Press release

Britain building again as new homes rise to highest level in 8 years

Figures show the number of new homes has risen 11% in a year.

From:
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (2018 to 2021) and The Rt Hon Gavin Barwell
Published
15 November 2016
This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government
new housing

Figures out today (15 November 2016) show the number of new homes has risen 11% in a year – the highest annual total in 8 years (since 2007 to 2008), representing the third consecutive year-on-year increase.

Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell welcomed the figures as further evidence that government measures to deliver more homes were working and that Britain is building.

The figures mean more than 893,000 additional homes have now been delivered since 2010. The 189,650 net additions over the past year resulted from: 163,940 new build homes, 30,600 gains from change of use between non-domestic and residential, 4,760 from conversions between houses and flats and 780 other gains.

Housing Minister Gavin Barwell said:

We promised to turbocharge house building so more people can have the security of their own home, and that is exactly what we are doing with the biggest increase in the number of new homes in many years.

We know there is more to do to ensure the housing market works for everyone and not just the privileged few and we will be setting our further details in our housing white paper shortly.

The government is determined to boost house building and recently announced a £3 billion Home Building Fund which will help build more than 25,000 new homes this Parliament and up to 225,000 in the longer term.

An additional £2 billion is also being made available to help speed up delivery of homes on surplus public sector land.

And the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, will support house building by speeding up processes and strengthening neighbourhood planning.

The Bill will:

  • further strengthen neighbourhood planning to give even more power to local people
  • improve the use and discharge of planning conditions, especially pre-commencement conditions
  • continue the reforms of compulsory purchase to make the process clearer, fairer and faster for all those involved
  • better monitor the impact of permitted development rights on housing supply

Further information

See the Housing supply: net additional dwellings statistics published today.

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Updates to this page

Published 15 November 2016

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