Community investment 'backs people' - Starmer

The expansion of a government scheme to invest in communities "backs people to change what matters to them", Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

The government announced its Pride in Place scheme will widen to 40 more areas across England, giving local people a say over how up to £20m is spent in their neighbourhoods.

Speaking in Hastings on Thursday, Sir Keir said the project could "create better sports facilities" in the town and "regenerate the town centre in Bexhill".

He said he was frustrated that "tomorrow's front pages are unlikely to be about" the scheme but it was the kind of change that would "affect millions of lives".

Sir Keir said: "I've always believed that people with skin in the game make better decisions about their community and their future, and so that is what we will do."

He described it as a "programme that backs people to change what matters to them".

The expansion means around 380 areas will receive funding.

"If you want to know where hope lives in Britain, its in our communities," the prime minister said.

"That is where people come together, it is where you will find our common good and that is where we will discover once again the courage in each other."

Before his speech in Hastings, anger had been growing among Sir Keir's own Labour MPs over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal.

The prime minister told Parliament he was aware of the former business secretary's ongoing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted paedophile who died in 2019, when he appointed him US ambassador in 2025.

But he said Mandelson misled him about the extent of his friendship with Epstein before he was appointed.

Mandelson has not responded to requests for comment. The BBC understood his position was that he did not act in any way criminally and that he was not motivated by financial gain.

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