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Chancellor Philip Hammond will use the Budget to announce plans to get 300,000 homes built a year.

Mr Hammond said fixing the housing market was a "crucial part" of ensuring Millennials are not the first generation since the Black Death to be less prosperous than their parents.

He promised the Government would do "whatever it takes" to get homes built including underwriting loans to small house builders if necessary.

According to the Sunday Times, he will also find around £5 billion for housing schemes.

But he will not take up a suggestion by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, who is responsible for housing, to borrow £50 billion to fund a massive home-building scheme.

He also vowed to protect the green belt, raising questions over where all the homes will be built.

And crucially, he did not say how many of the homes will be affordable or social housing.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

The Treasury would not take questions on the subject today, telling the Mirror to wait for Wednesday's Budget.

Only last month, Theresa May's pledge to build a "new generation of council houses" was slammed after aides admitted it'd only mean around 5,000 extra homes per year.

The Prime Minister, who at the Tory conference raised the affordable housing budget by £2bn to £9.1bn, said last week: "We must get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most."

(Image: Getty)

Official figures this week showed more than 217,000 homes were built last year, a rise which pressure groups said was encouraging.

But town hall chiefs made clear the only solution was to build more council homes - not private homes, or "affordable" homes at 80% of market rent.

The Local Government Association's housing spokesman Martin Tett said last week: "There is no way to solve our chronic housing shortage without a renaissance in council house building."

John Healey MP, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, said: " After seven years in Government, it’s clear the Conservatives have no plan to fix the housing crisis and still can’t see that their policy failures are making the crisis worse.

"More big targets, small changes in funding and yet another review into the housing market fall far short of what is needed.