UK House Building Soared In 2017

New build home numbers have soared in the UK, with the figures for homes starting to be built in 2017 surging to their highest recorded levels since the pre-crash levels around 2008.

Government figures show that greater than 160,000 new build homes were started in the year to June 2017. This was an increase of 13 per cent on 2016 figures and 75 per cent higher than in 2009 when the housing slump was at its peak. Despite the rise in numbers, there are still insufficient homes being built in England when the increased numbers of households are taken into account.

New build homes in 2017

More than 150,000 new build homes were completed up to June 2017, an increase of 11% on the previous year. The Minister for Housing and Planning, Alok Sharma, said: “Building more homes is an absolute priority for this government. Today’s figures are proof that we are getting Britain building again, with new housing starts reaching record levels since 2009”.

Gloucestershire, South Norfolk and South Derbyshire were among the strongest areas for new house building and the government also published a white paper demonstrating its goal to build more houses throughout England in the short term.

The Autumn budget 2017 also announced that an additional £1.4 billion investment would be injected into the government’s affordable housing programme. This puts the total budget up to £7.1 billion. There have been around 333,000 affordable homes built since 2010, which includes a total of 240,000 rental properties.

2018 new build homes

In the private sector, 11,600 new home builds were registered in February 2018 . Around 2,470 of these were registered to the affordable homes sector with more than 9,100 registered as private builds.