Many new houses in the UK are "shameful shoebox homes" which are too small for family life, the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has said.

It says average three-bedroom houses are 8% smaller - the space of a single bedroom - than the recommended minimum.

The institute, which looked at 3,418 three-bedroom homes in England, based its findings on building regulations which have come into force in London.....

An 850 house estate is currently under construction, on the island. Christ knows who they're going to find to fill them all - a matter of much discussion and concern, at the moment.

They've already been dubbed the Pan Meadows Breeding Boxes.

New houses tend to be quite dark inside now too, what with guidelines on the size of windows allowed on newbuilds - smaller windows specified to improve on insulation, and make them more thermally efficient. Great, you just have to turn the lights on during the day!

A 3 Watt light bulb uses less electric than a 20,000 Watt boiler.

An 850 house estate is currently under construction, on the island. Christ knows who they're going to find to fill them all - a matter of much discussion and concern, at the moment.

They've already been dubbed the Pan Meadows Breeding Boxes.

New houses tend to be quite dark inside now too, what with guidelines on the size of windows allowed on newbuilds - smaller windows specified to improve on insulation, and make them more thermally efficient. Great, you just have to turn the lights on during the day!

My house is terraced, built in the 1920s. My room is the smallest (used to be the largest but at some point was divided to provide an upstairs bathroom). Despite it being the smallest, it's still quite sizeable - I could easily fit three double-sized beds and still have room to walk between them (just about). In some of the more modern 3-bed houses I've seen, the smallest bedroom really is a tiny box room.

In the news, a chap from some building industry stated that the reason for smaller rooms was essentially money. Less floorspace = less building material required = less cost. But I wonder how much of a saving there really is, and how much is passed on to the buyer. It wouldn't surprise me if the reduction in floorspace meant a reduction in cost that was not passed on to the buyer.

The wife and I have been looking at houses. Some of the new 3 bedroom houses feel like they have less room than my 2 bed flat, smaller rooms all round. My flat was only built in 2004 so is not so new but it has 2 good size bedrooms and a very large lounge/dining room. It feels spacious.

Property developers are sitting on more than 300,000 plots with planning permission for new homes, undermining the case for controversial government planning reforms.