ABSTRACT
In November 2007 Prime Minster Gordon Brown announced to
the House of Commons that three million new homes would
be built by 2020. This ambitious figure, equalling 250,000 new
homes a year, is the result of a shortage of public and private
housing and the projected large population growth of 3.6 million
people in the United Kingdom by 2025. The highest projected
growth will be in the south-east of England, with the prediction
that London will grow by at least 800,000 more inhabitants by
2016, equivalent to a population the size of Leeds.1 Eighty per cent
of these new dwellings will be for single-person households.2
