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.

The British people, it appears, have the mistaken belief that much of the UK has been concreted over. Could it be that the psychological impact of city living means people have a distorted idea of what our own country looks like?

This misunderstanding is suggested by new survey data produced by Ipsos Mori. Asked how much of the UK’s land area is densely built on, the average estimate was 47%. The far more accurate figure – based on satellite images – as highlighted in my blog last November, is 0.1%.

The average Briton thinks 356 times more of our nation’s land is concrete jungle than is the reality.

This isn’t just a minor misconception. The error helps to distort our mental picture of the UK and shift the politics of land use.

If the UK is viewed as a large football pitch, the people in the survey reckoned that almost all the ground between the goal-line and half-way line is densely developed when, in reality, it would fit into the tiny arc marked for taking a corner.

The 0.1% figure for what is designated “continuous urban fabric” (CUF) was named UK Statistic of the Year by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) last month.

RSS president Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter said “whatever side of the argument you sit on, this statistic gives true insight into the landscape of the United Kingdom”