Britain must build one million homes to meet shortfall, says new report

There is little more than a gaping hole where Britain's first new town in more than 40 years is due to be built: it's a symbol of the huge housing shortage that successive governments have failed to fill.

For almost 10 years the project, 32 kilometres east of London, has languished - first as developers worried about its vast scale and then as the financial crisis hit the construction industry.

However, now, under a new government-backed plan, more than 20,000 new homes will be built in Ebbsfleet, which is only 17minutes from the centre of the capital on a high-speed rail line.

Yet that number of homes is a mere drop in the ocean, says a housing report last month by a former Bank of England policymaker: it suggests Britain needs at least one million homes.

This shortfall has helped push up house prices in the country over the past year by nearly 10 per cent - and much more in London - bringing with it echoes of past booms and busts.

"We've had to reshape colossal, almost biblical, amounts of land," said Jeremy Kite, leader of the local council in Dartford, the nearest main town. He has been working with the site's owner, Land Securities, to get work started in disused chalk quarries.