BRITAIN may be heading for a property shortage of more than a million homes by 2022, the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned today.

The country's housing crisis will worsen unless the current rate of housebuilding is dramatically increased, according to a report being presented to a housing conference in London.

The report reveals that the supply of housing is already falling behind demand faster than had previously been recognised, with the impending crisis hitting London and the South hardest.

"Although these regions contribute 70 per cent of the rising demand for new homes, only 50 per cent of new homes are currently being built there," it says.

In contrast, some parts of the North and Midlands face growing problems of low demand, with property lying empty and abandoned.

Ministers, planners, housebuilders and housing associations are warned that, unless concerted action is taken, areas of high demand for housing will see increased homelessness and a crisis in public services as more nurses, teachers and other staff are priced out of the housing market.

"The low demand areas of the north will, meanwhile, experience continuing decline and urban exodus."

Lord Best, director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and author of the working paper Land For Housing, said he estimated that the difference between housing demand and supply will have widened into a "yawning gap" of 1.1 million homes in England and Wales by 2022, most of it in London and the South East.

"This genuinely shocking statistic shows why the time has come for policy makers to recognise that a plentiful supply of new and affordable homes is of the greatest importance to the nation's future health and prosperity."

He said the bulk of new homes could go on "brownfield " sites, but this would only happen if there was positive planning and decontamination of polluted sites. "Even so, we have got to be honest and accept that not all of the necessary housing can be built on re-cycled land."

Today's centenary conference, chaired and introduced by the Duke of Edinburgh, commemorates 100 years since Joseph Rowntree started building the garden village of New Earswick near York.

Updated: 11:21 Tuesday, March 19, 2002