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Snow fails to stop boost in new home registrations
The number of new homes registered in the last financial year was the second-highest in a decade, despite bad weather causing severe on-site delays.
Figures from the National House Building Council (NHBC) show that 154,698 homes were registered to be built in the 2017/18 financial year.
This is the second highest number in a decade, down only 2% from the record 157,805 new homes registered in 2016/17.
According to the NHBC, this figure would have been much higher had the start of 2018 not been beset by unusually bad weather, including the so-called ’Beast from the East’ storm.
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Steve Wood, chief executive of the NHBC, said that anecdotal evidence suggested up to 30 days had been lost on site in the first quarter of 2018 as a result of snow, and that overall the weather had “significantly dampened the numbers”.
He added: “I was on a site in March and the ground was rock-hard, so no work was going on.”
At the beginning of March, the Federation of Master Builders warned that the snow and cold weather had led to severe delays on construction sites around the country.
In the first three months of 2018, the NHBC registered 7,939 affordable housing registrations, its lowest quarterly figure since Q3 2015 and second-lowest since 2012.
The NHBC suggested that this was because grant programmes for affordable housing operate in three-year cycles. The most recent programme ended in March, and so registrations slowed in that quarter.
Overall, the NHBC’s statistics suggested strong growth in registrations over the long term, with increases in six out of 12 UK regions.
The most notable increases were in the North West, where 21% more registrations were recorded, the East Midlands, which saw a rise of 12%, and Wales, where the figure was 11%.
Mr Wood said: “New home registration figures for the last financial year have reached the second-highest level in a decade, despite a challenging start to 2018, with freezing weather conditions affecting building sites up and down the country.”
