HTB comments on ONS Construction Output data

13 August 2026

Neil Leitch, Managing Director of Development Finance, Hampshire Trust Bank

“A new Government might be seen as a chance for a reset, for some fresh ideas to give housebuilding the shot in the arm these figures show that it so clearly needs. But we've seen plenty of these moments before. There has been no shortage of initiatives, announcements and reforms, yet the conditions developers are working in have changed far more slowly than the policy surrounding them.

“A recent report from Savills found that housebuilding in England was at its highest when planning policy was stable, following the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012. I don't think that's a coincidence. Developers can usually work around delay. What they find much harder is planning around uncertainty. If you can't price the planning risk with any confidence, it's very difficult to justify tying capital up for two or three years. That's when perfectly viable schemes quietly fall away long before they ever show up in the housing statistics.

“What I'm seeing is developers becoming much more selective about where they deploy capital. They're prioritising projects where the planning route is clearer and delivery is more predictable, not because demand has disappeared, but because the commercial margin for error has become too small.

“Demand for new homes is not the issue. The challenge is creating the confidence and certainty that allow viable schemes to move from planning into delivery. Get the planning system right, get the resourcing right, and then leave it alone. Developers know how to build homes.”