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English first-quarter housing starts down 9% year-on-year

27 May 16 House-building activity in England has taken a dip this year but remains officially at its highest level since 2008 crash.

New house-building starts are now more than double (107%) what they were in the trough of the first quarter of 2009 but remain 27% below the peak seen in the first quarter of 2007, during the last days of Tony Blair’s premiership.

The Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) says that 139,690 new homes were completed in the year to March in England, which is a rise of 12% on the previous year.

However, the first three months of 2016 saw a slowdown, confirming the picture from data from the National House-Building Council.

As previously reported, NHBC new home registrations in the first quarter of 2016 were down 8% on Q1 2015.

DCLG said that starts in the quarter January to March 2016 were 35,530 (seasonally adjusted), which is down 3% compared to the previous quarter and down 9% year-on-year. Completions were estimated at 32,950, which is 9% down on the previous quarter and 3% down on the year.

Over the year to 31st March 2016, 139,680 homes were started, which is the most since 2007/08.

Delivery in London saw 32% more homes being built in 2015/16 than the previous year, with local authorities in Basildon and Haringey seeing completions soar 279% and 1039% respectively over the same period.

Wakefield also saw a spike in completions for the year, which were up 59% from 1,028 to 1,634.

Source for graphs: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/525629/House_Building_Release_Mar_Qtr_2016.pdf

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