Sir Keir Starmer will pledge to build Georgian-style townhouses in urban areas and a string of new towns as he sets out plans for a decade in power.

Steven Swinford, Chris Smyth www.thetimes.co.uk 

The Labour leader will use his conference speech today [Tuesday] to announce a “new generation” of large towns and suburbs in areas with high growth.

They will be developed by state-backed companies with compulsory purchase powers, with a cap on what landowners can charge, to free cash for local amenities. Doctors’ surgeries, schools, transport links and other infrastructure would be “hardwired” into the plans, Starmer says in the speech.

Labour will run a six-month consultation to identify suitable sites for new towns with potential for high economic growth and “areas with significant unmet housing need”. The Times has previously been told that they could include Cambridge and the M1 corridor around Milton Keynes, with dozens of potential sites being considered.

Developers will be given “planning passports” to build on brownfield land if they meet the new design standards, with a “stronger presumption in favour of permission”. Guidance will specify a focus on “gentle urban development” emulating five-storey townhouses built during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Promising “a big build”, Starmer would also allow low-quality green belt such as scrubland and car parks to be released for development. The party has branded the areas “grey belt” and will specify that half of homes built are to be sold at affordable prices.

The first new towns were created by the postwar Labour government, which designated areas for building and set up development corporations to oversee settlements such as Stevenage, Crawley, Basildon and Milton Keynes.

Three million people now live in such towns and Labour will promise a similar model to create “entirely new, large-scale housing settlements”, insisting it can overcome inertia that has prevented previous attempts to revive the idea.

Referring to his childhood home, Starmer says in the speech: “That pebble-dashed semi was everything to my family. It gave us stability through the cost of living crises of the Seventies, served as a springboard for the journey I’ve been on in my life. And I believe every family deserves the same.” He promises a “decade of national renewal”, suggesting that his party would be in power until the mid-2030s, after previously telling activists it would take more than one parliament to achieve his goals.

He acknowledges that voters need a reason to back Labour at the next election and says the “tide is turning” towards his party and away from the Tories and the Scottish National Party.

Starmer promises “a Britain strong enough, stable enough, secure enough for you to invest your hope, your possibility, your future” where “things will be better for your children”.

He says: “People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers. People are looking to us because these challenges require a modern state and we are the modernisers. People are looking to us because they want us to build a new Britain and we are the builders.” Labour would be “totally focused on the interests of working people”, he says.

A Labour victory would give the chance to “turn our backs on never-ending Tory decline with a decade of national renewal” and give the British people the “government they deserve”.

Following his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech setting out plans to reform the “antiquated” planning system so that new infrastructure gets built, Starmer contrasts the approach with Rishi Sunak’s decision to abandon the northern leg of HS2.

He pledges Labour would “get Britain building” and “the winner this time will be working people, everywhere”. Promising a “big build” for the country, he says: “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt.”

Starmer signals that he would resist tax rises while living standards are squeezed and tells activists: “We should never forget that politics should tread lightly on people’s lives, that our job is to shoulder the burden for working people — carry the load, not add to it.”

He says: “That’s what getting our future back really means. It boils down to this: can we look the challenges of this age squarely in the eye and amid all the change and insecurity find the hunger to win new opportunities and the strength to conserve what is precious.”