Latest house building figures

5 July 2024

Social housing approvals, starts and completions are all down as we move out of the brief window of post covid recovery. In context, approvals are still substantially better than the low point of 2012-13 (2,452) and only marginally down on last year (4,981 compared to 4,984). Affordable approvals are at a four year high of 2,000.

Social housing starts are also down but still just over 5,085 for 2023-24. Completions complete the picture of decline down 15.4% from what was a 17 year high last year. Since 2007 the sector has delivered a total of 131,758 social and affordable homes and yet we still find ourselves in the middle of a deepening housing emergency.

The bigger picture around housing construction is no more positive. Private sector completions in 2023-24 fell to 14,589 and starts to 12,904. These figures (and a number of other tables) here.

The key conclusion on the current 110,000 AHSP target is “So far, 21,092 affordable homes have been completed towards the target. These completions consist of 15,964 (76%) homes for social rent, 2,904 (14%) for
affordable rent, and 2,224 (11%) for affordable home ownership.” The full report is available here.