Prime minister Theresa May has signalled the start of a new era of council-house building in England by announcing an end to borrowing rules that stop local authorities using a key fund to deliver new homes.

In a measure to boost housebuilding that had gone untrailed, May used her speech to this year’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham to announce the move that councils have long called for – using the revenue from their existing social housing to invest in new stock.

The prime minister’s announcement is a recognition that the only time in the past 50 years when the nation has delivered the 300,000 new homes a year her government is targeting, council homes have contributed a significant proportion of the count.

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