Plans to demolish hundreds of thousands of homes across the North and the Midlands should be urgently reviewed after signs of life in the regions’ housing markets, MPs said this week.

A report was published this week by parliament’s ODPM select committee on the housing market renewal programme. It says the number of empty homes has dropped and house prices have increased in some low-demand pathfinder areas.

The report said: “The market upturn may suggest public intervention is less essential than before, as the market might be renewing itself.”

It added: “If there is strong evidence that the rise in housing demand is sustained and not just the result of an artificial boost to the market caused by speculative activity, the pathfinders should review their demolition programmes as a matter of urgency.”

It also warned that there was a risk that the pathfinder would “repeat the mistakes of previous clearance programmes that destroyed the heritage of areas and failed to replace it with neighbourhoods of lasting value”.

However, it said that “houses should not be preserved for the sake of heritage if there is not the demand for them”.

It added that the pathfinders needed longer term advance funding than three years so that they could enter into compulsory purchase agreements with greater confidence.

Michael Gahagan, chairman of the Transform South Yorkshire pathfinder, said: “We’re in danger of swinging from one extreme to another – to a position of no demolition under any circumstances.”