LIVERPOOL, England — A wave of “new towns” designed to boost U.K. housing supply might still be awaiting their first residents before the next general election, a Cabinet minister has told POLITICO.
Housing Secretary Steve Reed pledged to get “spades in the ground” on proposed sites in Enfield, Leeds and Bedfordshire by the end of the current parliament — expected to be in 2028 or 2029. Ministers will confirm final locations in spring 2026.
However, when asked if anyone would be living in new homes on these sites before the next election, Reed said: “All I can give you is a guess, so I won’t do that. We will progress them as quickly as we can.”
Speaking in the POLITICO Pub at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Reed added: “Building a whole new town isn’t just like building 50 new homes. You’ve got to make sure all the infrastructure is there, the public transport is there, the investment that’s going to bring jobs. People want hospitals, they’ll need schools in there as well, they want access to green spaces.”
The three areas have been identified as the most promising of 12 locations suggested by a government “new towns” task force that reported recently.
Reed also declined to say when work would begin on the other nine sites. “We need to do the work to give a timeline to all of them,” he said.
Separately, the minister said he was looking at the idea of an “AI-enabled town.”
He said the government was “asking people to be really innovative about what we might be able to do with the new towns … what would an AI-enabled town look like? How could we make people’s lives easier by putting AI at the center of how we build it and how people can access information and public services?
“We need people to be really creative as we’re working towards what these places will be like.”
Reed took over the housing brief after the resignation of his predecessor, Angela Rayner, earlier this month. In his short time in the role, he has made the slogan “build, baby, build” — which has been plastered across red caps at the conference — his mantra.
He downplayed the suggestion that his approach — and red hats — had been inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
“We need to be able to communicate in bold colors … red is the color of the Labour Party as well as the Republicans in the U.S. But red is our color, and we need to be painting in bold color.
“So ‘build, baby, build’ was intended to get a bit of cut-through. It’s bit fun as well. You know, the run-up to conference didn’t feel that happy. There were some difficult things going on. We wanted to give people a lift.”
He added: “Behind it, there’s a really, really serious message, because in this country, we have a housing crisis, and the effects of that crisis are that homelessness, rough sleeping, people sleeping in shop doorways and underpasses has doubled under the conservatives. In my case, work as an MP over 50 percent of what people come to talk to me about is housing.”
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