Severe weather causes new housing build figures to plummet

In the first three months of 2018, the number of new houses registered to be built fell by 14 per cent because of the severe weather.

According to new statistics from the National House Building Council (NHBC), it was revealed that it is the worst percentage drop in a three-month period for six years - since 2012.

The NHBC said that although the overall trend for new housebuilding over the decade was up, the recent harsh winter weather dragged down the annual number of new builds for 2017/18 by two per cent.

Steve Wood, chief executive of the NHBC, said: “By far the biggest influence was the Beast from the East, the extreme cold weather that we had.

“That was very disruptive. I was on site and nothing was happening, the ground was frozen and there was a biting wind.

“Builders typically lost something like 30 days production - that has an impact on registrations, what’s coming through the pipeline. That is the main reason we saw the slowdown in the first quarter.”

And even despite the awful weather, housebuilders supposedly aren’t building as many houses such as before the financial crisis.

The NHBC - which registers 80 per cent of all new private and affordable homes built across the country including most social housing - said that 155,000 new homes were registered in 2017/18.

This means that the total number of new houses being built in the region stands at 190,000, over 100,000 below the government target.

Wood added: “To get to the 300,000 would require something like an additional 25,000 bricklayers.

“That’s not going to happen so we need to change the way that we build houses and embrace modern methods much more fully.”