the site, which it said could house 350,000 people and be a “major employment centre” for life sciences.

Tempsford is just one of 12 locations selected for major growth last September by the New Towns Task Force, with two others – Crews Hill in north London and Leeds South Bank – also earmarked as promising for early build out, meaning work could begin before the end of the parliament.