An end to nimbyism

SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, September 30) is right to suggest that tackling the housing shortage must be a priority for Theresa May’s Government.

However, the solution is not to sweep away existing planning restrictions indiscriminately while ignoring local community opposition. The “nimbyism” which Mr Moore decries, especially in rural areas and around villages, is largely driven by concern over the invariably poor aesthetic and quality of new mass housing developments in Britain.

Encouraging a housebuilding free-for-all across Britain would not only inflame local opposition, but also degrade the country’s built environment. Instead the Government should prioritise a carrot-and-stick strategy to induce housebuilders to improve their design and quality standards. At the same time it needs to ensure, on pain of sanction, that housebuilders develop the land banks on which they have often been sitting for years.

Other European countries have shown that you can mass-build well-designed and well-constructed homes, in a variety of styles, that are also “affordable”. Once communities are reassured that strict design, construction and estate landscaping standards will be rigorously and consistently enforced, then much of the “nimbyism” will melt away. Even better, new-build purchasers themselves, and society more widely, will benefit from better-quality, more attractive housing.

Farningham, Kent