Prime minister Gordon Brown will abolish regional assemblies and hand regional development authorities (RDAs) the power to set housing targets from 2010 in an attempt to boost delivery to 240,000 homes a year. The announcement follows recommendations made in the Treasury’s sub-national review of economic development. “For the first time each region will have a single strategy co-ordinating jobs, economic growth, housing, planning and environmental objectives, replacing the current myriad of overlapping strategies,”said the Treasury statement.<br><br>In future, housing targets will be drawn up by RDAs based on strategic market assessments undertaken by individual councils. Local authority leaders will have the power to approve the regional draft strategy before it is submitted to independent examination. HBF external affairs director John Slaughter said increasing RDA power would only be worthwhile if it encouraged local authorities to grant more planning consents. <br><br>“In principle we support devolution to RDAs as long as it makes the process more efficient. Changes to regional process have to go hand-in-hand with local delivery; we can’t get round the fact that it is local authorities that deliver planning consents.” The south east of England regional assembly (SEERA), which has notoriously rebuffed the government’s housing targets for the region, claimed …