• Andy Burnham also announced Right to Buy reform, new council powers over empty homes and a leasehold reform Bill before Christmas.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has promised the biggest council house building programme since the post-war era, in his speech to the Labour Party Conference.

Burnham said the programme will be led by Angela Rayner, and councils would be helped to build on unused public land to keep costs down. No target for the number of homes, timescale or funding figure was given.

The prime minister also said that Right to Buy will be reformed so that it no longer applies to newly built council homes. Burnham said existing tenants would keep the right, and that the change would keep the new homes in public hands for future generations.

Councils will also gain powers to take control of empty homes and return them to the public housing stock. Landlords renting out the worst-quality homes will be given warnings to improve them. If they refuse, it will be made much easier for councils to acquire the properties, and the government will legislate if necessary.

On homelessness, Burnham said "Everyone In" would become permanent national policy, with a mission to end the need for rough sleeping.

For first-time buyers, a "Your First Home" scheme will reduce the size of the deposit needed. Burnham said it would open up home ownership to those without family financial backing. Further details were not provided.

A Leasehold Reform Bill will be introduced before Christmas. Burnham told leaseholders that the days of being "squeezed for every penny" were coming to an end.

He said more than a million people are on housing waiting lists, close to the number of homes lost through Right to Buy in the 1980s. "With a good home, everything is possible," he said.

Burnham said he would stick to the government's fiscal rules. He argued that building a generation of council homes would save billions from the housing benefit budget over the decade and informed the conference that a full plan for Britain would be published later this year.

Commenting of the PM's anouncement, Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive of Partnerships and Regeneration, Vistry Group, said: “We welcome the commitment by the Prime Minister to progress with the biggest expansion of council housing since 1945 and we stand ready to assist in the delivery of that. Vistry has a long and established track record of working with local authorities of all political colours across England to deliver new homes of all tenures, provide skills and training opportunities for local people, and create new high-quality transformational places with new shops, public spaces, and a range of amenities for new and existing residents alike. Not only has this enabled councils to deliver new homes across a variety of tenures through joint ventures, it has also enabled them to invest the subsequent development uplift into service delivery and improvement. This is a model which Vistry is proud to have developed and refined, and is one which is ideally placed to assist local authorities in delivering new council homes across a range of affordable tenures and investing in our communities.”