Government attacked for South-east housing plan: The Thames Corridor from 1,000 feet above Thamesmead. To the right, Dagenham; ahead, City airport and Canary Wharf

The Government yesterday outlined a development strategy for the South-east into the next century and said 855,000 new homes would be needed in the region by 2006.

The plan could revive the bitter planning controversies of the 1980s, with shire councillors and residents protesting against a wave of new housing in high-amenity rural areas.

In issuing draft planning guidance to the region's councils, Michael Howard, Secretary of State for the Environment, said he had to strike a balance between the need for new homes and economic growth and for environmental protection. But some councillors and environmental groups said he had made a severe misjudgement.

Mr Howard also reined back hopes for a major development on miles of derelict land on both banks of the Thames estuary. This had been mooted as a way of cutting development pressure and congestion in Hamsphire, Berkshire and Surrey.

His response to a long-awaited consultants' report on the East Thames Corridor area, stretching 30 miles out of east London, was to set up a task force of civil servants. But he had no plans for any new pump-priming

investment to attract private

developers.

The figure of 855,000 new homes - more than in greater Birmingham - is based on government forecasts for how many extra households will be created over the period. The region's population is still growing slowly but the driving forces are the shrinking size of households and the ageing of the population, with growing numbers of single-parent families, divorced and elderly widowed people living alone.

Roger Carter, chairman of Berkshire County Council's environment committee, said the county and all of Berkshire's district councils had agreed 35,700 new homes could be accommodated. Mr Howard's allocation for Berkshire is 40,000.

'We've had decades of rapid development,' he said. 'The Green Belt in the east of the county and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the west are under pressure. Our figure is the maximum we can take without really severe environmental damage.'

Michael Burton, of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said: 'The announcement has confirmed our worst fears.' Although there was a need for about 80 per cent of the extra homes to be for single people, more than half of the new homes built in the 1980s had three or more bedrooms - and there was no reason to believe the 1990s would be any

different.

'This is not an effective way of providing affordable houses for people on low incomes - that's where the real need is,' he said. CPRE believes a maximum of 650,000 new homes is needed and development should be concentrated in London and larger towns.

But the House Builders' Federation said 925,000 homes were needed by 2006 to prevent serious shortages arising in the counties where there is most pressure to resist new development - Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey.

(Photograph omitted)