Prescott plans new homes on green sites

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, will this week announce "green" development plans to build half a million homes over unspoilt countryside.

The plans, coming after Labour promises to concentrate new housing in existing towns and cities, are bound to cause a storm of protest. Meanwhile the Government is pushing though legislation that will dramatically reduce the powers of elected councils to decide where the developments will go.

Exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday last summer, the plans are the result of a joint drive by Mr Prescott and Gordon Brown to greatly increase low-cost housing in south-east England.

Concentrated in four areas – around Milton Keynes, Stansted, Ashford and in the Thames Gateway, east of London – the housing is intended to be environmentally friendly and "sustainable", fulfilling the aims of last year's Earth Summit in Johannesburg. Mr Prescott has pressed for the developments to be designed as communities, with schools and good transport links.

During Labour's first term, Mr Prescott promised to cut back on building on "greenfield" sites, to make more use of "brownfield" land that had already been developed, and to concentrate on reviving towns and cities. The Government achieved its target of building 60 per cent of new houses on brownfield sites.

However, planning studies, commissioned by the Government, show that the vast bulk of new housing in three of the four areas will go on greenfield land over the next 30 years. A total of 29,000 houses will be built in open country around Ashford, between 123,000 and 197,000 in the M11 corridor around Stansted, and 250,000 around Milton Keynes.

Only in the Thames Gateway area will most houses be built on brownfield sites, but even here some 40,000 will be in the countryside, according to calculations from the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE).

The pressure group accuses the Government of breaking its promises and points out that it will be hard for local communities to resist the plans. Under the Planning Bill, now in Parliament, county councils will no longer have the power to decide where new housing is concentrated; this will be directed by unelected regional assemblies.

Henry Oliver, head of planning for the CPRE, said: "Ministers are returning to the bad old ways of building on greenfields and seem determined to deprive the public of their say."