Indicators of house building UK

31st January 2025

Housing is a devolved area of government. This release brings together published data from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to provide quarterly UK totals for newly built dwellings.

Where possible, data are presented separately for dwellings started and completed, and split by sector (private enterprise, housing associations or local authorities). This allows users to easily compare over time and between areas, as well as with a total for Great Britain and the UK, in a timely manner.

These statistics provide a timely leading indicator of housing supply. However, they do not cover all house building in the UK, because most of the data in this release are based on local authority building inspectors and National House Building Council (NHBC) information, which cover most, but not all, large house building projects.

For England, the primary measure of housing supply is the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG's) annual housing supply: net additional dwellings series. This is a more complete (but less frequent) measure of changes to the size of the dwelling stock based on the more detailed annual returns from local authorities and the Greater London Authority. In addition to starts and completions, the net addition dwelling series includes conversions, demolitions and changes of use, and so is more complete when looking at the provision of new homes.

As part of housing supply statistics MHCLG publish a chart (Figure 5) showing the comparison between the net additions and housing supply house building measures.

Similarly, the Scottish Government's supply of new housing series includes conversions, demolitions and changes of use. These series are therefore a fuller measure when looking at the creation of new homes.

Housing statistics Scotland

Read the full ONS report HERE