The New Labour Government - and I blame the centralists and the localists equally for this - has created an enormous house-building advocacy sector, which has achieved remarkably little "on the ground" as the following article illustrates :
"Millennium Communities scheme set to fall far short of goals
Jamie Carpenter, Regen.net, 2 June 2009
A government programme to construct 6,000 environmentally-friendly homes in seven new communities between 1997 and 2010 has so far succeeded in building fewer than 2,000 homes, ministers have admitted.
Figures published in a written parliamentary answer by housing minister Margaret Beckett show that the Millennium Communities initiative has delivered 1,626 new homes.
The Greenwich Millennium Village in London was the first development to be announced under the scheme in 1997. The figures show that nearly 1,100 homes have been built on the site.
But only 14 homes have been completed at the Oakgrove Millennium Village at Milton Keynes and no homes have been constructed at the Hastings Millennium Community, spanning an area of 72ha across three sites in East Sussex, Beckett said.
In New Islington in Manchester, 179 homes have been constructed under the scheme, while 172 homes have been constructed at the Allerton Bywater Millennium Village near Leeds, the figures show.
At the South Lynn Millennium Community in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, 109 homes have been built.
In 2007, the then housing minister Yvette Cooper revealed that public expenditure related to the Millennium Communities programme amounted to £131.6 million."
I have to say that all this comes as no surprise to me at all. The state-funded house-building advocacy sector is, I would suggest, a gravy train which has plunged well off the rails of common sense and the sooner someone shunts it into the sidings, the better !
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