ROOF Blog

Britain is unlikely to return quickly to the peak rate of housebuilding during the boom of the past decade, the chief executive of Taylor Wimpey has said. Despite reporting a rise in demand for new homes that was better than expected - running at nearly a third higher than the dark days at the end of 2008 - Peter Redfern said that planning requirements would hold back a wholesale recovery in building volumes. Mr Redfern said: ‘At the peak, the industry in the UK was building 170,000 units. That has halved and last year the industry completed around 85,000 to 90,000 units. It will be a very long time before we get back to those high volumes because of the constraints on land availability and the planning system.’

Hundreds of England’s village churches could be revived and up to 10,000 affordable homes built for local families – if churches sold land and buildings to housing associations, according to research by the National Housing Federation. The Federation believes that with the Church of England owning an average of eight acres of land per Anglican village church, in addition to parsonages and church halls, every rural place of worship could deliver an average of one new affordable home. Federation chief executive David Orr said: ‘By making land available for housing, rural churches would increase their chances of survival and also help meet local housing need.’