Housing Starts Jump 20% as Building Safety Regulator Flow Swells Figures
England recorded 35,910 new-build housing starts in Q2, up 20% year on year, with 5,758 flowing through the Building Safety Regulator — nearly five times its previous peak.
- Section
- Construction
- Author
- By Elena Vasquez
- Filed
- Length
- 2 min read
Key takeaways
- England recorded 35,910 new-build housing starts between April and June, up 6% on the previous quarter and 20% year on year.
- The Building Safety Regulator reported 5,758 housing starts in Q2, nearly five times its previous quarterly high of 1,206, and around 16% of all starts.
- Rolling 12-month starts to the end of June reached 136,330, up 15%, while completions held flat at 143,770.
House building starts in England jumped 20% year on year to 35,910 in the second quarter, but government statisticians caution that a surge of projects passing through the Building Safety Regulator is boosting the numbers.
New-build starts between April and June rose 6% on the previous quarter and 20% on the same period last year, according to the latest government figures. The rebound coincides with a dramatic rise in higher-rise homes being reported through the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), the body that gates tall residential construction.
The BSR recorded 5,758 housing starts during the latest quarter. That figure stands against a previous quarterly high of just 1,206, set as recently as the third quarter of 2025. BSR-reported starts are now running at nearly five times their previous peak and represented around 16% of all starts recorded during the quarter.
The surge follows reforms launched last summer to tackle delays at the regulator. Those measures included a fast-track process for new-build applications and changes to leadership and resources at the BSR.
The trend is not a one-quarter anomaly. The BSR reported 7,089 starts in the final quarter of 2025 and another 6,276 in the first three months of this year. The Government says these higher numbers partly explain the recent recovery in the national housing figures, as thousands of higher-rise homes flow through the regulator's pipeline and into the official count.
Even with the rebound, the market remains far below its recent high. Starts sit 47% below the exceptional peak reached in the second quarter of 2023, when developers rushed to break ground ahead of changes to building regulations.
Over the rolling 12 months to the end of June, new-build starts in England reached 136,330, up 15% on the previous year. Completions over the same period totalled 143,770, unchanged on the year before — a signal that finished stock is arriving faster than new work is beginning.
The figures suggest the housing pipeline is beginning to rebuild after starts collapsed in the second half of 2023. Activity, however, remains well short of the levels seen before that downturn.
The next test for the recovery will be whether starts can keep climbing once the initial backlog of BSR-gated projects has cleared the system, and whether the regulator's fast-track process can sustain throughput at current volumes.
Source: Construction Enquirer
