New homes built in England need to have “beautiful” features if their construction is to be accepted by the communities living near to them, a senior government minister has said.
Speaking to the BBC, housing secretary Michael Gove said the government under new prime minister Rishi Sunak wants to fulfil the 2019 manifesto aim of getting annual house building levels up to 300,000 a year, although he acknowledged pressures such as labour shortages and the high cost of building materials were an impediment to that.
Addressing concerns by some that fixed targets would mean excessive construction in parts of the country like the south-east and that new homes would be unattractive, he said “more beautiful” homes would be needed as well as getting local consent, the right infrastructure to support them and appropriate environmental measures.
The use of laser profile cutting in Nottingham could help deal with the aesthetic issue when adding new homes in the city and across the East Midlands, helping to produce attractive metal patterned fences, fascia and other fixtures and fittings to give homes original and eye-catching elements.
This may particularly apply in dense urban areas where they are used on modern apartment blocks, which have become a growing feature of densely-populated central areas of towns and cities in recent years.
Nottingham and its surrounding towns may be one of the areas of significant growth in the future, although the 2021 Census revealed the city itself only saw 5.9 per cent growth since 2011, compared with 6.6 per cent for England as a whole, while neighbouring Broxtowe was up just 1.3 per cent.
However, the East Midlands region was up by 7.7 per cent, the fastest rate north of the Severn-Wash line, with the largest rate of increase being in Harborough, up by 14.3 per cent, followed by West Northamptonshire on 13.5 per cent.
