Future Homes Hub introduces new scheme
Several housebuilders – including Barratt, Bellway, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry – have signed up to Homes for Nature, a scheme designed to help support wildlife on new developments.
The initiative, which has been signed up to by 20 housebuilders, will see a bird-nesting brick or box for every home built, as well as creating hedgehog highways as standard.
These housebuilders build more than 90,000 homes a year combined, and this scheme represents a “major step” towards providing the minimum of 300,000 nesting bricks and boxes needed to support swift populations and other bird species.
One in three planning permissions left unbuilt
The first Planning Portal Market Index has found that more than a million homes granted planning permission in England and Wales since 2015 have not yet been constructed.
This figure equates to around a third of the total number of units granted permission over the same period.
Had all homes granted permission actually been built, the government’s 300,000 new homes a year target would have been achieved in 8 of the last 10 years.
House price inflation remains flat in May
The latest Zoopla house price index has revealed that house prices remained stable in May, with the average UK property valued at £264,900.
The report also found that house prices have risen across all regions over the past three months, but that the annual rate of house price growth remains negative across southern England.
Demand and sales are both higher than this time last year, and the firm predicts that house prices are on track to rise by 1.5% by the end of the year.
Housing View 