Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Steve Reed’s speech at Labour Party Conference 2025

Conference, when I picked up the phone to the Prime Minister three weeks ago, he offered me my dream job.

But not under the circumstances I wanted.

So can I begin by thanking my good friend Angela Rayner, for all she has done for our party and our Government over so many years.

For workers’ rights, for local government, for building council homes.

Angela – you are a true working class hero.

Now Angela knows, as I do, that everything we hope to achieve as a Government, is only possible if we get Britain building.

The Tories spent 14 years blocking the homes that people need.

They didn’t just hold back the economy, they crushed the dreams of families who couldn’t afford a decent home.

Well, Conference, no more.

We will fight the Tory blockers and give working people the key to a decent home they can afford to live in.

I will do whatever it takes to get Britain building again.

And we won’t just build homes, we’ll build communities. And not just communities but entire towns.

Our 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 new towns, with homes fit for families.

We will mobilise the full power of the state to build a fresh generation of new towns and restore the dream of home ownership to thousands of families right across the country.

I can announce today that we will go ahead with work in at least 12 locations with Tempsford, Leeds South Bank and Crews Hill identified as three of the most promising sites.

We’ll build homes people feel proud to live in.

Communities with schools, hospitals, good public transport, green spaces on the doorstep, and the investment that brings good, well paid, unionised jobs to the area.

And we’ll work with world-class architects to design each new town with its own character and distinct, unique identity.

We’ll back the builders by streamlining planning rules so local people have a voice but we can get spades in the ground much faster.

So we’ll start building homes in at least three new town locations before the next general election.

And that’s how we’ll build one-and-a-half million new homes in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Now rough sleeping more than doubled under the Tories. They looked the other way while people were left shivering in shop doorways and underpasses.

They didn’t care. But we do.

That’s why this Government is investing nearly £1 billion of new funding to tackle and prevent the scandal, the moral stain, of homelessness.

That money is being used right now to put a roof over the head of the most vulnerable children in our country. It’s breaking the cycle by helping councils act more quickly to stop households becoming homeless in the first place.

But I know we must do more.

That’s why we are investing a record £39 billion to build 300,000 social and affordable homes.

Conference, that’s the biggest increase in council and social housing this country has seen in a generation.

And it means we can offer a safe, decent and affordable home for every person, for every family in our country.

When I said ‘build baby build’, I meant it.

Now each of us is shaped by the place we belong to – where we live, where we grew up.

But in living memory, too many of Britain’s bustling high streets have seen local shops and pubs boarded up, graffiti-covered metal shutters come down and rubbish clutter up our pavements.

That decline is not inevitable. It happened because for 14 years a Tory government told the country they were levelling up, when they were really holding people down.

In the words of our party’s founders, we believe in an irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people. Not just wealth. Power.

That is why this Government will permanently shift power out of Whitehall into every region, town, village and community in this country. And it will help to restore those battered high streets.

The Pride in Place Programme is a big step forward on that journey.

The 244 neighbourhoods that have suffered the most decline over the last 14 Tory years will get up to £20 million each to kickstart their recovery.

And local people, this is crucial, local people will have the power to decide for themselves how that money will be spent because it’s local people who know their own areas the best.

And that means community owned pubs instead of betting shops, cleaning crews tackling litter covered streets and yes, homes instead of neglected sites and derelict buildings.

This is how we give hope back to communities that Reform is so desperate to tear apart.

A shared pride in your home town is the bridge away from decline, and by bringing communities together we bring our whole country back together again.

Now I still remember the silence around the dinner table the day our local factory closed, and my dad, grandparents, uncles and aunts all lost their jobs. Our whole community saw its heart ripped out. People were powerless as their lives were thrown on the scrapheap.

That is why first as a council leader, then an MP and now in this job, I have a driving mission, and it’s to give people up and down this country the power to shape their own destinies.

I’ve taken an incredible journey from a town hall to Whitehall, but I never forgot where I came from. To our amazing councillors, Labour mayors and the council employees who work for you, I want to say thank you for everything you do to improve people’s lives.

You are heroes. You make a difference every single day.

I want to thank my fantastic ministerial team, Matt, Ally, Miatta, Sam, Sharon.

We know that national renewal depends on the renewal of every town, village and community that makes up our great country.

We’ll build the homes people need.

We’ll build the communities where they can thrive.

We’ll bring in the investment and the jobs that will open up opportunities.

But Conference, I want to leave you with the words of Nye Bevan, that Labour hero, speaking on the Labour conference stage in 1945, addressing a party on the threshold of government and a nation recovering from catastrophe.

He stood on a stage just like this one and he said this:

“We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, but now, we are the builders.”

Thank you, Conference.