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The deputy chief executive of housing association Home Group has hit out at private housebuilders, saying they do not have the ability or inclination to build the homes needed to solve the UK housing crisis.

Speaking at a Policy Exchange fringe event at the Labour Party conference, Joe Docherty said that housebuilders had 鈥渁 duty to their shareholders, not to society鈥� and said that government attempts to get them to build more were 鈥渓ike pushing on a string.鈥�

He said: 鈥淚t is the job of the [housebuilder] chief executive to increase their return on capital. If a chief executive built an unlimited amount he would get to an inflexion point where that return started to fall. So they simply won鈥檛 do it.鈥�

Docherty also called on the government to invest more cash in building affordable homes, as housing associations were running out of balance sheet capacity to borrow money from the private sector to build houses.

He said Home Group鈥檚 own gearing was at 66%, just 4% shy of putting it in excess of the loan covenants from its banks, meaning it was all but impossible to borrow more.

鈥淭here has been this theoretical search going on for how to build affordable homes without spending any grant. Unfortunately it鈥檚 just a matter of arithmetic. It can鈥檛 happen. It can only really come from the public purse,鈥� he said.