House building figures are not at a 70-year low

23 November 2023

This morning, on the Today programme, Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed “house building today is at a 70-year low”.

That’s not what current house building figures for England show, as we pointed out when Ms Reeves reportedly made a similar claim last month. (Housing is a devolved matter so the UK government has responsibility for policy in England.) 

There are two main official measures of house building—’net additional dwellings’, which measures how many new homes have been created and includes conversions such as offices to flats, and ‘indicators of new supply’, which shows the number of new build homes being started and completed. 

According to the latest annual figures for net additional dwellings, 232,820 new homes were created in 2021-22. That’s 10% more than the year before and 85% more than the figures for 2012/13, which was the lowest number on this measure since this data began being collected in 2000.

The latest figures for indicators of new supply also show significantly more homes were built than a decade ago. 

However, one industry projection earlier this year did suggest house building could hit a post-war low in the next few years, depending on whether or not certain policy changes occur. 

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