With the end of the political party conference season and with a general election expected next year, now is a good time to look at what each party is saying about housing targets and supply. 

First up, where are we now? For something that is relatively easy to count, there are surprisingly lots of ways to calculate how many homes are built each year. Different statistics are quoted in the media by the political parties but the official figures show 210,000 new homes were built in England in 2021-22, alongside 22,900 in Scotland and 5,300 in Wales. So just under 240,000 in total.

By historical standards that 210,000 figure in England is actually a good number. For while 3.1m homes were built during the 1960s, that fell each decade to 1.5m during the 2000s, then 1.3m during the 2010s.