There are some encouraging figures emerging from the house building sector that suggest the fortunes of the housing market and the construction sector may be on an upward trajectory. The latest figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) show that building has been started on 29,510 new houses in England in the second quarter of 2013, representing a 6 per cent rise compared to the same period last year, which is very heartening.

The knock-on effect of more houses being built is that it keeps a cap on both house and rental prices. So housing will become more affordable, meaning fewer families are left without a place to live.

There is currently a scandalous shortage of social housing in this country and it is therefore good to see from the DCLG figures that housing association completions increased by 3 per cent between April and June 2013 compared with the previous quarter, although they are lower than the same period last year.

These figures give us hope for the future recovery of the housing market, not to mention the UK economy. As the Confederation of British Industry said recently, for every pound spent on construction, we get nearly £3 going back into the wider economy. So the positives of house building are three-fold – a greater supply of houses, more affordable prices and a boost to the economy.

But this doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels: we are still only building around half of what we need and these figures are still lower than they were before the recession hit. According to statistics from the National Housing Federation, around 240,000 new households were created in the UK last year and yet fewer than 111,250 homes were built.

Looking at the latest DCLG figures, although the number of housing starts have risen by 21 per cent in the first six months of 2013 compared to the same period last year, the number of houses completed have fallen. If the rate of completions stays at its current pace, only around 104,000 homes will have been built by the end of the year, which still leaves us 136,000 homes short – and that’s assuming that the number of new households stays flat.

Access to finance is a key barrier to property developers but government programmes such as the NewBuy scheme are helping to break down these barriers. At Aldermore, we’ve seen an increase in demand for finance from property developers and we’re on target to hit a 200 per cent increase this year on our 2012 funding levels.

The government, finance providers and other stakeholders must continue to support house builders and the construction industry. Bricks and mortar are solid foundations upon which to build the UK’s economic recovery.

By Rob Lankey, Managing Director of Aldermore Commercial Mortgages