New figures show that government action is getting Britain building again, Housing Minister Kris Hopkins confirmed.

The latest statistics reveal that the last 3 months have seen the fastest rate of housebuilding since the crash in 2008, and government schemes are helping tens of thousands of hardworking families get onto the housing ladder.

Mr Hopkins said the housing market inherited in 2010 was a "smoking ruin", but the right policies, including prioritising limited financial resources, are returning it to health. He said the figures were the latest evidence that solid progress is being made across the housing market as a whole, including:

• faster housebuilding – housing starts over the last 12 months increased by 16% compared with the year before, rising from 101,280 to 117,110, and the 32,230 homes started between July and September this year represent the fastest rate of housebuilding since 2008.


• building new homes to match demand – over 18,000 reservations have now been made through Help to Buy: Equity Loan.Every reservation means a new build home is being sold, and housebuilders are using this momentum to build more homes. At the same time 2,000 households received offers through Help to Buy: Mortgage Guarantee in the first month alone.

• helping hard working people onto the housing ladder – since 2011, the government has been helping almost 50,000 hardworking households onto the housing ladder: over 36,000 through Help to Buy and earlier schemes, and over 13,400 social tenants through the Right to Buy. The Council of Mortgage Lenders confirmed this week that the number of new mortgages is now at the highest level since 2008

• more affordable housing – 98,700 affordable homes have been delivered through the affordable homes programme since it started in 2011, which is more than half way towards delivering 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015.

Mr Hopkins said: "This government inherited the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history and house building rates that had crashed to their lowest levels since the 1920s.

"We've taken the tough decisions to tackle the deficit, keeping interest rates and repossessions down, and introduced a series of initiatives to help build more affordable homes and give hard-working people a helping hand up the housing ladder."

(CD/IT)