Year posts largest shortfall
Data analysis on the number of new home completions seen across the UK shows that the government missed its new-build target in 2021 by 39%, a shortfall of almost 120,000 homes.
In 2007, the Labour government set a target of building 240,000 homes a year.
Unlatch, a new-build sales optimisation platform, analysed the data to determine how they stack up when compared to the government’s own targets.
Its analysis revealed that the closest the government came to its target was in 2007-08, when 215,862 new homes were completed.
The worst effort came in 2012-13, when just 133,056 new-builds reached the market and, while this has been steadily increasing ever since, they managed just 169,274 in 2015-2016, and 178,007 in 2016-2017 – 25% fewer than the target set a decade ago.
Then came the turn of the Conservatives, who saw Labour’s failure and raised them an additional 60,000 homes a year, promising to reach this 300,000 annual target by mid-2020.
Despite the impending pandemic, a respectable 210,719 new homes were completed across the UK in 2019-20, the second highest level seen since 2007-08, but still 30% off the pace, missing the 300,000 target by almost 90,000 homes.
However, the latest data showed that the government’s failure to reach its targets hit a high in 2021. A total of 181,810 new homes were completed across the UK, almost 40% below the target of 300,000 new homes and a deficit of 118,190 – the largest shortfall since 2007.
Read more: “Government must address shortfall in new homes”.
Lee Martin, director and head of UK for Unlatch, commented that the complications posed by the recent pandemic will provide the government with a convenient excuse to mask yet another year of failure when it comes to the delivery of new homes.
“But the reality is that this failure is not a recent occurrence, and both the Labour and Conservative parties have failed to seriously honour their responsibility to build more homes for going on 15 years now,” Martin stressed.
“This is no doubt due to their archaic, lethargic approach to housebuilding and a failure to adopt the evolving technologies and practices that are helping many housebuilders to streamline their internal process and deliver more homes, without compromising on quality or revenue.”
He said that the planning system has a huge part to play, as this seems to be the biggest ‘roadblock’ in building more new homes.
“The current government has diagnosed the planning system as central to the failure to build enough homes, particularly where housing need is at its most severe. There’s a continued focus on supporting private sector delivery, however, this is surely down to them to solve with many of the largest national housebuilders willing to give feedback, yet currently, the revamp is still paused,” Martin added.
