Andy Burnham has pledged the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period.

In a speech in Manchester today, Burnham made his first policy promises since announcing he would run for Prime Minister.

The likely successor to Keir Starmer, who is currently uncontested in his leadership bid, set out plans to tackle the UK’s “housing trap”.

He said the housing crisis is having a “ruinous effect” on public finances.

Burnham promised further decentralisation of power away from Westminster by setting up a “No10 of the North”.

This would form the “nerve centre of a re-wired Britain” he said, by helping to “redistribute power and resources across the UK”.

Burnham described this decentralised model, which he called “Manchesterism”, as a “vision for good growth and a rejection of the old trickle down model”

And he promised that growth would be spread across every British postcode with “places no longer forgotten or written off like they have in the past”.

But Burnham offered some reassurance to the markets by pledging to stick to current fiscal rules and back up his plans with “sound public finances”.