John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Housing and Planning, commenting on new house-building data for the fourth quarter of 2015, said:
“After five years of failure on housing under the Tories, house-building is still falling far short of what the country needs.
“Ministers have talked up the economic recovery, but these figures show that there were more than 20 per cent fewer new homes started last year than before the global financial crisis.
“Ultimately what matters most to hard-pressed households is how expensive housing costs have become, and Ministers aren’t just failing on numbers, they’re also failing to get homes built that local people can afford.
“Conservative Ministers’ extreme and short-sighted housing plans are set to choke off thousands of genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy at a time when they’ve never been needed more.”