Childish talk of Legoland – by Rupert Bates

I don't know who I disrespect more now - Housing Minister Grant Shapps, or the Royal Institute of British Architects.

More new homes are needed because of the massive housing shortage that even Shapps acknowledges. There is a massive low carbon agenda, which without the housebuilders on board is undeliverable; if it's not already undeliverable.

Shapps and Eric Pickles - the DCLG's Laurel and Hardy - are handing planning power to the parish pump, which means even less chance of new homes being built and now Shapps has a pop at housebuilders for building ‘identikit legoland homes'.

"We all recognise the bog standard, identikit Legoland homes that typify some new developments - all looking exactly the same on streets that could be anywhere in the country. Whilst we are seeing good examples emerging, too often new developments are dominated by the same, identikit designs that bear no resemblance to the character of the local area," wrote Shapps to the Design Council, which recently merged with CABE.

Well yes of course there have been some shockers over the years, but outside of Welwyn Hatfield how many new developments has Shapps seen? It is not only a lazy critique; it is 25 years out of date.

But it gets worse. Galloping into the debate are the black polo neck jumpers of RIBA, pompous aesthetic prejudices strapped to their saddlebags. Do they stick up for housebuilders who employ them? Do they hell.

"It is encouraging to see government ministers berating the banality of many new homes and challenging the house development industry to up its game. The RIBA agrees with them. Housebuilders can and should do better," said RIBA president Ruth Reed.

"The development industry has tended to present a false trade-off between the quality and quantity of homes being built. We all deserve to come home to a house we can be proud of - one which is built well and offers sufficient space for us to live our lives comfortably."

None of this is the fault of the architects of course; they just have to do the bidding of the wicked housebuilders.

"There's nothing that depresses architects more than seeing the soulless, drab, identikit estates being built in our towns and cities. And whilst architects are involved in mass housing design, the reality is that those who work for major housebuilders face severe constraints. The traditional housebuilder business model relies on pattern book designs, which can be quickly and easily rolled out across the country, often with little consideration to the local context, or the needs of the people who will live in them," said Reed.

Well there is nothing that depresses me more than architects who believe they are the overlords of taste and should be telling people what to live in.

Housebuilders cannot "quickly and easily roll out" anything at the moment. They are constrained by planning and a whole host of regulatory burdens and cost pressures.

Good design does not have to be a shard of glass and steel at a jaunty angle, preferably in a shape resembling a root vegetable for marketing purposes, or, for really big column inches, to quote Baldrick from Blackadder: ‘A turnip shaped exactly like a ‘thingy'.

Now RIBA incredibly claims that the reason ‘cheaply replicated models' have emerged is because up until now local communities have not been empowered in the planning system.

Locals are not hanging out for new developments that ‘reflect the identity of the local area'. They don't want new developments at all.

It is easy to mock the neo-Tudors and faux-Georgians, but buyers like them and the industry knows that because research tells them. If this is seen as unimaginative pastiche, it is only because no architects have come up with any new style, local or national, that justifies being assigned a period. Most of their designs are simply one-off monuments to vanity.

In the rush to genuflect at the feet of the Candy brothers and the £1 billion Hyde Park scheme, very few have been brave enough to point out, that while lavish beyond the means of Croesus within, outside they are absolutely hideous tower blocks. It is the poor old public passing by who has to see the outside, while inside oligarchs and oil sheikhs have grapes peeled for them by bullet proofed butlers.

Shapps wants local stone for local people, built by local builders with fifth generation beer tankards hanging in the local pub. Thank you Thomas Hardy.

"Cob and limestone Mr Builder. Why didn't you say? Here's permission for 1000 homes." If that happens, my name's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Interesting to hear Tim Collins, Shapps' former senior policy and press adviser and now the Home Builders Federation's new deputy director of external affairs, take issue with his old boss.

"It is a little disappointing that Grant Shapps has not recognised progress made on all aspects of homebuilding by the industry - which is, after all, customer-driven - borne out by our own consumer satisfaction surveys. Over 90 percent of new home buyers last year were very happy with their new home and would recommend their builder to a friend," said Collins, blogging at www.hbf.co.uk.

"By reducing both the cost of regulation and the hoovering up of planning gain for unrelated policy objectives, while increasing the supply of land available, housebuilders will be freed to do what they do best. With a truly pro-development system builders will no longer waste time and money fighting bureaucracy and unrealistic and inconsistent planning rules, but instead can work properly with communities to ensure that new developments please local people."

"As more homes are built and competition on the homes themselves - rather than land and planning permissions - increases, communities and homebuyers will be able to vote with the power of the free market and competition behind them."

Pity you are not advising Grant on policy now Tim. As for the housing minister's Welwyn Hatfield constituency, isn't that in Hertfordshire, where housebuilding hardly ever happens? Never mind Pygmalion. Shapps is making a pig's ear of creating his "nation of housebuilders'.

Ask yourself this. If we were facing a serious food shortage, would we be worried what packaging the amusingly shaped turnip came in?

Rupert Bates is editorial director of www.whathouse.co.uk and Show House magazine.