Three and a half years ago Professor Stephen Crow risked the fury of every countryside campaigner by calling for 1.1 million new homes to be built in the south east of England by 2016. Crow, who chaired the independent panel examining Serplan&amp;’s regional planning guidance, was widely vilified for leading the call for increased housing provision to support the region&amp;’s economic growth. Indeed he was swiftly removed from subsequent panels as the government squirmed with the embarrassment of possibly offending the nation&amp;’s nimbies. <p></p><p>At the time John Stewart, writing in Housebuilder, repeatedly stressed the importance of housing to the economy. But the Treasury wasn&amp;’t listening and left poor John Prescott to find an unhappy compromise.</p><p>But now that has all changed. The Treasury, galvanised by the revelation that we are building record low levels of houses, sees soaring houses prices as a major restraint on economic growth. Gordon Brown, who for some years delivered Budgets that had next to no impact on the housing market, this time served up a triple helping of key industry reviews while using his Budget speech to blame 50 years of a stop-go British economy on the volatile housing market.</p><p>What a change. An industry ignored for …