Building of three new towns will start before election, Labour pledges

The construction of three new towns will begin before the next general election, Labour has pledged.

A taskforce has recommended 12 locations in England for development, with three areas – Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds South Bank, and Crews Hill in north London – identified as the most promising sites.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed is expected to announce the plans in a speech on the opening day of Labour’s annual party conference.

Labour has put housebuilding at the centre of its vision of how to get the economy growing, promising to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029.

Tempsford is home to 600 people and currently has around 300 houses. Its parish council chairman David Sutton said residents had been kept in the dark about the potential plans, including how many new homes could be built.

“The biggest problem we’ve got at the moment is that even today, as an announcement’s being made, we’ve been given no idea whatsoever of the scale of what we’re being asked to live amongst,” he told the PA news agency.

“Nobody’s come to talk to us at all.”

The promise of a “new generation of new towns” was included in Labour’s election manifesto last year.

The 12 proposed developments range from large-scale standalone new communities, to expansions of existing towns and regeneration schemes within cities.

Sites in Cheshire, South Gloucestershire, East Devon, Plymouth and Manchester are among those which have been recommended for development.

The chosen sites will be subject to environmental assessments and consultation, with the government confirming the final locations and funding next spring.

Labour said each new town would have at least 10,000 homes and they could collectively result in 300,000 homes being built across England over the coming decades.

The government has welcomed a recommendation from the New Towns Taskforce that at least 40% of these new homes should be classed as affordable housing.

A New Towns Unit will be tasked with bringing in millions of pounds of public and private sector funding to invest in GP surgeries, schools, green spaces, libraries and transport for the new developments.

The taskforce has recommended new towns are delivered by development corporations, which could have special planning powers to compulsory purchase land, invest in local services, and grant planning permission.

This follows the model of the regeneration of Stratford in east London during and after the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “For so many families, homeownership is a distant dream.

“My Labour government will sweep aside the blockers to get homes built, building the next generation of new towns.”

In his speech, the housing secretary will promise to “build baby build”, while “taking lessons from the post-war Labour government housing boom”.

“This party built new towns after the war to meet our promise of homes fit for heroes. Now, with the worst economic inheritance since that war, we will once again build cutting-edge communities to provide homes fit for families of all shapes and sizes,” Reed is expected to say.

After World War Two Clement Attlee’s government planned the first wave of new towns, including developments in Stevenage and Crawley, to relocate people from poor or bombed-out housing, with development corporations assigned responsibility for building them.

The announcement comes as Labour members gather in Liverpool for the party’s annual conference.

It will be Reed’s first major speech since he took over from Angela Rayner as housing secretary, after she resigned for failing to pay enough tax on a flat purchase.

It has been a bruising few weeks for Sir Keir, who is facing questions over his leadership and the direction of his party.

With Labour trailing behind Reform UK in the polls, the prime minister has stepped up his attacks on Nigel Farage’s party.

Arriving in Liverpool on Saturday, he warned Reform would “tear this country apart” and said the conference would be an opportunity to set out his alternative to the “toxic divide and decline” offered by the party.