The shadows are about to lengthen across suburbia. Property owners are to be granted new rights to install extra storeys on housing blocks without planning permission in a government push to boost homeownership that appears likely to provoke furious neighbourhood debates.

The scheme, which will begin this summer, is expected to transform the skyline of residential areas as owners are allowed to build upwards by two storeys without their designs being policed by planners.

Critics say the new right, announced on Thursday by the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, as a “bold and creative” measure, risks a new generation of substandard homes and raising tensions between neighbours.

Building upwards currently requires planning consent, which involves checks on how well designs fit with nearby homes and the potential overshadowing of neighbours’ properties.

The new right will “deliver new and bigger homes” and increase density “in line with local character and make the most of local infrastructure”, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said.

It will apply to purpose-built blocks of flats rather than individual houses, a ministry official said.

Max Titchmarsh, a London-based architect who has researched ways to add housing above commercial buildings, said it could be a “total car crash”.

“Developers won’t need to make the units compliant with the national planning policy framework and you will get undersized homes,” he said. “There will be no screening for quality.”

The Labour MP Helen Hayes said it would be a repeat of the “unmitigated disaster for many communities” that was the result, in her view, of a similar “permitted development right” to turn office blocks into homes.

“The job of planning is to balance competing concerns and make sure outcomes reflect the common good,” she said, warning a building free-for-all could cause tensions.

Jenrick announced the scheme as part of a suite of measures aimed at solving the housing crisis, which included a consultation on allowing developers to demolish vacant commercial and residential blocks and replace them with housing without planning consent.

'The housing delivery system is broken, not the planning system' Mark Crane of District Councils Network

He also announced early plans for a new town near Cambridge as part of scheme for four large new housing developments in an arc between Oxford and Cambridge, a long-planned development corridor.

District councils voiced “significant concerns” that the new permitted development right for building upwards would allow developers to “avoid paying what they owe for local infrastructure and for local affordable homes”.

Mark Crane, the District Councils’ Network lead member for stronger economies, said: “Districts continue to grant nine in 10 planning permissions, while tens of thousands of homes with planning permission remain unbuilt – the housing delivery system is broken, not the planning system.”

David Renard, planning spokesman for the Local Government Association, said the government should not “take away more of the powers councils and communities need over planning”.

He said the planning system protected communities “so they can ensure new developments are environmentally friendly, safe, supported by the right infrastructure and include affordable homes”.

The ministry said it would also introduce a renters reform bill that would abolish landlords’ right to evict tenants on a “no fault” basis, and promised a much-delayed social housing white paper, previously promised after the Grenfell Tower disaster to “ensure that residents in social homes are treated with dignity and respect”.

