The government has been urged to build more than a dozen new towns on the edge of London to solve the capital’s housing crisis.

Think-tank the Policy Exchange said in a new report the government should collaborate with the Greater London Authority and build a total of 450,000 homes in 15 new “millennial towns”, accommodating 30,000 new homes each, along five growth corridors which spread out from the capital.

Of the corridors two – the Thames Gateway extending eastwards and the London-Stansted-Cambridge development corridor – have already been recognised by the government as having national importance.