Labour's 'hopeless' homes plan blasted

A GOVERNMENT target of providing 128,500 new homes along the Thames Gateway by 2016 is 'hopeless', according to one of the region's leading housebuilders.

Westbury chief executive Martin Donohue said Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's plans to regenerate the Gateway - an area Westbury is targeting for development through its Dartford office - are being stymied by English Partnerships (EP), the quango that distributes Government land for development.

The accusation by Westbury, one of the country's top 10 housebuilders, comes a year after the publication of a Government-commissioned report that called for a massive shake-up of the country's land supply and planning system to tackle a chronic shortage of new homes.

Prescott and Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a £6bn action plan for the Thames Gateway barely a month ago, hoping to reassure the property industry that the largest regeneration area in Europe would become a reality.

The Government has identified the Thames Gateway as one of four 'growth areas' alongside Milton Keynes, the London-Stansted M11 corridor and Ashford, and has tasked English Partnerships as its specialist adviser.

EP, headed by David Higgins, reports directly to Prescott, owns about 6,000 hectares of land around major cities and has an annual investment budget of about £600m. One of its main jobs is to ensure that surplus public sector land - ranging from Ministry of Defence to National Health Service sites - is used to support Government building initiatives.

Donohue said: 'As a clearing house agency, its performance has been less than impressive. I think the intention is good at top level but delivery has fallen short of promise.'

But he warned that when EP is involved in public land releases, it 'seeks to impose a level of control on design, pricing and the proportion of social housing, such as to risk making many developments uneconomic'.

Higgins joined EP in 2003 after a stint as chief executive of Lend Lease, the Australian developer that was part of a consortium which in 2002 sealed a deal with EP to build up to 10,000 homes on the Greenwich Peninsula, at the edge of the Thames Gateway.

Under Higgins' leadership, the quango has tried to improve its performance and Donohue recognised Higgins' expertise. 'If they want housing output to increase and be affordable, they could do it - they hold the supply chain,' he said.

Last year's report into the housing market by Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's interest-rate setting monetary policy committee, examined how planning authorities could cut the time it takes to grant landowners permission to build new homes.

English Partnerships declined to comment.