[from The Observer]

Prince backs new housing bonanza

Prescott wins royal approval for 200,000 homes

Nick Mathiason Sunday October 19, 2003

Prince Charles and John Prescott are to join forces to create a framework
for what will be the biggest housebuilding drive Britain has seen for 50
years.

The prince will share a platform with the Deputy Prime Minister in east
London next month when they will reveal the design principles behind the
building of 200,000 new homes in the south-east of England. They will be
flanked by an elite group of international planners who will help create a
new generation of towns for key workers unable to get a foot on the housing
ladder.

The project will be seen as a valuable endorsement of Labour’s far-reaching
housing plans by the heir to the throne — and a blow to conservationists,
who fear a concreting over of the countryside in the South East. The
unprecedented move will also show that the prince’s ideas on sustainable
developments on a human scale have been taken on board by government.

Prescott is expected to outline proposals to create a strict design code for
communities using local materials to enhance identity and reduce the risk of
new homes becoming soulless estates.

The Government has identified four growth zones: Milton Keynes,
Buckinghamshire; Ashford, Kent; Stansted, Essex; and an ambitious Thames
Gateway linear city spanning east London, Kent and Essex.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is chairing a Cabinet committee to kickstart the
building of thousands of new homes on largely derelict and contaminated
land. Settlements are expected to be compact, with homes built close to
shops and amenities to minimise car use.

Prescott has been influenced by the New Urbanism design movement flowering
in the States and earlier this month visited America to see new towns and
cities. This chimes with the prince’s long-held theories. A royal aide said:
‘Charles wants to be seen as useful, and Labour wants kudos by royal
association. It makes for a marriage of expedience.’

Charles’s forays into the architectural world have not always proved
successful. Plans for an eco-friendly model village in the Hebrides were
scrapped because they cost too much. His Poundbury development in Dorset has
split the property world, with many saying it is too twee and impossible to
replicate elsewhere.

Gordon Brown has signalled that booming house prices in the south-east are
hampering economic growth as key workers leave the region because of the
cost of homes. Fewer homes are being built now than at any time in the past
80 years yet more households are being created as people live longer,
divorce or choose a single life.

The ‘Not in My Back Yard’ lobby has railroaded local councils into refusing
planning permission for new houses, and a cumbersome planning system has
also been blamed for stifling new homes. The result is rocketing house
prices in the south.

A series of announcements over the next three months will push forward the
housing agenda. Plans to use more urban brownfield land instead of
countryside will be published in 10 days’ time, and reform of the planning
system and measures to finance new roads, rail lines, schools and hospitals
needed by new communities need will be outlined.

Prescott’s plans have been costed at �22 billion over 20 years and there is
concern that this is unrealistic. The Treasury is looking to introduce a
windfall tax on agricultural land which has increased in value once planning
permission for development has been granted.

Farmland can fetch �1,500 an acre, but once houses are earmarked for such
plots the price can shoot up to �1m, said the Town and Country Planning
Association.

Critics say that too much growth is centred on the south and that the
Government should move jobs to the the north where there is no shortages of
houses, and build new rail lines connecting northern cities.