Public support doubled for new homes to tackle housing crisis
17th March 2015

More than half the population are now in favour of house building in their area to ease Britain’s urgent need for new homes – nearly double the proportion surveyed just a year ago.

The dramatic increase, revealed in the recent British Social Attitudes Survey, has led the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) to reply that this shift in attitude must now be addressed by delivering of the homes people want.

The survey findings reveal that the number of people saying that they oppose new house building in their area has fallen from 46% in 2010 to 21% in 2014, and those supportive of new homes in their area has risen from 29% to 56% over the same period. 

FMB Chief Executive Brian Berry said of the findings: “These shifts in public opinion suggest that recognition of the need for more new homes has risen significantly and continues to rise.

“This should be an encouragement to all concerned. The house building industry, government and local communities need to capitalise on this shift in public opinion and work together to deliver the homes people clearly want to see.”
He concluded: “Smaller local house builders in particular are ideally placed to engage with communities, to produce quality designs in keeping with the local area and to make use of smaller brownfield sites which people want to see built.

“In return, local planning authorities need to continue to enable them to build by minimising bureaucracy and delays, and making more of smaller sites for the delivery of housing. Local and national government between them also need to make sure that planning offices are sufficiently resourced so that the planning system can do its job speedily and efficiently to deliver more homes.”