Brown's housing pledge for South

A huge new surge in housing, roads and air traffic in the South-East signalled by Gordon Brown could face the Government with its biggest battle yet against environment campaigners and others protesting that the region will be swamped.

"Radical" changes to bring more people and jobs to the region will form a central part of the Chancellor's comprehensive spending review to be unveiled next month.

It will open the way to far more housing, including lowcost homes, a massive increase in staff and resources to halve the time taken to reach planning approval, and a fresh look at proposals for a major new airport.

The housing and planning changes have already been foreshadowed by the Treasury. But Mr Brown today indicated that they will be far more ambitious and farreaching than expected.

His comments came in an unpublished section of an interview he gave to the Financial Times in which he stressed that it was essential that the UK should maintain high levels of growth to stay competitive with rival EU economic powerhouses.

He went on: "It is clear to me that we will have to take seriously the case of further new housing development in the South-East, that we should move to radically revamp the rules and resources to speed up planning decisions. We should in addition consult on a longterm strategy for increasing airport capacity.

"A dynamic South-East, competitive with other fastgrowing regions in the rest of Europe will need the radical planning, housing and transport reforms that I'm talking about."