MORE council houses and affordable houses for rent could be built in Swindon.

Last week Prime Minister Theresa May announced the government would abolish restrictions on council borrowing to boost house building.

Both main parties in Euclid Street have welcomed the move, with Labour challenging the Conservative administration to borrow more and build more rental homes.

The borough council’s cabinet member for housing Cathy Martyn said: “This is excellent news and shows a real intention to help councils build more homes. If we are to increase house building across the borough in order to reach our ambitious targets, this latest announcement from the Government will be crucial in helping us reach our potential to deliver more truly affordable homes for rent. “

She added that with the announcement only just having been made, the authority would be looking for more details before it started making plans: “It is a very recent announcement and we look forward to seeing the detail in due course so that we can assess the impact on the council’s housing development programme.”

But Labour group leader Jim Grant said the administration should commit itself to building more council houses: “Theresa May’s decision is long overdue and it’s a shame it has taken years of campaigning from local councils to get her to change her mind on this. This delay has led to many families in Swindon living in temporary, inadequate accommodation, with no hope in sight of getting a permanent home.

“This council needs to be much bolder in the number of council homes it builds. Low interest rates of borrowing mean that rents from new council homes can more than cover the borrowing costs of building them. With the cap lifted Labour would hope to build around 1000 homes over 5 years. That is a challenging but deliverable target and we would urge the Conservative administration to have the same ambition in their council house building agenda.”

The Conservative Party nationally said it was lifting abolishing the borrowing cap entirely specifically to try and get more houses built, with potentially for many millions of pounds to be borrowed and tens of thousands of houses built nationwide. No government announcement of when the cap will actually be lifted has yet been made

The move has been greeted warmly by the Local Government Association, a group of all the councils in the UK, which has long campaigned against the borrowing cap.

It pointed out that in the 1970s, when Britain last had growth in housing similar to that required now, local authorities built 40 per cent of them