Shortly after Labour took office, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner dismissed “beautiful” as “too subjective” a requirement for new buildings. She claimed the word was “preventing and blocking development”. Thankfully, Rayner and her party seem to have changed their tune.

This week, the Government announced that work on a number of new towns will begin before the next general election, with many of them inspired by the King’s superlative town-building in Dorset and Cornwall. The pictures in the newspapers were hopeful: Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and the King walking by pretty Cornish cottages, visiting the new school and inspecting allotments. But will the reality be as good as the messaging?

At first glance, digging behind the press release and looking at the New Town Taskforce’s freshly published interim report, there are reasons to be optimistic. Much of what makes for prosperous, healthy and happy places is there. However, the best towns combine living, working and shopping, have real middles, and are popular and attractive. The task force’s principles don’t quite get there — it is merely committed to “business creation”. This could still mean zoned housing on one side of the dual carriageway and a “business park” on the other side. This would take longer, cost more, require more land, and won’t create the same economic agglomeration.

The update says new towns should be vision-led. Quite right, but what vision might that be? The Prime Minister was in marvellous Nansledan with the King early this week. At the same time, I was inspecting an excellent new town near Paris, Plessis Robinson. They both have one thing in common: an absolutely cast-iron commitment to the creation of attractive buildings and gorgeous streets and squares. Why should only the rich live in beautiful places? The interim report is too technocratic in its language and imagery. Copy the King and build for the people, not the professionals.

Location matters, too. The task force rightly says that new towns should have room for at least 10,000 homes each but it’s a shame that we don’t have the list yet. New towns should be in places with acute housing needs, with strong links to existing cities or towns, and should make use of existing or planned infrastructure. There will be lots of political pressure to build in the wrong places, but it must be resisted.

Finally, we need pace. We’re millions of homes short, which is blighting both living standards and economic growth. The Government needs more courage in its unarguable democratic mandate for bold measures such as Acts of Parliament to supply infrastructure and speed up planning. Fingers crossed, that is coming.

Building towns is not merely about building houses — we need speed, clarity on location, and a greater emphasis on popular beauty and mingling uses. The new towns built after the Second World War were often bad examples of grey modernist misery. Starmer’s government must not repeat the same mistakes.