Is Britain a land of gated housing developments and ghettos?

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says housing policy is partly to blame, despite government desires for a more inclusive society.

The divide is characterised by fear of crime and mutual suspicion at both ends of the scale, it adds.

And it warns Britain may be heading towards a US-style fractured society.

The report, entitled Mind The Gap, says both exclusive housing enclaves and poor estates overloaded with residents on benefits are "unbalanced".

Sink estates

It says housing policy has contributed to the gulf by putting its emphasis on "affordable housing" rather than "social housing".

This means that the 20% of the population who rely on state-subsidised accommodation are increasingly having to rent homes in the private sector.

And in some place, such as Hartlepool and Crewe, the report says the mass buying of properties by private landlords hoping to let them out to people on benefits has pushed property even further out of reach for the less well-off.

This process leaves some families and individuals housed in poor quality private accommodation or else concentrated in sink estates where poverty of aspiration is endemic, it says.

The question is whether the people of Britain as a nation are happy to follow the American model leading to a fractured, more fearful and less mixed society Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong, chief executive of RICS, says: "We know we are building less and less social housing and we know that more people are choosing to live in gated communities, deliberately cutting themselves off from mainstream society.

"We know that the use of private security is on the rise and that social mobility is on the wane.

"It is not a question of whether these things are happening. They are. The question is whether the people of Britain as a nation are happy to follow the American model leading to a fractured, more fearful and less mixed society."

'Misguided'

Meanwhile, campaigners have criticised a group of building firms and other organisations for backing a controversial report published earlier this year which called for 140,000 new homes a year to be built.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England and Friends of the Earth say the Barker report's recommendations would "trash" the environment and fail to solve the country's housing problem.

The group of organisations pushing for the report's recommendations to be implemented include Shelter, Unison, the National Housing Federation, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Wilson Bowden plc and the Town and Country Planning Association.

But the CPRE and Friends of the Earth say the support is short-sighted and misguided.

House builders and the CBI are misleading people into thinking that simply building more housing will automatically help people who are homeless or need affordable housing Tony Juniper

In a joint statement, they said the Barker recommendations would lead to land being allocated for housing on the basis of price, bypassing important safeguards to ensure building is both sustainable and democratically controlled.

While the plans would ensure the government's house-building targets were exceeded and stabilise the housing market, they would not help people in severe housing poverty, the statement said.

Wildlife would suffer and the infrastructure in south east England would be unable to cope, while housing in the north of England was abandoned, they warned.

They called instead for more subsidised homes for people who cannot afford market prices.

Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper said: "House builders and the CBI are misleading people into thinking that simply building more housing will automatically help people who are homeless or need affordable housing.

"The Barker Report will do nothing to reduce current house prices or deliver the number of low cost homes that are needed.