One of Britain’s largest house building groups has warned that construction of new residences is being hindered by the upcoming General Election.
York based firm Persimmon added however that it had made an ‘encouraging’ start to the financial year, with 85 sites opened of the 120 planned for the first half of 2015.
Concerns have been raised that councils could be holding back on granting planning permission ahead of the General Election in just under three weeks’ time.
In a trading update this week, Persimmon said: ‘As anticipated, in line with past experience it has become increasingly difficult to secure planning consents for sites as May’s General Election approaches.
‘While we would expect such delays to be short term in nature, they are hindering the expansion in the number of active outlets required by the house building industry to support an increase in the volume of newly built homes delivered to the market.’
The news came in the week that a Conservative pledge to widen the Right to Buy to 1.3m housing association tenants raised significant concerns in sections of the house building sector.
A recent review of housing construction also found that only half the 250,000 homes needed annually to tackle price rises and affordable housing shortages were built in 2014.
