Body set up to police UK housebuilding not representative, say critics
A new government-backed body set up to police the building industry faces claims that it lacks representation from architects, ordinary homeowners and BAME communities whose Covid-19 death rates have been linked to poor housing standards.
Labour had claimed the New Home Quality Board [NHQB] lacked independence as it was chaired by a Tory MP and Conservative-linked developers sit on the board alongside her. On Friday it announced a new CEO and chair as it moved to what it described as its “full operational stage”.
The body has published a code of practice for the housebuilding industry and is working to oversee the creation of the New Homes Ombudsman Service, due to launch in the Summer, with the stated aim of providing “robust independent redress” for new-build buyers who have “issues with their new home or developer”.
However, the NHQB was criticised by Ben Derbyshire, a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who questioned what he described as an “inexplicable absence of anyone with a design background or training on the board”.
“Design in British housing, especially speculative mass housing, is generally very poor. The exceptions to this represent the minority of housebuilding and renovation but these exceptions should become the rule. Good housing architects are notably absent from housebuilding and that is never going to change so long the profession is not represented on the New Homes Quality Board,” he said.
He expressed concern about the extent of representation of people from BAME communities on the board after the pandemic had showed up the correlation between poor housing standards, overcrowding, disadvantage and death from Covid among ethnic minorities.
Cym D’Souza, a chief executive of
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