Pickles demolishes 'Soviet' targets

The move is intended to improve housing growth following the abolition of centrally-imposed regional targets.

Mr Pickles officially scrapped the "Soviet" targets yesterday as he laid an order in Parliament revoking regional spatial strategies which, he said, had failed to increase house-building.

"Communities will no longer have to endure the previous government's failed Soviet tractor-style top-down planning targets – they were a terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the Green Belt," he said.

Mr Pickles, a former leader of Bradford Council, said that the Government would introduce "powerful new incentives" for communities to encourage support for the construction of new homes.

Local people would be given "direct rewards from the proceeds of growth to improve their local area", he said.

Chancellor George Osborne will be announcing his spending review in October, after which there will be a consultation about the details of the scheme.

He has suggested incentives could be passed onto residents via council tax or business rates.