Homebuilding surge in late 2020 despite Covid-19 but supply outlook still downbeat

This year’s supply will be affected significantly by the new restrictions on building sites in the latest and third lockdown, economists say

The number of new homes is still hugely short of the annual 30,000 new-home completions needed and means the pressures on house prices and rents, as well as the homeless crisis, will likely get a lot worse when economic recovery gets under way. Picture: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

A late-year surge in housebuilding helped make up for some of the fallout from the Covid-19 restrictions on building sites earlier in the year but the outlook for housing remains downbeat.    

New CSO figures show builders completed many more units than once expected in the last two months of the year to deliver just over 20,676 new homes, remarkably only slightly fewer than the number built in 2019 despite the restrictions that closed building sites last spring.