At the heart of the housing crisis in England is the failure of successive governments to build enough social rent council homes. The next Labour leader (and deputy leader) must step up to this challenge if they are to win the next election and fix the crisis.

We all see the impacts of this failure every day, in the harrowing statistics on housing and homelessness (released just this week), in the cases that we see on the television, and the increasing amounts of rough sleepers that we see on our daily commutes.

Last year, to ensure that a Labour government would end the housing crisis once and for all, the Labour Campaign for Council Housing (LCCH) played a key role in shaping the housing policy for our 2019 general election manifesto. The result was a set of ambitious commitments that put council housing back at the heart of Labour’s housing policy:

• To build at an annual rate of at least 150,000 social rent homes per year, with 100,000 of these being built by councils for social rent, by the end of the parliament;
• To end the Right-to-Buy policy;
• To provide a £75 billion infrastructure fund to deliver these homes, over five years.

We are all bitterly disappointed with how the 2019 general election ended, but that should not mean that our ambition to end the housing crisis ends as well.

To win the next election, Labour must demonstrate that we have the answers to the ‘bread and butter’ issues that millions of people face; having a tangible and transformative commitment to large-scale council housebuilding at the forefront of our agenda will be one of those issues.

LCCH wrote to all Labour leadership and deputy leadership candidates asking for them to commit to retaining Labour’s commitments on council housing.

It is hugely encouraging to see such a positive response over the last two weeks. In the race to be the next leader, both Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy have publicly responded to LCCH, by re-committing to a policy of building 100,000 social rent council homes per year. This is welcome and we commend the fact that both Long-Bailey and Nandy have signalled to us and members that they will take serious action to tackle the housing crisis.

We are, however, disappointed that we have received no public commitment to our pledges by frontrunner Keir Starmer.

We know that Keir understands how acute the housing crisis can be, and that tackling homelessness through providing high quality council housing is a key reason why he wants to be leader; he has shown this in his constituency and in his campaigning. He stated in a letter to the Labour Housing Group that he “was proud to stand on a manifesto that included radical but deliverable housing policies that would have addressed the housing crisis.”

We believe it is important, then, to publicly commit to retaining our large-scale council housebuilding programme to turn sentiment into action. By committing to the numbers and scale, Keir can be confident that his plans would indeed solve the housing crisis. It is a chance to signal to members and voters alike that he, like his opponents, have concrete answers to one of the biggest issues our country faces.

We do hope to hear from Keir formally soon and that he continues to publicly back a large-scale council house-building programme moving forward, if elected leader of the Labour Party.

Today, all deputy leadership candidates – Richard Burgon, Angela Rayner, Ian Murray, Dawn Butler, and Rosena Allin-Khan – have publicly committed to retaining Labour’s policies on social and council housing from the 2019 general election manifesto. Again, this is a hugely welcome commitment and we wish them the best of luck in their campaigns.

This leadership election does not have to be about internal factionalism. It can be a chance for all candidates to share their views and debate how best solve issues like the housing and homelessness crisis. We are glad to see such a positive response so far and are hugely encouraged by the fact that seven out of eight candidates have publicly backed our existing housing policies. We look forward to making it a full house.