Smaller homes make developers rich – but they are shrinking our lives | Wayne Hemingway

The average house has lost 20% of its space since the 1970s as austerity warps planning processes and greed rules the market

On any given week, if you can bear to look, you’ll see dispiriting news about the state of housing in Britain. Last week brought research suggesting that the average home in Britain has shrunk by 20% since the 1970s. Elsewhere, Persimmon, the UK’s second biggest housebuilder, announced half-year profits of £516m, up 13%, thanks in part to the government’s help-to-buy scheme (earlier this year, it emerged that the company’s CEO Jeff Fairburn had been handed a bonus of £75m).

Homes are getting smaller, and for the top few national housebuilders profits and bonuses get ever bigger. How did we get here? One answer is greed. Homes are crucial to our needs – elemental to how we live. It beggars belief that businesses are allowed to abuse this for such outright profiteering.

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