Redrow boss welcomes ‘strong and sustained upward trend in new housing’

With close to 200,000 homes built last year, the government looks to be on course to meet its target of building 1m new homes over this parliament.

New housing output continued to grow in November despite a marginal fall in overall construction output, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published this week revealed.

Public housing, private housing, infrastructure and other public construction works all grew in November 2016.

John Tutte, chief executive officer at Redrow, commented: “It’s very encouraging to see that the strong and sustained upward trend in new housing culminated in an all-time record high in output levels in November.

“It is also encouraging that 190,000 homes were added to the UK’s overall housing stock last year, an annual increase off 11%.

“In my view this puts us on track to hit 200,000 additional homes in 2016 / 2017, which hasn’t been achieved since 2008.”

But the government’s existing housebuilding target is significantly lower than the 300,000 new properties that the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee last year recommended should be delivered each year.

To help boost the supply of much needed new housing, Tutte believes that there needs to be a fresh impetus from the government. 

He added: “The Housing White Paper, which we hope will be published in due course, is a golden opportunity to unlock more new homes through improvements to the planning system to make it less cumbersome and alleviate delays. We welcome government innovation which will boost the number of much needed family homes across the UK.”