HOUSING minister Kit Malthouse visited Oxfordshire to see progress on a major development which will see nearly 2,000 homes built there.

Up to 1,900 homes will be built over 10 years at Graven Hill, near Bicester, many of them self-building projects.

Mr Malthouse said Oxfordshire is playing a ‘critical part’ in developing the ‘brain corridor’, between Oxford and Cambridge.

He said he wanted councils to be involved in the process of building new homes as much as possible. The land between the country’s premier university cities could mean up to a million homes are between Oxford and Cambridge by 2050.

He said: “We are looking for ideas. We need one million houses [in the Oxford to Cambridge arc] by 2050.”

He added he was ‘enthused by the grand designs’ and that it was ‘great to see the ambition in Oxfordshire’.

Mr Malthouse was joined on a tour of the site by Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth, Vale of White Horse District Council leader Roger Cox and Cherwell District Council leader Barry Wood.

Appointed in July, Mr Malthouse is the third housing in less than a year.

He replaced Dominic Raab, who is now the Brexit Secretary. In March, Mr Raab signed the £215m Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal along with representatives from six councils. Mr Raab replaced Alok Sharma in January.

Mr Sharma made a visit to Graven Hill last September to open a ‘plot shop’ in Bicester town centre.

Channel 4 commissioned a six-part series into building ten homes at Graven Hill in 2015.