The leader of Oxfordshire County Council has branded Gordon Brown’s much heralded housing plans as “simplistic” and says that they will not have the effect of helping people on to the housing ladder.

Staff at one of the country’s best-performing youth services fear its good work could be undone when it switches to an integrated youth support model of working next year.

A French woman shattered the life of a British psychologist during an obsessive 16-year campaign of stalking and harassment, a court has been told.

One North East, a group that helps the children of alcoholics, has won the prestigious Maxie Richards Award.

A simple test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease could be available within five years, scientists said yesterday.

Nearly 3,000 hospital patients were given the wrong treatment last year because of inaccurate or confusing information on their identification wristband, according to the National Patient Safety Agency.

Gordon Brown yesterday promised the biggest programme of housebuilding since the 1970s — but left the country guessing where the homes will be, how much they will cost and what they will look like.

{mosimage}At the same time he stunned MPs by killing off the supercasino, the centrepiece of Tony Blair’s long planned expansion of gambling in Britain. The Prime Minister pledged the creation of three million extra new homes by the end of the next decade.

The annual housebuilding target is to be increased to 240,000 homes a year. The last time that figure was reached was in 1979, when council houses were still being built.

In the years since, council building has virtually stopped, but it will be revived drastically as part of yesterday’s package. Doubts were voiced last night over whether councils would be able to remobilise the construction expertise that they once had.

Some 550 sites across the country owned by the Government are being examined for the building of up to 100,000 new homes, with a further 60,000 being built on “brownfield” sites owned by local authorities. Among the ambitious plans are proposals for five “eco-towns”, which will be built with the lowest possible carbon impact.

The Prime Minister came under immediate attack for failing to disclose how much of the new property would be social housing and how he would ensure that affordable private housing was built. There was also little detail about where the new homes would be built and how planning could be fast-tracked to make sure that houses were delivered as quickly as possible.

The Conservatives accused Mr Brown of announcing old plans and claimed that he was responsible for “kicking a whole generation off the housing ladder”.

There will be three housing Bills in the next parliamentary session, dominating Mr Brown’s first programme which, in a break with tradition, he outlined yesterday — four months before the real Queen’s Speech.