John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary, responding to the fall in the value of new orders for housing, said:

“This is more worrying evidence of a housing crisis that Tory Ministers are failing to fix.

“After eight years of failure, housebuilding is still lower than under Labour, home-ownership is at a thirty-year low and the number of new homes built for social rent has fallen to the lowest level since records began.

“Rather than cutting back on new investment in affordable homes, the Conservatives should back Labour’s plans to invest to build a million new genuinely affordable homes, including the biggest council housebuilding programme in more than thirty years.”