New figures show government action is getting Britain building and helping to provide the homes this country needs, Communities Minister Brandon Lewis has said.

The latest housebuilding start figures show there were 29,510 new homes started between April and June this year - 6% higher than the previous quarter, and a third higher than the same time last year. Seasonally adjusted private enterprise completions increased by 11%.

This increase was seen across the country, with 178 of the 326 councils in England reporting an increase in housebuilding starts over the year.

The figures confirm that the housing market has turned a corner since the end of the unsustainable housing boom, with developers looking to build and aspiring homeowners looking to buy.

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This has been boosted by the wide range of government measures including:

• new housing supply at its highest level since 2008, with a total 334,000 new homes built in England over the past three years

• more than 150,000 new affordable homes built over the past three years thanks to the wide range of affordable housing programmes, including £19.5bn of public and private investment over this Spending Review, and over £22bn investment in the three years after that

• interest rates kept low thanks to government action to tackle the deficit inherited from the last administration

• more than 10,000 reservations for newly-built homes in just the first four months of the government’s Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme

• the Funding for Lending scheme, which has increased the availability of competitively priced mortgages.

Minister Lewis said: "Under the last administration, housebuilding fell to its lowest peacetime rate since the 1920s. But today's figures clearly show government action is bringing confidence back into the housing market and getting Britain building again, with starts increasing by a third year-on-year."

(CD/JP)