JOHN PRESCOTT has agreed to release 800 government sites, including disused railway stations, tracks and sidings, former lunatic asylums, coal yards, nature reserves and goods yards for the development of affordable homes.

The decision was announced yesterday as part of a package of measures outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister and Gordon Brown to improve the supply of cheaper homes and make it easier for first-time buyers to get a foot on the property ladder. The 800 sites cover 9,000 acres (3,600 hectares), roughly equivalent to the size of a small market town and sufficient to build about 145,000 homes.

They include 100 former NHS sites previously identified by the Government for possible housing development and a further 700 new sites owned by a number of agencies including the Ministry of Defence, the Railways Board and the Highways Agency.

Mr Prescott and Mr Brown confirmed yesterday that the owners of the sites must now work with English Partnerships, the Government’s regeneration agency, to see if houses can be built on the land.

At least 10,000 new homes, including many released at below the market price, are expected to be built on former Ministry of Defence land in the capital, under an initiative known as Project MoDel (Ministry of Defence Estate in London).

A further 400 new homes will be built on three former NHS sites under the Design for Manufacture scheme, which challenges house builders to design and build homes at a cost of £60,000 or less. The new sites bring to seven the number earmarked for the scheme.

The plans are in response to criticism that the Government has focused too much on increasing housing without increasing supply.

Mr Prescott said: “We need to increase . . . supply and to provide more affordable housing. We need to build more for our money.”

Mr Brown said that he was determined to add to the increase of one million home owners since 1997, to reach two million by 2010.

This would be achieved, in part, by plans to enable people to buy a stake in their homes through shared equity schemes in which the Government and lenders would fund up to half the cost of a new home.

Trevor Beattie, the corporate strategy director of English Partnerships, said that the decision to release surplus land would make the agencies that owned the sites think more creatively.

“Until now, they have not been bringing forward land for housing development. Now they will have to,” he added.

Some social housing providers welcomed the plans but other organisations were highly critical.

Adam Sampson, the director of the housing charity Shelter, said that the Government’s top priority should be to increase the number of affordable homes for those most in need.

“Instead, public money and public land is being used to subsidise the acquisition of personal wealth through home ownership,” he said.

Martin Weale, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said that the real beneficiaries of shared ownership schemes would be wealthy speculators.

HOUSE HUNTING

15 million people in England are owner occupiers, 6.4 million rent private or social housing and 80,000 are in shared-equity schemes

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