Brown pledges 100,000 new homes on brownfield land
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has vowed to build five new eco-towns with a combined total of 100,000 carbon-free homes if he becomes Prime Minister.
The towns will be built on brownfield land on old industrial sites and are designed to give first-time buyers a chance to get onto the property ladder at an affordable price.
"I would say a home-owning, asset-owning, wealth-owning democracy is what would be in the interests of our country because everybody would have a stake in the country," he said this morning.
His aim is for 200,000 new homes to be built by 2013 and the first town will be built at former Army base Oakington in Cambridgeshire.
At the moment about 185,000 new properties are built each year but the amount of new households being formed which require a property far exceeds that.
"More households are being created than there are places for them," said Mr Brown. 
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