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A decade of Tory rule is set to see the fewest houses built since Second World War – according to a think-tank set-up by Margaret Thatcher.

Analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies warns that with a year to go until the end of the 2010s, housebuilding figures in England come in below any decade since the war.

Research reveals a 50-year pattern in which each decade has seen fewer new homes built than the last.

New-build housing completions between 2010 and 2019 are set to be average 130,000 per year - well below the 147,000 of the 2000s or 150,000 of the 1990s - and half of the level in the 1960s and 1970s, it says.

(Image: PA)

In the 1960s, the new-build construction rate was roughly the equivalent of one home for every 14 people over the decade.

But in the 2010s, that ratio plummeted to one to 43 - more than three times higher.

CPS director Robert Colvile said:“The housing crisis is blighting the lives of a generation, and robbing them of the dream of home ownership.

"But as this analysis shows, this is not just the consequence of the financial crisis - it is part of a pattern stretching back half a century in which we have steadily built fewer and fewer new homes.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

"The Government has rightly promised to focus on this issue, and there are encouraging signs that housebuilding is picking up.

“But ministers need to take bold action in 2019 to ensure that the 2020s become the decade in which we break this hugely damaging cycle.”

The think-tank was set-up by Mrs Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974.