Space, the final frontier for housebuilding

Communities minister Stephen Williams has suggested that implementing a space standard for new homes could help developers and councils to save money.

In a recent government consultation, 80% of respondents supported minimum space standards, to cover items such as bedroom sizes, ceiling heights and storage space.

"The further reforms we plan to make would slash the mass of unnecessary rules and regulations down to just five core housebuilding standards, freeing developers from unnecessary red tape and letting them get on with the real job of building the right homes,” explained Williams.

"As part of this, councils and communities will be able to choose if they would like to introduce new space standards to influence the size of new homes in their local area if this is right for them.

"By doing this, we could save developers and councils as much as £114 million a year, while making homes safer, more accessible to older and disabled people and more sustainable."

However, the House Builder's Federation urged caution, saying: "Specifying the size of homes reduces choice for home buyers which could impact on the affordability of new homes and in particular penalise those on lower budgets and first time buyers.