The latest annual housing supply statistics show 198,610 new build completions in England for 2023/24. The figure is down 6.5% from the previous year, where there were 21,364 new build completions.
The number of new build completions in 2023/24 is 9% below the 2019/20 peak.
Overall, the annual housing supply in England amounted to 221,070 net additional dwellings in 2023/24, down 6% in 2022/23. Net additions are now 11% below their 2019/20 peak of 248,600.
While this alone underlines the challenge to reach government’s housing targets of 1.5m new dwelling in England by 2029, wider indicators predict further falls in supply are still to come, according to the Home Builders Federation (HBF).
The net additions data published today captures completions in the year to March 2024. However, energy performance certificate (EPC) registrations and planning approvals in the months since the March 2024 indicate an increasingly negative picture for house-building.
As it stands, the number of units being granted planning permission is 130,000 down on the 370,000 that the government is targeting.
The figures paint a bleak picture of a continued decline in housing supply overall in the last two years, the HBF says.
While the government has reversed previous reforms to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) and announced plans to fund 300 new council planning officers (there are 324 planning authorities in England), the HBF says that more government intervention is required. The state of the economy has put a dampener on mortgage availability and affordability; and, for the first time in 60 years, there is no effective government support for homeownership. The HBF is calling for measures to help first-time buyers access affordable lending and mortgages, helping to address both supply and demand issues in the housing sector.
Home Builders Federation chief executive Neil Jefferson said: “Today’s figures and other, more up-to-date indicators of new housing supply starkly illustrates the scale of the challenge we face if we are to increase housing supply to the ambitious level government is a quite rightly targeting.
“The positive planning policy reforms announced in July were welcome but will take time to come through and the decline in output has been caused by multiple factors that go beyond planning policy.
“It is the first time in decades there has been no support scheme in place for first-time buyers and with only a limited market for new homes there is a very obvious constraint on output.”
Jefferson continued: “Delays in the planning process caused by a lack of resources and inefficiency at a local level are a daily feature of trying to build homes while 160,000 new homes remain blocked because of European rules on nutrient neutrality.
“If the government can reverse the decline in house building of recent years it will deliver a huge social and economic boost to our communities, but unfortunately the starting point is a difficult one that will require an ongoing concerted effort to address.”
