The Guardian: "Labour: let cities grow by lifting the cap on councils' borrowing"

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"Existing towns and cities should be expanded and the cap on some councils' borrowing lifted to allow more homes to be built, according to the man responsible for overhauling Labour's housing policy, to ease the chronic shortage.

Sir Michael Lyons told the Guardian he had identified protracted delays in the release of land as the single biggest cause of Britain's housing crisis.

He is minded to recommend a new generation of 'urban extensions', modelled on the post-war new-town expansion, insisting that while communities should have a say in planning, they cannot veto new homes in a time of severe shortage. The expansion of current conurbations, capable of using existing infrastructure, could be built as quickly as new towns, and lead to tens of thousands of new homes, contributing to a target of 200,000 new dwellings a year by 2020."