John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Housing and Planning, responding to the publication of the latest quarterly housebuilding statistics, said:

“Over the last five years, fewer homes have been built under the Conservatives than any peacetime government since David Lloyd George’s in the 1920s. This five years of failure has meant rents and house prices have soared, so the urgent task now is to get to grips with these spiralling housing costs. 

“Today’s figures show that we have a long way to go. We are still building far fewer homes than the Government’s own assessment says we need to, and too few of them are affordable.

“As the Government’s Housing and Planning Bill is debated in Parliament, Labour will fight to stop the haemorrhage of affordable homes, and to get more homes built that young people and families on ordinary incomes can actually afford to buy.”

ENDS

Notes

·   Today’s housebuilding statistics for Q3 2015, published by the Department for Communities and Local Government, are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/477840/LiveTable213.xlsx. They show that in Q3 2015, there were 32,040 housing completions in England, still below pre-crisis levels.

·   Analysis by the House of Commons Library has confirmed that the in the 2010-15 Parliament, the Conservatives built fewer homes than any government since David Lloyd George in the period after the first world war.

·   The explanatory notes for the government’s Housing and Planning Bill state that the number of homes needed to keep up with demand is “200,000 to 300,000 per year”: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0075/en/16075en.pdf, p. 10. In the last year from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015, the government have managed just 135,040 housing completions.

·   Shelter have estimated that 180,000 affordable homes to rent and buy will be lost or not built over the next five years as a result of the government’s Housing and Planning Bill: https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1199408/2015_10_Housing_and_Planning_Bill_-_brief_v7.pdf.

·   Analysis released today by Labour shows that first-time buyers could need to be earning £100,000 a year to afford the Conservatives’ flagship ‘starter homes’: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/first-time-buyers-will-need-6858374#ICID=sharebar_twitter.