Once built upon, it has gone." But he stressed that the Government's proposals would recognise the needs of continuing economic growth.He reiterated that the Government would be seeking the use of previously developed land, pointing out there were about 10,000 acres of it available for recycling in the Thames Gateway area to the east of London.* Nurses, teachers and people on very low incomes should get state subsidies to live in expensive areas of Britain, a housing expert has suggested. Yesterday, in a speech to a Fabian Society environmental conference, he gave the clearest indication yet that he will not accept the Crow/Whittaker proposals - at least not in full - when he proclaimed: "This Government will not be concreting over the South-east."He went on: "We can't go on squandering our heritage Land is a finite resource. Their full proposal would represent 12 cities the size of Southampton.The final say is Mr Prescott's, with his decision due shortly. Inspectors Stephen Crow and Rosamund Whittaker rejected the strategy of the South-east's own consortium, Serplan, representing 138 councils, which said no more than 666,000 houses should be built in the period 1996-2016.Professor Crow and Ms Whittaker suggested an increase of 430,000 on Serplan'smaximum - with a big drop in the number of homes planned to be built on urban sites. Controversial proposals to build 1.1 million houses in south-east England by 2016 will not be accepted, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, indicated yesterday. Controversial proposals to build 1.1 million houses in south-east England by 2016 will not be accepted, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, indicated yesterday. The proposals, by two senior planning inspectors appointed by the Government, caused anger when they were made in November.

Mr Mandelson said that although republicans had not made sufficient progress on weapons there were positive elements which he wished to explore.. It added: "The IRA's guns are silent and there is no threat to the peace process from the IRA."For Mr Trimble the key issue was that actual decommissioning had not taken place. Most elements side with Mr Trimble in asserting that the IRA should now begin to disarm, but most also agree with the view of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, that suspension would be unnecessary and dangerous.The IRA weighed in with a statement saying it was totally committed to the peace process and wanted permanent peace. The British and Irish governments continued to consider the report of the Canadian General John de Chastelain, which was passed to them just before midnight on Monday and has yet to be published.Political opinion is fractured along a number of different fault-lines.

The political crisis in Northern Ireland deepened last night as Belfast and Dublin made desperate attempts to salvage the advances made during the peace process. The Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, indicated that he is on the brink of resigning as First Minister of the devolved administration because the IRA had failed to decommission weapons by the end of January.But the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, refused to endorse Mr Trimble's view that a suspension of the assembly was inevitable, appealing instead for a breathing space in which other options could be explored. The political crisis in Northern Ireland deepened last night as Belfast and Dublin made desperate attempts to salvage the advances made during the peace process. The fear is that things could unravel disastrously during the suspension, with a log jam on decommissioning gradually draining credibility from the whole peace process.. There would then be the question of whether, having been put on ice, the Assembly could be thawed out later. Even republicans can see that a new Unionist leader could hold everything up by three years or more.But although suspending the Assembly might protect the new institutions in the short term, it would also carry major risks, representing a big step backwards for the process. Although he began his political life as a hardliner, he has moved considerably in recent years, and all his likely successors would take a harder line on the peace process than he has.

The next few days will tell whether the Unionists and republicans can somehow move towards each other.All sides agree that a Trimble resignation would be disastrous in that he lacks the votes in the Assembly to be re-elected - he needs more than half the Unionist members to back him, and he does not command such support.Given that, he could resign not just as First Minister but also as leader of the UUP. But the alternative of a Trimble resignation could be catastrophic, in that it might lock the process in stalemate.The IRA has made it clear to General John de Chastelain that arms are not presently on offer, although it has declared that its guns are silent and that it offers no threat to the peace process.While Mr Mandelson has described the IRA statement as encouraging, everyone is well aware that these words are not enough to persuade the UUP to remain in the new executive without actual decommissioning. In Downing Street, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise that we are not as far down the road as we would like to be, but that doesn't mean we are at the end of the road."Suspension is seen as a most hazardous undertaking which could destabilise the peace process and put its new institutions at risk. if the Ulster Unionist Party either walk from this process or force the governments to collapse the process then I don't know, I don't know, how we're going to put it together again."Last night, Tony Blair, the United States President, Bill Clinton, and the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, were all involved in the last-ditch attempt to rescue the Agreement. Mr Adams warned: "I can tell you that we are in a real crisis at this time...