20 years ago, at the Athens 2004 Olympics, Team GB won 25 medals. Eight years later, at the London 2012 Olympics, the medal haul increased to 65. That high standard has been maintained ever since and we can hope for similar levels of excellence this summer.

This is what you can achieve when you have clear targets, consistent leadership and a funded, long-term plan that makes hitting them feasible.

A few weeks before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympics, the UK General Election will take place. All the major parties have clear targets regarding the housing crisis, and they have all promised to build more homes. Labour promise to build 1.5m. The Conservatives 1.6m. The Lib Dems 1.9m.

But setting targets doesn’t win medals.

Long before London 2012, UK Sport worked with each sport to identify the opportunities, set ambitious annual targets and then track progress against them. To deliver this it provided proper long-term funding and consistent leadership.

The next government, likely to be led by Keir Starmer, needs to take a similar approach to housebuilding. We need clear national and regional targets, guaranteed long term-funding and more senior consistent leadership. The Labour Manifesto does not provide enough detail on how targets will be achieved or paid for. To encourage and enable the level of building that is required, their policies need funding that is locked-in for the next 10 years. That financial clarity will encourage private sector investment – the more clarity we have on the future, the more homes we will build.

National targets then need to be broken down and set at a regional level, with local authorities and registered providers given the appropriate level of resources and financial support. We also desperately need consistent leadership at a more senior level. The Conservatives came into power in 2010 and since then there have been 16 different housing ministers. No one person can be held accountable for the current mess.

The housing crisis is one of the biggest issues faced by the UK – it warrants Cabinet-level seniority and the introduction of a Secretary of State for Housing. And, of course, fixing the planning process is critical. Today it is a housebuilders squid game, with very few applicants surviving to the end. If the planning process isn’t fixed, targets won’t be hit and the problem will keep getting worse. To resolve this we should roll back the changes made to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) in December, as that would ease the approval process for new housing developments. We also need a national approach to planning policies and procedures.

We should look at this challenge as a long-term opportunity. House building benefits all of us. It reduces homelessness. It enables young people to see a future in which they have a safe and secure home. It saves local authority spending on temporary accommodation and improves health, education and social inclusion. It provides people with the opportunity to improve their quality of life, creates jobs and drives economic growth.

Research by Shelter and the National Housing Federation shows that every £1 of taxpayers’ money used to fund new, affordable homes results in a payback period to the Treasury of just over four years.

Labour has promised to deliver “the biggest boost to affordable housing for a generation”. If they make these changes, we can and will help them deliver it.