In England, where the government has a target of over 300,000 new homes a year, Q1 completions were just 31,670 - a long way short of the 75,000 completed homes per quarter needed to meet the target.
Melanie Leech, chief executive of the British Property Federation, commented:
“The housebuilding figures for the first quarter underline the scale of the challenge in delivering the Government’s target of 1.5m homes by 2029.
“We will not reach and sustain this level of housebuilding nor meet the needs of individuals and families by focusing on homes for sale alone; we need to also supercharge the Build-to-Rent sector and look at how to unlock the delivery of affordable housing of all tenures.
“Built-to-Rent, or multi-family, is fundamental to housing supply in countries such as the US and Australia, and there is a huge opportunity through the Government’s reform of the planning system to attract more long-term institutional capital to accelerate the growth of the sector in the UK and alleviate the pressure on supply in our cities.
“For affordable homes the challenge is often viability, and we have called for Government to increase the level of subsidy available which would in turn unlock more private capital to work in partnership with housing associations.
“The property sector is fully committed to working with the new Government to address the long-term under-supply and under-development of homes and we are pleased to see the new Government hit the ground running in addressing some of the challenges developers are facing on the ground.”
