New home warranty and insurance provider the National House Building Council (NHBC) recorded 124,144 new home completions last year, marking a 7% fall compared with 133,611 in 2023.
Pressed whether there were enough construction workers to build 300,000 houses this year, she added: “That no, that’s part of the problem, that’s what we inherited from the last government, a skills system that was fragmented where a third of vacancies across the economy are because of skills shortages.
According to its figures, 104,232 new homes were registered in 2024 to be built, a figure which was broadly unchanged compared with 2023, when there were 105,071 registrations for homes to be built.
Skills minister Baroness Smith of Malvern was frank about the need to train up more construction workers to achieve the challenging target to tackle the housing crisis in London and other parts of Britain.. “I’m not confident that we’ve got enough skilled workers, no that’s what we’ve inherited,” she told Times Radio.
Looking at the different property types in the pipeline, there was annual growth in detached and semi-detached home registrations in 2024, while registrations of apartments, bungalows and terraced properties experienced a decline, compared with 2023.
