House building in Britain reaches highest level since 2009

New homes are being built in Britain at the rate of more than 400 every working day, figures released Thursday showed.

The number of newly built homes is continuing to rise and is now at the highest level since 2009, says the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

The DCLG report that 139,690 new homes were completed in the year to March, 2016, a rise of 12 percent on the previous year.

Today's figures show strong growth in London which is experiencing high levels of house completions. New homes completed in the capital in the year to March 2016 is 32 percent more compared to the previous year.

Minister of State for Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said: "We've got the country building again and are seeing our housebuilding efforts paying-off with this considerable increase in the number of homes built in just one year. This is real progress but there is more to do."

House building reached a peak in 2007, with 183,600 homes completed, but fell due to recession in 2009 to 79,350 homes.

The vast majority of new homes completed in the past year have been built privately by housebuilders, with social housing associations building most of the remainder.

The DCLG said: "There are strong areas of new build starts in Cambridge and in parts of London, in particular Ealing. Areas north of the London green belt in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire have been experiencing high levels of starts, along with areas in North Oxfordshire and the Thames estuary."

During the recession years the number of properties completed were almost equally divided between houses and apartments. In the past year, houses accounted for around 75 percent of new homes completed, the highest proportion of new houses since 2001/02.

Government policies are paving the way for the building of a million homes in England over the next few years, with new measures given to local councils to make house building easier. Endit