Gove pledges to build social rented housing

The justice secretary called for a “national ambition” to build hundreds of thousands of homes a year, “both private and socially rented”.

He said the programme should be led by “someone who will push for diggers in the ground and homes for all come what may”.

Mr Gove made a surprise entry into the leadership race yesterday, as former London mayor Boris Johnson bowed out.

The justice secretary will be running against Theresa May, Liam Fox, Stephen Crabb and Andrea Leadsom in the race to become the next prime minister.

He said: “We need a national ambition to build hundreds of thousands of new homes a year, both private and socially-rented – led by someone who will not take no for an answer and who will push for diggers in the ground and homes for all come what may.”

In the Autumn Statement last year, the government sharply shifted grant funding after 2018 away from affordable rent, reserving most of the cash for low-cost homeownership.

The government has also put £2.3bn aside for the building of 200,000 Starter Homes.

Mr Gove, a former shadow housing minister, was interviewed by Inside Housing in 2006.

In the interview, he expressed doubts about the extension of the Right to Buy to housing associations, saying it could deplete the availability of social housing stock.

“The desire that we had to extend the Right to Buy to housing associations was an understandable reaction,’ he said.

“However, far fewer people live in social housing now than did in 1979. It’s vitally important, given homelessness and other factors, that we maintain a decent social housing stock. The Right to Buy [if it] applies to housing associations clearly has capacity to remove that.”