Measuring progress towards one million homes
Published 24 May 2024
Applies to England
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Measuring progress towards one million homes
Summary
With the publication of weekly domestic Energy Performance Certificate lodgements up to 19 May 2024; we estimate that 1,001,000 net additional homes have been delivered in England since the start of Parliament on 17 December 2019 up to 19 May 2024. This shows that one million homes have been delivered within this Parliament. This note sets out the basis for this calculation.
Estimating net additional homes since December 2019
Our official measure of overall additional housing supply in England is the annual net housing supply: net additional dwellings statistics, also known as ‘net additions’. However, these statistics are a lagged measure, which means they cannot yet tell us about homes delivered from April 2023 onwards. They are also based on the financial year (from 1 April to 31 March), which means that 2019-20 figures count from April that financial year rather than the start of the current Parliament in December 2019.
To overcome these problems and develop a best estimate of housing delivery during the current Parliament we set out below a methodology that combines different data sources to provide a robust, timely estimate of new housing supply and which makes adjustments to reflect the period since December 2019. It begins with net additions, the most robust measure of additional housing supply, but then makes two adjustments:
1. To count from 17 December 2019 (the day Parliament first met). This means adjusting 2019-20 net additions to remove those delivered before then. We do so using the profile of new Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) lodgements for new build homes over that period.
2. To estimate new housing supply occurring after the latest published net additions statistics – currently up to March 2023 – we use new EPC lodgements adjusted to account for demolitions to give robust estimates for the period since then, using the most relevant publicly available data.
Table 1 shows that one million homes have been delivered this Parliament, with an estimated 1,001,000 homes delivered by 19 May 2024.
Table 1: estimated progress towards 1m homes, by time period and data source.
| Period | 17 December 2019 to 31 March 2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 | 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q1 | Latest delivery update (up to 19 May 2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net additions during relevant period | 60,770 | 217,750 | 234,460 | 234,400 | 226,000 | 27,000 |
| Overall progress towards 1m homes | 60,770 | 278,520 | 512,980 | 747,380 | 974,000 | 1,001,000 |
| Method / Source | EPC weekly profile applied to 2019-20 outturn | Outturn net additions | Outturn net additions | Outturn net additions | Quarterly EPCs adjusted for demolitions | Weekly EPC adjusted for demolitions |
Note: values up to 2022-23 are based on outturn net additions and are rounded to the nearest 10. Values from 2023Q2 onwards are rounded to the nearest 1,000 because they are calculated using the EPC-based leading indicator, which has more uncertainty. The rounded values may not exactly sum to the total.
Methodology details
17 December 2019 to 31 March 2020
By applying the profile of weekly EPC lodgements to the 2019-20 outturn total, we estimate that between 17 December 2019 and 31 March 2020, there were 60,770 net additions.
Outturn net additions are measured in financial years, which run from Quarter 2 of one year to Quarter 1 of the next. For example, the 2019-20 financial year runs from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. We measure progress towards the 1m homes target from the beginning of this Parliament. This Parliament began on 17 December 2019, when the current Parliament met for the first time.
These dates do not align. Therefore, it is necessary to make an assumption about the distribution of net additions across 2019-20. Prorating net additions across 2019-20 gives an over-estimate, because the number of homes completed around Christmas is generally very low.
Instead, we apply the profile of weekly EPC lodgements to the 2019-20 outturn total, in two steps:
1. From the weekly EPC lodgements dataset, estimate the proportion of total net additions in the year which came between 17 December 2019 and 31 March 2020.
2. Multiply outturn net additions from 2019-20 by this proportion.
From this method we estimate there were 60,770 net additions between the start of Parliament and the end of the 2019-20 financial year.
2020-21 to 2022-23
Adding outturn data to the prorated total from the previous section gives 747,380 net additions between the start of Parliament and the end of 2022-23.
The most recent available outturn data for net additional units is for 2022-23, which covers up to 31 March 2023. The figures are published here: Housing supply: net additional dwellings.
| 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 248,590 | 217,750 | 234,460 | 234,400 |
Adding the outturn annual figures for 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 to the prorated total from the above section gives an estimated 747,380 net additional units between the start of Parliament and the end of 2022-23.
1 April 2023 to 19 May 2024
Using quarterly and weekly EPC lodgements and applying a small adjustment to subtract an estimate of demolitions over the period, we estimate there were 253,000 net additions from 1 April 2023 to 19 May 2024.
Outturn net additions for the period 2023 Q2 onwards have not yet been published, so a leading indicator is needed. We use quarterly and weekly Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) lodgements.
EPC data is a very close proxy for gross additional dwellings (net additions excluding demolitions), but the 1 million target tracks net additional dwellings. Therefore, we apply a small downward adjustment to the EPC data to subtract an estimate of demolitions over the period, calculated as a 5-year rolling average of demolitions from the net additions release, as a proportion of new EPC lodgements.
The number of new EPC lodgements in 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q1 was 232,000. Over the most recent five years with available data, the average ratio of demolitions to EPC lodgements was 2.7%. This gives a demolitions adjustment of 2.7%, which is equal to 6,000 demolitions for 2023-24. Applying the demolitions adjustment to the sum of EPC lodgements gives an estimate of 226,000 net additions in 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q1. This number is not completely certain, because the outturn data for 2023-24, when published in November 2024, is likely to differ to some extent from the EPCs-based estimate.
Applying the same method using weekly EPC lodgements, we estimate there were 27,000 net additions from 1 April 2024 to 19 May 2024. Adding together 27,000 and 226,000 net additions gives a total of 253,000 net additions from 1 April 2023 to 19 May 2024.
Regional breakdown
The net additional dwellings and EPC lodgements datasets used in this methodology are also published on a regional basis. We have applied the same method to estimate homes delivered this parliament in each region of England. For these regional estimates, we calculate the EPC weekly profile for 2019-20 and the demolitions adjustment separately for each of the nine regions of England. The regional estimates sum to a value marginally higher than the national total because of how the EPC weekly profile and demolitions adjustment are calculated. The regional totals are adjusted downwards by around 0.02% to ensure they sum to the national total.
The results are shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Cumulative estimated homes delivered this parliament, by region.
| Period | 17 December 2019 to 31 March 2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | 2022-2023 | 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q1 | Latest delivery update (up to 19 May 2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Method / Source | EPC weekly profile applied to 2019-20 outturn | Outturn net additions | Outturn net additions | Outturn net additions | Quarterly EPCs adjusted for demolitions | Weekly EPC adjusted for demolitions |
| England | 60,770 | 278,520 | 512,980 | 747,380 | 974,000 | 1,001,000 |
| East England | 6,760 | 32,430 | 59,880 | 90,070 | 118,000 | 122,000 |
| East Midlands | 5,340 | 26,760 | 48,860 | 74,010 | 97,000 | 100,000 |
| London | 11,080 | 49,910 | 89,080 | 124,380 | 158,000 | 163,000 |
| North East | 2,200 | 9,340 | 18,270 | 27,590 | 36,000 | 37,000 |
| North West | 9,190 | 37,150 | 65,610 | 92,420 | 122,000 | 125,000 |
| South East | 9,430 | 48,560 | 89,800 | 131,940 | 170,000 | 174,000 |
| South West | 5,950 | 28,760 | 52,970 | 78,520 | 101,000 | 104,000 |
| West Midlands | 5,610 | 24,290 | 48,460 | 70,440 | 91,000 | 94,000 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 5,200 | 21,330 | 40,050 | 58,000 | 79,000 | 81,000 |
Note: values are rounded in table 2 as in table 1. The rounded values may not exactly sum to the total.