Despite the initial rhetoric around ‘nimby' councils' planning decisions, Theresa May's housing announcement this week is a step in the right direction – but it needs to go further.

Plans to tackle the UK's housing shortage, pre-empted by a change of job title for the secretary of state, have a former housing minister's fingerprints all over them. Gavin Barwell, now Number 10's chief of staff, may well have been the man to get the country building had he not fallen victim to the poorly-judged election last year.