Not wrong to be a Nimby, says Government housing adviser

NIMBYISM is an understandable “emotional” response from local communities to new homes on their doorsteps, a senior adviser to Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary, has said.

Nicholas Boys Smith told the Bright Blue think-tank seminar that people were right to have an “emotional” response to new homes and “no one should condemn anyone for that”.

Nimbyism is shorthand for people who have a “Not In My Back Yard” response to proposed new developments.

Mr Boys Smith, chairman of the board advising the Government’s new “Office for Place”, has helped to draw up a design guide for builders to ensure that new homes are in keeping with their surroundings. He told a seminar that Nimbyism was a “human response to change” and will never go away because people are right to fight against unsightly development near them.

The Government is committed to increase the number of homes built every year from 240,000 to 300,000 by the middle of this decade.

Asked if Nimbys were a “problem”, Mr Boys Smith said: “A human response to change to a place in which you live is natural and to condemn that, as some developers do, as emotional, is to miss the point.

“Humans are emotional and home is emotional. Where you live, where you bring up your children, where you go to see your mum – that’s an emotional thing. It should be emotional, and no one should condemn anyone for that.”

Last month, Mr Boys Smith said that he wanted new homes to be built “in beautiful and popular places ... we should demand nothing less”.