What if we could deliver almost 100,000 extra homes a year — enough to end the housing crisis — without spending a pound of taxpayers’ money? That could happen if we changed one law, a new report argues.

Rewriting a 1960s act of parliament would bring down the cost of land so councils could leverage it to fund £9.3bn of infrastructure a year. According to the Centre for Progressive Policy think tank, this would create up to 35,000 affordable homes and deliver 61,500 plots every year — with new transport, schools, hospitals and utilities in place. It would take output past the government’s annual target of 300,000 homes by 2022 without needing the £44bn budgeted to get there.

The study, funded by the Labour peer