This year’s delivering sustainable communities summit in Manchester was used last week by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to launch a five-year action plan for housing, changes to the planning system, new regulations to help authorities tackle nuisance and an Academy for Sustainable Communities.

The housing action plan includes a new shared equity scheme for up to 600,000 council and housing association tenants and plans to build up to 80,000 low cost starter homes on public land identified by English Partnerships.

English Partnerships, said deputy prime minister John Prescott, has given 15 surplus sites bought from the NHS to a London-wide initiative offering leasehold housing to key workers and other first-time buyers for £60,000. London mayor Ken Livingstone proposes matching this, using land owned by Transport for London and the London Development Agency.

Mr Prescott said: ‘We used to have this silly situation where the public sector sold off land for the highest prices only for me to ask the Treasury for a subsidy to buy land back for affordable housing for nurses and teachers. So let’s build more homes on surplus public land and re-use this asset for future generations.’

The deputy PM reiterated a government plan to build 1.1 million homes in four growth areas in the south-east by 2016, on the Thames Gateway, the Stanstead corridor, and in Milton Keynes and Ashford. A lower density target enforced by the secretary of state, of fewer than 30 dwellings per hectare, is to be extended from the growth areas to the eastern and south-western regions.

Mr Prescott also announced changes to the planning system. ‘We are working with the Environment Agency, local authorities and other stakeholders on much more rigorous environmental assessments,’ he said. ‘For the first time, our main planning policy statement will make sustainability a core principle of the system.’