Christian charity Housing Justice has backed a renewed call for political parties to build 90,000 social homes a year to end the housing emergency.In an open letter to political parties, Grenfell United, the Health Equals campaign, IKEA among others called for a “mass social housebuilding programme" to be introduced should they win the general election.

Bonnie Williams, chief executive of Housing Justice, told Premier Christian News: "It's worse than we've ever seen... At the moment, we've got 300,000 people experiencing homelessness, so living in temporary accommodation, across England and Wales, and of that there's 135 thousand children. So we're in desperate need of more social homes."

Williams then further expressed the urgency of the situation, saying: "All of the evidence says that the way out of homelessness for governments is to build more social homes...We've got (millions of) households on local authority waiting lists."

A poll, carried out by YouGov for the homeless charity Shelter, suggested that more than two thirds (69 per cent) of parents said social housing had given their children a stable home, while 43 per cent of social tenants said it had meant they could live close to their support networks.

Shelter's chief executive Polly Neate told the Irish Times: “Now that a general election has been called we cannot afford to waste any time. All political parties must commit to building genuinely affordable social homes – we need 90,000 a year, over ten years, to end the housing emergency for good.”

In response, a Conservative Party spokesperson told the outlet: “Thanks to our clear plan and bold action we have delivered one million homes this Parliament,” while Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson Helen Morgan said: “Nowhere near enough affordable housing is being built in this country because of a Conservative Party that is in the pockets of greedy developers.”