Brown's House Building Targets Include Building On Flood Plains

The government today will detail plans to boost by a third the number of houses built in Britain each year after a shortage left thousands of families unable to afford a home.The Department of Communities and Local Government plans will set out details of how ministers hope to reach the target of three million new homes by 2020.

Housing minister Yvette Cooper's green paper is expected to include plans for the release of public sector land for housing, and for new carbon-neutral ecotowns. She is also set to detail plans for an extra 20,000 social rented homes a year, which will be funded with cash made available through this autumn's comprehensive spending review.

Surprisingly the Government plans also include building new homes on flood plains, despite the weekends recent events, according to a leaked document.

Brown's new targets in total will add no more than an extra 250,000 homes above previous target, which was for 200,000 new homes a year to be built by 2016. That's a small fraction of England's 22 million housing stock. Brown lifted the target when he set out his priorities to Parliament on July 11.

Government figures show that the number of households has increased by 30 percent in the last three decades while house building has fallen by 50 percent. Between now and 2026, the U.K. will generate 223,000 extra households every year, and almost three of them quarters of will be single dwellers.