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Tag: DCLG

Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

The construction industry imports about 10% of its output value in building materials and seems to have done all my adult life at least. Admittedly the figures are a bit ropey, but the pattern looks pretty clear from the top graph. This is important, because the Government’s rather suspect industrial strategy (pdf) for construction has as one of its big targets a 50% cut in the building materials trade gap by 2025. Looking at the current data I reckon that means,…

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Those house building numbers: Joy, reality then annoyance

Those house building numbers: Joy, reality then annoyance

The latest official housing figures provide a bit of a puzzle. The uplift in the actual figures doesn’t look that spectacular when you plot the graphs, so why is there so much fuss? The tale on the street is that house building is booming. Brick shortages, skills shortages, rising prices, it has to be a boom. And picked judiciously the figures are powerful. Private starts were up 29% in the third quarter compared with last year. Housing associations also started…

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Finding smiley faces in the wallpaper – a look at today’s house building data

Finding smiley faces in the wallpaper – a look at today’s house building data

What can be said of the latest (second quarter) house building statistics that we don’t already really know, or suspect we know? Probably not a lot. The chances are they tell us more about the things we are likely to forget or ignore. Let’s look at the statistics for house building in England. Starts were well up, a bumper 37% (not seasonally adjusted) comparing 2013Q2 with 2012Q2. But this is comparing a relatively event-free sun-baked quarter with a rain-sodden Jubilympics…

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The real problem raised by the Homes and Communities Agency affordable homes figures

The real problem raised by the Homes and Communities Agency affordable homes figures

On the face of it the Homes and Communities Agency statistics for affordable housing starts are absolutely awful. I’m going to go out on a limb and accept that they look significantly worse as a snapshot of what is going on than the reality on the ground. The data suggest that the starts are back-end loaded within the financial year, so a drop in this half of the year would have been expected. Obviously this drop was greatly exaggerated by…

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House building figures provide no comfort in an age of uncertainty and need

House building figures provide no comfort in an age of uncertainty and need

Housing completions in England in the third quarter of this year at just 24,250 were the lowest in a generation or two at least. The Government can hide its shame a little by pointing to the seasonally adjusted figures which show completions in the final quarter of 2010 were lower. This still falls within the current Government’s time in office, but they have some room then to blame their predecessors. While a decline in the social sector might be expected,…

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