Number of proposed eco towns is doubled: TCPA warns against 40 degree cities

The number of new 'eco-towns' to be built across Britain is to double to 10, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced. He said a positive reaction to the project had spurred him to expand the plans to build communities of up to 100,000 green-friendly homes.

The low-carbon or carbon-neutral dwellings will be powered by locally-generated energy from sustainable sources. In his Labour conference speech, he announced the move as part of proposals to boost housebuilding to 240,000 a year in total.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has been appointed by the Government to carry out a study of the criteria for new eco-towns and has launched a new Tomorrow Series paper ‘Eco-towns and the next 60 years of planning’, themed from green belts to eco-towns.

The paper demands more green spaces and medium density housing to cope with climate change. The report shows the demands on planning have never been greater as we seek to deal with the dual challenges of household growth and climate change, and highlights the important role of tree cover.

The TCPA Chief Executive Gideon Amos, said: 'Affordable housing and environmental imperatives affect every region - it is therefore logical that every region should have the option to develop an eco-town.

'The Prime Minister is absolutely right to make social and affordable housing in sustainable communities a priority and we strongly support the housing provision target of 3 million new homes by 2020.

'Local authorities have a real opportunity to bring forward housing schemes through their plans and we encourage planning authorities to release more sites.

The Prime Minister told conference delegates: 'For the first time in nearly half a century we will show the imagination to build new towns – eco-towns – with low and zero-carbo homes.

'And today, because of the responses we have received, we are announcing that instead of just five new eco-towns we will now aim for 10 - building thousands of new homes in every region of the country.'

The eco-town idea was the first major policy announcement made by Mr Brown as he began his campaign to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister earlier this year.

The Communities and Local Government Department said that, with a month to go until the deadline, there had been around 30 expressions of interest in building eco-towns from councils, developers and others.