Brown's housing plan 'will devastate country' By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Daily Telegraph (Filed: 01/06/2004)
Gordon Brown's plans to build more than a million homes in England to halt the rise in house prices would have devastating environmental consequences, including a loss of greenfield land equivalent to half of Greater London, says an unpublished Government report.
The building programme proposed in a Treasury report would also ruin Tony Blair's plans to tackle climate change by increasing carbon dioxide emissions from domestic buildings by a fifth.
Researchers commissioned by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were asked to look into the environmental implications of the report for the Treasury by Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee.
She recommended building 1.4 million extra homes over the next 10 years - double the present building rate.
The Defra report found the environmental impact of the take-up of land alone would be "significant and severe" when compared with the current building rate. It priced the total environmental damage to Britain by
2016 at between £5 billion and £8.4 billion.
While Miss Barker's report was launched by the Government with a fanfare on Budget day and its findings accepted by the Chancellor a few hours later, the report into the environmental consequences languishes on a website, known only to officials, though it was submitted to the Government last month.
Critics will say this is because the report makes uncomfortable reading for senior ministers, most of all for John Prescott.
His plans for "sustainable communities" are shown to be far from sustainable and to conflict with the Kyoto climate change treaty, which he is proud of helping to negotiate.
The report, by three groups of consultants, Entec, Hodkinson and Eftec, looked at the land take, energy use, waste and water resources required to build 1.4 million homes above current planning guidance in England.
They found that this would have a number of serious consequences: An area of 192,000 acres of greenfield land would be needed, above the amount of brownfield land built upon. This is equivalent to 10 times the size of Leicester, half the size of Buckinghamshire or half the size of Greater London.
The new buildings would increase carbon dioxide emission from the domestic sector by almost 20 per cent by 2016.
The report attempts to put a monetary value on all the environmental benefits lost as a result of the construction plans. These include things such as damage to coral reefs from global warming to the loss of amenity sites in the south of England.
The cost of building all the homes Miss Barker recommends is calculated at up to £8.4 billion.
Domestic waste disposal would increase by almost 40 per cent, at a cost of £1.1 billion.
An additional 11 billion gallons of water would be required, meaning new reservoirs and regulations for reduced-flush lavatories, flow regulator taps and smaller baths. There would also be a 10 per cent increase in the amount of sand, gravel and stone quarried by 2016.
The authors say the only way to reduce the impact would be to build at higher densities and to use the most environmentally friendly standards of building.
The Government's failure to publish the report has caused concern among members of the Commons environmental audit select committee, who are engaged in a review of the Barker report.
Peter Ainsworth, the committee's Tory chairman, said: "We did not know about it. We discovered it by accident. We are very surprised it was slipped on to the website without any fanfare.
"The increase in carbon dioxide emissions is huge and worrying. Barker seems to have excluded any consideration of environmental impact which is what will be of most importance to people."
He said the failure to look at the environmental consequences of the Treasury's plans showed the folly of taking the planning system away from the department responsible for the environment.
Henry Oliver, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England said: "The important thing is someone has finally looked at the environmental implications of Kate Barker's report - and it looks pretty scary.
"If there was ever a reason for saying 'hold on, let's look at this again', this is it."
A Defra spokesman called the report "a valuable contribution to inter-departmental discussion."