Taller houses to help cut the property crisis down to size

STRICT limits on the height of houses could be axed under the biggest overhaul of planning laws for more than 70 years.

Sajid Javid, the Local Government Secretary, is examining plans to relax strict laws dating back to 1947, which ban new homes from being taller than surrounding properties.

Ministers are also reviewing rules which prevent neighbouring properties from being cast into shadow in a bid to solve the nation’s housing crisis.

The measures are likely to be included in a White Paper that is due to be published by the end of the year with the intention of solving the issue “once and for all”.

Councils could also be required to produce five-year housing quotas.

A government source told The Sun: “Some planning rules have been around since almost the end of World War Two. It’s high time they were updated to reflect the modern world. How we use the space available is the key, and that means building upwards.”

The proposal follows concerns that just 31 dwellings per hectare were built on new housing developments over the last five years, compared with a national average of 42 dwellings.

Ministers want to encourage more tenement blocks and three and fourstorey terraced houses rather than high rise properties.

Mr Javid used his speech at the Conservative Party conference to mount an attack on “nimbies”.

Mr Javid warned that those objecting to house building are “betraying” the next generation and must have a “change of attitude”. He added: “Every- one agrees we need to build more homes. But too many of us object to them being built next to us. We’ve got to change that attitude.”

John Penrose, a Tory MP and former architecture and heritage minister, who has campaigned for taller buildings on high streets, said: “This change will bring investment to reinvigorate hard-pressed high streets… as well as releasing huge numbers of new urban housebuilding sites to solve the housing shortage.

“That’s why I started this campaign: to make homes more affordable for everybody, break the stranglehold of large housebuilding firms on the number of new homes that are built, and reduce pressure to concrete over greenfield sites as a result.”