John HealeyMP, Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, responding to today’s housebuilding figures, said:

“These are yet more disappointing housebuilding figures. The number of new homes being built is still far lower than under Labour, seven years on from the depths of the global financial crisis. We are now well on our way to a lost decade of low housebuilding under the Conservatives.

“On the most recent figures, the Government are set to miss even their own housebuilding target by a big margin. We won’t hit a million homes built until 2025.

“These problems are of the government’s own making: huge cuts to housing investment and piecemeal planning changes have put a brake on new housing development including desperately needed affordable homes to rent and buy.

“Labour’s plan for investment would build thousands of new low-cost homes for hard pressed families. After six years of failure, Philip Hammond should use next week’s Autumn Statement to back our plans to build.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

·         Today’s housebuilding figures for the financial year 2015/16 record changes in the so-called ‘net supply of housing’ (published here). They show the number of new build completions is still 18% lower than before the global financial crisis in 2007/8. The overall net supply of homes is 15% lower. This latter measure inflates the housebuilding total by includes new dwellings which have been ‘converted’ from existing homes or business premises as well as new homes built.

·         Government Ministers have repeatedly promised to build a million homes, though have recently tried to boost their weak numbers by shifting the measure of choice to ‘providing’ more homes (i.e. including conversions).

·         These are not the most up-to-date official figures on housebuilding, which can be found here. These figures show an annual increase in housebuilding of just 6% in the last year, which would mean a million homes over five years wouldn’t be achieved until 2025.

·         According to the independent House of Commons Library, under David Cameron we built fewer homes than under any Prime Minister since the 1920s.