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Housing Minister welcomes increase in affordable homes

The Housing Minister has welcomed figures indicating that there has been a “rapid and dramatic” increase in the number of new homes being built.

New figures published indicate that new house builds in the six month period of March 2012 were up by 15,000 in comparison to the same period in the last financial year. In March the total number of completed affordable homes for rent and ownership stood at over 51,000/

Grant Shapps believes that this is clear evidence that efforts to get Britain building are starting to yield impressive results.

He commented: “I am impressed at how, as we’ve moved to our new housebuilding programme, developers up and down the country have taken up the exciting opportunity to build thousands of new affordable homes.

“This rapid and dramatic progress means that we are well on track to exceed all original expectations and deliver up to 170,000 new affordable homes over the next few years.”

In order to ensure these high levels of growth can continue, the Govenrment now plans to spend £1.3 billion to restart stalled developments, and build infrastructure needed to unlock housing sites. This comes on top of a £4.5 billion investment which has already been made in affordable homes.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .