Housing Green Paper

The government's newly published housing green paper unveils plans to invest £8 billion in affordable housing, with an overall plan to deliver three million new homes by 2020. Some two million will be built by 2016 and Yvette Cooper said these would be distributed throughout the country.

Land for 1.6 million new homes has already been identified in current regional plans and Ms Cooper said the remaining 1.4 million would not infringe into the greenbelt despite widespread rumours to the contrary.

The government will consider new proposals to prevent property developers sitting on land where planning has been approved and there would also be financial incentives for councils to reclaim empty properties, estimates of numbers of empty houses in the UK vary, but could be as high as 700,000.

The green paper contains "historic proposals" for the much publicised five new eco towns, supposedly the first new towns for 40 years, legislating through building regulations to make all new housing 'zero carbon' by 2016. The cost of going zero carbon in 2016 could add 30% to the average construction cost of a home. This equates to a £25,000 increase in the cost of a dwelling.

Ms Cooper also pledged to prioritise social and affordable housing, telling MPs "we believe a decent home should be for the many and not for the few". By 2010-11, 70,000 affordable homes will be built a year, 45,000 of which will be social housing, she said.

Replying to critics who pointed out that the paper did not rule out building on floodplains, despite parts of Britain currently being underwater after torrential rain led rivers to burst their banks, Cooper said that developments proposed in flood-risk areas would be subject to an assessment by the Environment Agency. She said “It is not realistic to stop building on floodplains. You can't say that there will be no building in somewhere like York, which is built on a floodplain.”