Ministers announce land for cheaper homes

More people than ever are being given the opportunity to own their own homes, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown announced today.

Mr Prescott and Mr Brown were visiting homeowners in the Isokon building in Camden, London, a new restoration of a building whose residents formerly included Agatha Christie. The homeowners have purchased their homes with the help of a shared ownership scheme.

Mr Prescott and Mr Brown confirmed that English Partnerships (EP), the Government's regeneration agency, has purchased nearly 100 surplus NHS sites for the purpose of supplying more affordable homes. In addition to this, EP is reviewing more than 700 further vacant and surplus sites, including land owned by the Ministry of Defence and vacant public sector sites next to railway stations in London.

The Deputy Prime Minister also announced three further public sector sites for the Design for Manufacture competition, which challenges house builders to design high quality homes with a construction cost of around £60,000.

The sites, which are all ex-National Health Service (NHS) land, were announced as Renny Lodge, Newport Pagnell; Park Prewett, Basingstoke and Laybourne Grange, Maidstone. These sites will provide nearly 400 new homes, many for first time buyers. In all the scheme will provide nearly 1, 000 homes.

Mr Prescott said: "We want to ensure decent housing for everyone, whether they own or rent. We remain absolutely committed to the provision of decent social housing at an affordable rent. We have already announced a 50% increase in new social home building and have made excellent progress on achieving our decent homes target for 2.2m homes. Now, work has been completed or plans agreed to bring 82% of these homes up to standard. We must all work together to create sustainable communities."

(CD/SP)