31 August 2007
Serious doubts have been cast over government plans for 3 million new homes by 2020 after inspectors backed a more modest increase in house-building in Southeast England.
The independent panel, appointed by the government to review proposals by the South East England Regional Assembly, declared this week that 32,000 homes should be built in the region each year for the next 20 years.
This compares with 28,900 per year proposed by the assembly, but appears to be well short of the number required to meet the target set by Gordon Brown within days of taking over as prime minister.
The government has so far avoided setting targets for each region, but wants 240,000 homes a year to be built across England as a whole by 2016.
Brown, who has made housing one of the main priorities of his premiership, wants a huge expansion in building across areas from the Thames Gateway to Milton Keynes, Ashford and Aylesbury Vale. But local politicians have opposed such widescale development, fearing that infrastructure and services would come under strain.
Catriona Riddell, director of planning at Seera, said that even if numbers in the Southeast were raised in line with the panel's recommendation, the government faced a national shortfall of more than 30,000 homes per year. 'We see this as the first challenge to Gordon Brown's figures,' she said.
The regional assembly reacted positively to the panel's report, published on August 29, calling it 'a victory for common sense'. Local authorities, it said, had already suggested sites for almost half of the extra homes required beyond those proposed by the assembly.
Riddell told Public Finance that it accepted that 'life has moved on' since it began drawing up the Southeast Plan four years ago. But it will be billing ministers more for infrastructure costs than the £89bn it previously sought.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said its recent green paper acknowledged that the current round of regional plans will fail to meet revised house-building targets and will have to be reviewed again before 2011.
The DCLG will now consider the inspectors' recommendations, which include new growth areas near Oxford and Reading, before consulting on changes to the Southeast Plan.
Edward Dawson, southeast director at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said it had major concerns over proposals for selective green belt reviews and urged the government to slow down development.
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