Is it ok security-wise to change the group ownership of the /var/www directory using these commands?

sudo chmod 775 /var/www
sudo chown -R :admin /var/www


Explanation: I just installed ubuntu 7.10 on a fresh server that I will use as a lamp with mySQL. I am using filezilla with FTP over SSH to upload files to the web directory root. By default, I dont have write access to /var/www except with sudo.