Spring Statement

• A bright spot in the otherwise rather gloomy Spring Statement (the economic growth forecast was halved to 1% for 2025) were new numbers from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) on housebuilding.

• The OBR modelling suggests that government reforms to planning policies last year will have a ‘material’ impact on housebuilding numbers.

• Their forecasts suggest that housebuilding levels in the UK could rise to more than 305,000 by 2029. This is a slow process and it will take time for planning reform to reach through to delivery of new houses. The forecasts did show that housebuilding levels will fall further before they improve.

• Housebuilding levels in 2024 were around 244,000. The prior peak was just ahead of Covid in 2019 when housebuilding reached 287,000. The 2019 level is the highest in at least the last 15 years.

• The OBR highlighted that these reforms were a welcome offset to the negative impact of higher build costs and interest rates. Source: Dataloft by PriceHubble, Spring Statement, OBR Historic data is for England, Wales and Scotland