Skills are key as new homes fall to record low

New home starts in October fell to their lowest level since accessible records began, according to NHBC's new house-building statistics.

Furthermore, the longer-term picture looks set to worsen as NHBC anticipates as few as 85,000 homes being registered in 12 months to the end of March next year. This compares to the relatively strong volume of 184,000 recorded in the same period last year and will represent the lowest annual figure recorded since the early 1980s when NHBC's accessible records began.

NHBC's Chief Executive, Imtiaz Farookhi, said: "In the face of such a stark decline in new home volumes, we are at serious risk of losing a generation of skilled workers, as experienced in the 1990s.

"It is vital that we work to maintain capacity so that when the upturn comes, which it inevitably will, the industry will be able to respond to housing demand."

NHBC's latest figures show that they received just 5,893 applications to start new homes in the combined private and public sectors in October, 65 per cent lower than the same month a year ago (16,895).