We'll turbocharge house-building in region, says shadow Chancellor

Claiming that Labour was now the party for homeowners, Mr Parker said, if elected as mayor, he would build an extra 2,000 social homes every year.

Miss Reeves said the number of young people living with their parents has, over the past four or five years, increased by 16 per cent.

Miss Reeves said 64,000 people were now on council housing waiting lists across the West Midlands, but the present mayor had succeeded in building just 46 new council homes.

"Richard wants to turbocharge the building of new homes, particularly social housing," Miss Reeves told the Express & Star.

"The demand is there and we know what a transformational impact it can have on people to have a home of their own.

"The great thing about these houses is that they have low bills because they are energy efficient."

Miss Reeves has pledged that a future Labour government would set housebuilding targets for local authorities, which would result in an extra 1.5 million homes being built over a five-year period.

This could involve more homes being built in green belt areas, but Miss Reeves insisted people had no cause to fear encroachment as Labour would adopt a 'brownfield first' approach to development.

"What Keir Starmer said earlier this week was that, where, for example you have got a disused car park or a petrol station in the green belt, building on those sites is preferable to building on a field in an urban area," she said.

"Here in the West Midlands there is plentiful brownfield sites that we want to see developed. And when new housing is built, first dibs should go to local people.

"We are identifying pieces of land like car parks and petrol stations, a brownfield-first approach.

"People do not need to worry."

She said the only way the country could provide enough homes was through collaboration between regional government and Westminster.

“For too long the Tories have put the problem of housing supply and home ownership into the 'too hard' basket and the result is thousands of more adults locked out of a housing market who need to stay at home with their parents longer than they want," she said.

Mr Parker said the mayor had a £200 million budget for reclaiming brownfield sites. He said if he became mayor he would use that to build more social housing.

"When we build on brownfield sites, we rebuild and reconnect our communities, we create jobs, and allow all the communities the West Midlands to thrive."

Miss Reeves and Mr Parker were taken on a tour of a block of 72 new flats being built by Lovell Homes on behalf of Walsall Housing Group (whg).

Corporate director of development Rebecca Bennett Casserly explained how each flat included its own self-contained heat pump, made use of heat capturing technology in the ceiling, and benefited from solar roof panels.

"These are fossil-free homes," she said.

Earlier in the day, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh had announced that a future Labour government would seek to nationalise most of the rail network within five years of taking office.

Miss Reeves said she had arrived half an hour late on an overcrowded train, caused by the cancellation of an earlier service.

"That is not how people should be travelling, but it is the result of a fragmented train policy which doesn't put the passenger first," she said.

"We will bring those back in-house put the passenger at the heart of the train system, instead of having multiple companies operating different routes will bring that under a central organising body."

Miss Reeve said the Government was subsidising the railways to the tune of £4 billion.

"The evidence today shows you could save £2 billion if you had one train operating company rather than multiple companies," she said.