New Homes England Figures Released on Affordable Homes

NEW GOVERNMENT FIGURES show a rise in social housing starts and completions in the year ending March 2020, with more affordable homes starts.

Under housing programmes delivered by Homes England, official statistics released today (16 July) showed there were 47,965 new houses started on site and 40,452 houses completed between April 2019 and March 2020.

Three-quarters of starts were for affordable homes (35,809), with the proportion up from two-thirds (67%) from the previous year. These are the highest numbers of affordable home starts for ten years.

Of the housing completions, 28,261 (70%) were for affordable homes, which is a 2% decrease on 2018-19.

Homes England programmes are funded by central government to enable private registered providers, house builders, community groups and local authorities to deliver affordable housing.

Market starts – housing built for sale at market rates – were down by 21 per cent on the previous year. Fluctuations in the number of market starts and completions between periods reflects the nature of the programmes, with different types and sizes of sites starting at different times with varying build-out rates.

These latest figures show the highest overall level of starts since official figures were first published in 2009-10, and the highest overall level of completions for five years. Total starts for the previous year (2018-19) were 45,970 with 40,350 completions.

Covid impact

Overall completions are likely to be have been reduced by the impact of Covid-19 on housebuilding in March, when there has historically been an increased rate of completions very close to year end.

A total of 17,015 affordable homes started in 2019-20 were for Affordable Rent – down 4% on the previous year.

There were 11,656 starts under schemes including Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy – up 1 per cent on last year.

There were 4,739 starts defined as ‘Affordable Tenure TBC’ homes, where the ultimate tenure category is not known until completion.

The remaining 2,399 were for Social Rent, a 91% increase on the previous 12 months, following the reintroduction of Social Rent as an eligible tenure for grant funding by the government, which took effect in July 2018.

Simon Dudley, Interim Chair of Homes England, said, “We are pleased to see that the proportion of affordable homes increased significantly last year, and that increased government funding has led to a big increase in the social rent start figures.

“We don’t know the precise impact of the lockdown on completions last year, but we do know Covid-19 is having a major impact on the housing sector and the wider economy in the current year. So it has been really encouraging to see work on site starting to pick up again.

“We welcome the Prime Minister’s recent commitment to building more homes and the additional £450m secured for the Home Building Fund underlines our determination to support SMEs.”