Housing Minister Lord Falconer has continued the Government\'s attack on poor planning and design of housing by criticising identikit estates often sold as executive homes that make no architectural reference to their region.

Speaking at the University of Exeter at the first of four regional seminars on planning, he said councils should get on with delivering Government policies on brownfield sites as set out in PPG3 now not at some point in the future when greenfield allocations have run dry.

He also spoke about an on-line planning portal in which the Government is investing £3.2million in order to speed up the often ponderous workings of the bureaucratic planning process by making it possible to fill in forms for planning applications and appeal against decisions on-line.