The best show in town

The plan to build three million new homes by 2020 will not satisfy demand, government advisors claimed on Friday.

The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit said too few houses could leave a generation unable to get its foot on the property ladder.

Ministers have allocated £10.2 billion for rented and low cost homes in the next three years and have promised extra funds for councils building family homes and those putting to use empty houses.

But will all these new buildings have gardens? And will the gardens of vacant properties be dug up for extra buildings or concreted over for parking? These questions are crucial to helping urban wildlife and halting losses of sparrows, starlings and song thrushes, all of which are declining fast.

Metre for metre, gardens, which cover 5,000 square kilometres of land in the UK, are the best show in town as far as wildlife is concerned.

Insects, birds, mammals like hedgehogs and wood mice, and of course plants, can all thrive in the smallest of spaces. But we have to let them and we have to want them too. The RSPB’s Homes for Wildlife initiative, launched at the weekend, proves you don’t need green fingers or a big plot to do so.

Housing advisers have told Minister Yvette Cooper we could need another 250,000 homes in addition to the three million planned for the next 12 years.

If three-quarters of those extra houses - have plants on balconies, small patches of longer grass or honeysuckle, ivy and sunflowers growing, those new homeowners will have collectively hit the RSPB’s target for its Homes for Wildlife project.

That’s how easy it could be to help the UK’s wildlife.

Read here about the need for more homes: http://business.guardian.co.uk/houseprices/story/0,,2200291,00.html

And here about the RSPB’s Homes for Wildlife: www.rspb.org.uk/hfw