England’s new housing supply likely to fall to lowest level in decades, study says

theguardian.com:

Housebuilding in England is due to fall to its lowest level since the second world war, according to an analysis by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), owing to a range of government policies that threaten to dramatically slow development.

The study says the supply of new housing is likely to fall below 120,000 homes annually over the coming years, less than half of the government’s target, as a result of changes to planning policy and what developers say is over-strict enforcement of environmental regulations.

The drop will leave England with a huge shortfall of new homes, the HBF warned, exacerbating the country’s housing crisis and making it harder than at any point in recent history to become a homeowner.

Stewart Baseley, the executive chairman of HBF, said: “The increasingly anti-development and anti-business policy environment poses a real threat to housebuilding and is inevitably at the forefront of minds when investment decisions are being made.

“As we try to tackle the housing crisis during a recession, with tighter mortgage availability and no government scheme to assist buyers purchase new builds for the first time in decades, short-term political decisions to appease backbenchers seriously threaten confidence.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “We do not accept this analysis. We remain committed to delivering 300,000 new homes per year remains and we are investing £11.5bn to build the affordable, quality homes this country needs.”

The predicted drop comes after years of rising housing supply spurred in part by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s adoption in 2012 of the national planning policy framework (NPPF), designed to stop councils blocking large