Labour will build a series of new towns across the country to stop housing become “a luxury for the few”.
Sir Keir Starmer announced the plans in his speech to the Labour Party Conference, replicating the policy of Clement Attlee’s government that built 10 new towns during the 1950s.
The Labour leader said the party would “bulldoze through” a planning system that was “an obstacle to the aspirations of millions, now and in the future, who deserve the security of home ownership”.
He said: “We used to call it the ‘dream of home ownership’, didn’t we? We used to say it glibly on stages like this. But look at Britain now – it has become a dream.
“It’s out of reach for millions. And if we don’t take action – it will only become more distant. A luxury for the few not the privilege of the many.”
Pledging to build 1.5 million new homes during the five years of the next Parliament, Sir Keir added: “Sometimes the old Labour ideas are right for new times.
“So where there are good jobs, where there is good infrastructure, where there is good land for affordable homes, then we will get shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky, and build the next generation of Labour new towns.”
The first wave of new towns, built between 1946 and 1950 to alleviate post-war housing shortages in London, included Stevenage, Crawley and Harlow.
Two new towns in Scotland – East Kilbride and Glenrothes – and Cwmbran in Wales were also established during the 1940s.
Subsequent Conservative and Labour governments built two more waves of new towns in England.
Sir Keir told the Labour conference that his proposed fourth wave of new towns would not mean “tearing up the green belt”.
He said: “Labour is the party that protects our green spaces. No party fights harder for our environment.
“We created the national parks, created the green-belt in the first place. I grew up in Surrey.
“But where there are clearly ridiculous uses of it, disused car parks, dreary wasteland – not a green belt, a grey belt, sometimes within a city’s boundary – then this cannot be justified as a reason to hold our future back.
“We will take this fight on. That’s a Britain built to last.”
Responding to Sir Keir’s speech, Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Keir Starmer’s bold vision has huge potential; the first generation of new towns had social housing at their heart.
“The drastic decline in social homes is at the root of this country’s housing emergency.
“It has pushed ever more people into wildly expensive and under regulated private renting and forced hundreds of thousands into homelessness.
“In order to the end this crisis, any plans for new towns must have social housing in their DNA.
“Housing will be a critical issue as we head into the next general election, voters want real solutions not piecemeal promises.
“All political parties need to commit to building 90,000 genuinely affordable social homes each year that this country desperately needs.”
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