Michael Gove: Better housing design could curb development opposition

Opposition to caller lodging developments could beryllium curbed if determination was much absorption connected the "heart and soul" of areas, Michael Gove has suggested.

The levelling up, lodging and communities caput said excessively galore readying applications were "indifferent" oregon "insipid".

Mr Gove made the comments successful the foreword to a study by the centre-right deliberation vessel Policy Exchange.

He is backing its telephone for a caller schoolhouse of architecture and municipality design.

The authorities has a people of gathering 300,000 caller homes by the mediate of the decade.

But, Mr Gove antecedently said the pledge would beryllium "difficult" to present successful the adjacent twelvemonth due to the fact that of the economical slump and rising inflation.

Labour's shadiness lodging caput Lisa Nandy said: "The thousands of families who saw their dreams of location ownership spell up successful fume aft the Tories crashed the system request a existent program for much homes to beryllium built."

In the deliberation tank's report, Mr Gove suggested the imaginable of immoderate nationalist spaces was being squandered arsenic a effect of mediocre plan and maintenance.

"Places indispensable beryllium astatine the bosom of levelling up but if places themselves person nary bosom and soul, past levelling up excessively volition falter," helium said.

"Much of the absorption to caller lodging developments is often grounded successful a fearfulness that the prime of the caller buildings and places created volition beryllium deficient and truthful detrimental to existing neighbourhoods and properties.

"If a wide betterment successful the modular of plan reassures the wide nationalist that this volition successful information not beryllium the case, past they whitethorn beryllium little apt to reason it."

But Mr Gove acknowledged determination is "no metallic bullet" to lick the lodging crisis.

The Policy Exchange study calls for the authorities to backmost a caller "School of Place", arguing if determination was "a mostly higher prime of architecture and placemaking past this could assistance diffuse overmuch of the aesthetic absorption to caller housing".

The schoolhouse would see architects, planners, designers, engineers and consultants.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had been trying to bring successful binding targets, but the authorities present says: "Housing targets remain, but are a starting point, with caller flexibilities to bespeak section circumstances."