640,000 more homes set for South-East

Plans to build up to 640,000 homes across the South-East can be revealed today.

The aim is to increase housebuilding to an unprecedented 32,000 new homes a year to tackle soaring prices and boost the economy.

The proposals insist that the green belt must be preserved, but they raise the prospect of creeping urban sprawl around London, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire to Ashford in Kent.

Experts claim £30 billion of Government investment in new roads, schools, hospitals and water supplies would need to be provided alongside the homes to protect the region's quality of life.

The proposals from the South-East England Regional Assembly will go out to consultation on Monday, when more than three million households will be asked their views.

Eight million residents will be asked to back one of three options for a South-East plan - to allow the building of either 25,500, 28,000 or 32,000 new homes a year. The favoured option will be submitted to the Government in July, and be formally adopted by 2007 after a public inquiry.

Some 28,000 homes were built across the region last year. The assembly is asking whether this rate should be maintained, lowered or increased - alongside a warning about the possible effect on the environment.

The plan also aims to tackle economic blackspots in Kent and revitalise coastal towns. It calls for a new Thames rail and road crossing linking Essex and the Medway towns, and backs an extension of the Crossrail scheme to include Reading and Ebbsfleet. Mike Gwilliam, the assembly's planning and transport director, said the consultation was in response to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's call to increase housebuilding. But he insisted the assembly was not being forced to meet artificially high targets.

Mr Gwilliam said: "The notion that the South-East is in some sense full up is a myth. About 11 per cent of the region is actually developed. At its highest levels, this plan will add just 0.4 per cent. A lot of the towns are struggling because of the decline in traditional tourism. How can we spread the success that Brighton has had along the coast?"

The South-East plan covers 67 council areas outside London, from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight and round to Kent. Separate plans have been produced by the East of England regional assembly, which takes in Essex and Hertfordshire, for 478,000 new homes over the same period.

Keith Mitchell, Conservative chairman of South-East County Leaders, an alliance of county councils, said: "This huge housebuilding programme has been put together at breakneck speed to satisfy the Government's ridiculously short timescale. Now at last people in the South-East have an opportunity to express their views about housing and its relationship to economic, environmental and social well-being."