The house building industry slump to its lowest level.

 The house­ build­ing industry has warned that the num­ber of new prop­er­ties com­pleted each year in

Eng­land could slump to its low­est level since the second world war, owing to a «per­fect storm» of gov­ern­ment policies and higher mort­gage rates.

Stew­art Base­ley, exec­ut­ive chair of the fed­er­a­tion, said the gov­ern­ment’s «capit­u­la­tion» to the «not in my back yard lobby» and its mis­hand­ling of envir­on­mental policies, could lead to a plunge in house build­ing and threaten hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs.

Base­ley said «short-term polit­ical decisions to appease» back­bench Con­ser­vat­ive MPs con­cerned about devel­op­ment were threat­en­ing con­fid­ence in the hous­ing mar­ket just as Bri­tain headed into a prob­able reces­sion, with tighter mort­gage avail­ab­il­ity.

In research for the HBF, plan­ning con­sultancy Lich­fields pre­dicted that the changes to the frame­work could reduce sup­ply by 77,000 prop­er­ties a year in the near term.

The research also con­cluded that gov­ern­ment envir­on­mental rules to guard against pol­lu­tion of rivers and water­ways could fur­ther cut sup­ply by 41,000 homes a year.

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