Keir Starmer plans to build dozen new towns inspired by King Charles’s designs

Keir Starmer will set out plans for a dozen new towns with designs inspired by King Charles, saying he wants them built by British workers.

King Charles has a laugh with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, during a tour of a housing development in Cornwall, southwest England. Picture: Getty Images

Keir Starmer will set out plans for a dozen new towns with designs inspired by King Charles, saying he wants them built by British workers.

The Prime Minister will reveal that 100 areas across England have applied to build towns of more than 10,000 people as he vows to “take on the Nimbys and the blockers”.

About a dozen areas are expected to be chosen in the northern summer, with Sir Keir having indicated that he wants construction under way before the end of the parliament.

The Prime Minister has made his drive for 1.5 million new homes a priority. Saying that there are “700,000 homes stuck in the system”, he has pledged action to “unblock” projects where environmental and other regulators disagreed.

Labour has cited Georgian townhouses and Edwardian mansion blocks as key inspirations, with Sir Keir, who noted winding roads and multi-coloured streets as favoured elements, due to set out design principles for new settlements on Thursday.

While Labour has dropped a requirement for “beauty” imposed by the Conservative Party, Sir Keir said homes must be “well-designed”. He cited “variation” and “roads that aren’t all straight” as important elements.

“A beautiful home is … hard to define, but well-designed and led by the community is important,” Sir Keir said.

On Monday he and Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, joined the King on a visit to Nansledan, a new town in Cornwall being developed on principles set out by the monarch, centred on traditional approaches, local materials and terraced housing that harmonises with the landscape.

Sir Keir said that he was “really interested” in the development. “I was struck by the quality of the build, the variety … the fact that you couldn’t tell which was social housing,” he said. “The original scheme … was for 400 homes, but because people in the locality really liked what they were seeing, the demand now is for 4000.”

Sir Keir stressed he did not want to drag the King into policy, but said: “He’s very interested in his own right in the development that he’s involved in and wanted us to see what it looks like.”

The Prime Minister has faced questions on whether there are enough tradesmen in Britain to build the homes Labour wants, but denied a building boom would mean importing workers.

“No, we’ve got to get the construction workers we need trained up,” he insisted, saying he wanted to put the “onus” on developers to train staff in return for big contracts to build new towns.

“I absolutely don’t accept that if a developer is told, ‘You’ve got a massive contract for 10,000 houses for a new town, but what you’ve got to do is help us make sure we’ve got the training in place for the construction workers that you need,’ that they’re going to say ‘I’m not doing that’,” he said.

“I’ve never accepted the argument that there’s a limited number of construction workers and that’s the number we’ve got today and we can’t shift the dial on it.”

Sir Keir said that applications for new towns had come from “every single region” of England. Most are in London and the south and east of England, where housing demand is greatest, with Tempsford in Bedfordshire thought likely to be among the first to be chosen.

The Prime Minister argued that young people had been “locked out” of ownership, saying that his homebuilding drive was focused on “people who want to get on, get their foot in the door, get their key in the lock”.

The Times