Housebuilding figures flawed, says HBF

Britain’s housebuilders are completing over 30,000 more new homes than government figures record, according to a report from the Home Builders Federation.

The HBF’s Ghost Towns study reveals that government House Building statistics exclude tens of thousands of new-build homes completed each year.

This is acknowledged to some extent by the Department for Communities and Local Governmentdescribing
the House Building statistics as being less “comprehensive” than its own Net Supply of Housing statistics.

The new-build component of the Net Supply series and the House Building series should tally, says the HBF.

However, in 2014/15, the House Building statistics failed to recognise more than 30,000 completions that were recorded in the Net Supply of Housing statistics. This means that the government’s House Building Statistics are failing to capture approximately 20% of all new homes built.

More than half of new-build homes in areas such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Leicester, Salford and many London boroughs are completely unaccounted for in the government’s House Building statistics, which are released everyquarter.

As a result, the HBF says a town equivalent to the size of Stevenage is being “lost” every year. Over the course of a parliament, in which the government is targeting the construction of 1 million homes, a city larger than Nottingham, Coventry or Newcastle simply vanishes.

According to the HBF’s calculations, the Net Supply of Housing data, which is published once a year, shows that more than 181,000 homes were added to the housing stock in 2014/15 – the last numbers available – of which 155,000 were new build, up 20% year on year.

“Housebuilding has increased significantly in recent years but the continual publication and use of inaccurate statistics is painting a negative picture that is undermining the progress being made in tackling the housing shortage,” says HBF executive chairman Stewart Baseley. “The government's housing policies and the industry are delivering, and it is incredibly frustrating that official statistics are not reflecting what is happening on the ground but instead presenting an open goal for critics."

According to the HBF, the published data excludes: At least 75% of new homes built in the London boroughs of Brent, Wandsworth, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea

• 1280 new homes in Birmingham (two-thirds of all new-build completions)
• 920 new homes in Liverpool (63% of all new-build completions)
• 640 new homes in Salford (half of all new-build completions)
• 570 new homes in Leicester (6 out of 10 new-build completions)
• 570 new homes in Sheffield (40% of all new-build completions)
• 400 new homes in Chester West & Chester (29% of all new-build completions)

The report also puts forward additional indicators of housing delivery, including the official Council Tax base statistics, counting net additional homes at a later point in the year than that covered by the Net Supply statistics, and the issue of Energy Performance Certificates for new-build properties. Both report that construction levels vastly outstrip the figures reported by the House Building statistics.

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