Jeremy Corbyn vowed to radically increase council house building speech at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool yesterday.

In his speech, the Labour leader stated that “Labour will remove the artificial local borrowing cap and allow councils to borrow against their housing stock. That single measure alone would allow them to build an extra 12,000 council homes a year.”

Tanya Jackson, Yorkshire Building Society’s head of corporate affairs, said: “Giving local authorities greater powers to borrow more would help to address the huge housing shortage we face.

“We estimate there has been a shortfall of almost 1.2m homes being built since 2004 which has contributed to rising prices.

“Any measures that increase supply of new homes are welcome but the needs of would-be first time buyers should not be overlooked.

“Varying tenures of housebuilding are required across different areas and putting extra powers in the hands of local authorities would do more to ensure the availability of homes both for market rent and sale and further alleviate the underlying causes of the housing deficit.”