More homes will be built in Swindon under a new government drive - and the councillor in charge of planning says that can only be a good thing for the town.

Councillor Marina Strinkovsky says she fully sees the need for the government’s proposed changes to planning rules across the country in order to encourage the building of more homes.

“The housing crisis is at the root of so many of our problems today," said the cabinet member for placemaking and planning.

“If we can offer people a safe and secure place to live, if children get a secure home to grow up in, if people have a place where they can start families- because young people aren’t having children because they can’t rent a home, let alone dream of buying one – then that will help with lots of things.”

Just weeks after Labour won the general election, deputy prime minister and the new secretary of state for housing communities and local government Angela Rayner announced a consultation on changing the rules informing each council’s planning policies, with the express intention of getting 1.5 million more homes built.

She said: “The new approach reflects the level of ambition necessary to tackle the housing crisis and meet the government’s commitment to 1.5 million homes.

Supporting the government’s number one mission to grow the economy across the country, these new targets will flow into the development of local plans. It is through local plans that communities have a say in the building of the homes and infrastructure we need.

She added she had told every council in the country: “There is not just a professional responsibility but a moral obligation to see more homes built.”

Cllr Strinkovsky said she agreed with that aim and said Swindon was continuing to have more homes built: “We are in a reasonable place- we are updating our local plan, and we don’t need to wait to see what finally is announced, nor are we so advanced that we have to redo anything.

“We will have to find more land for housing, and it means that some sites that we might  have thought weren’t perfect might be needed – but to give the previous  administration here its due – it was always quite ambitious about building houses here, so we have the Wichelstowe and the New Eastern Villages expansions, and more sites elsewhere.”

As part of the new government proposals councils will be encouraged to use ‘grey land’ low-quality or previously used land before green field sites - but Cllr Strinkovsky said this would not hugely impact on Swindon: “This is about mainly protecting the Greenbelt and there isn’t a designated Greenbelt around Swindon.

“And if you look around the borough the town is surrounded by farmland, it’s not like London, we don’t have  acres of abandoned developed land to use here.”

The government’s proposals have been criticised, p[particularly by its political opponents. The Conservative leader of Wiltshire Council Councillor Richard Clewer called the plan ”nothing less than a developer’s charter”.

But Cllr Strinkovsky, a Labour councillor, rejects that: “It’s a little strange to see Conservatives so upset that things might be made easier for private sector developers to build houses.

“If the government had gone full Clement Attlee and announced that 1.5m homes were to be built by the public sector I might have understood it.

“What I’m hoping is that there will be a win-win. The housing market and developers will create a positive feedback loop – and we will see the houses built to be able to solve the housing crisis.”

Cllr Strinkovsky said officers and elected members would be involved in Euclid Street’s response to the government’s proposals which must be submitted by late September.