The Government has implemented a wide range of measures to reduce house price inflation, increase housing output to match demand, remove infrastructural and planning constraints on residential development, afford greater access to the housing market to first time buyers and improve affordability for first time buyers and lower income households.
The measures introduced to improve affordability include revised stamp duty thresholds and rates to ease the burden on first time buyers, measures to discourage speculative demand, the provision of affordable housing under the affordable housing scheme and, in future, under Part V of the Planning and Development Act and significant improvements to the eligibility criteria under both the shared ownership and the affordable housing schemes.
Last year was the first year of a four year multi-annual local authority housing programme designed to deliver 25,000 of the 41,000 local authority housing starts planned over the period of the national development plan. At the end of last year, there were more than 5,000 housing units under construction, the highest level since 1985. Local authorities expect to start more than 7,000 units this year and to complete or acquire 5,000 units. This would represent an increase of more than 50% on last year's output and yield the highest level of local authority housing output since 1986. I expect that voluntary housing output this year will be around 1,200 additional units which will be the highest level ever recorded in the country.
Total house completions last year reached almost 50,000 units, the sixth consecutive year of record housing output. Output for the first nine months of this year is up more than 4% on the same period last year, and we are on target this year to achieve the second highest level of housing output on record.