Sovereign revises down number of homes it expects to complete by around 800

An Essex housing association has completed barely half of its planned development programme for the first six months of the financial year because of problems getting hold of materials and labour.

Romford-based Sovereign yesterday said in a trading update for the six months to September that it had completed 458 homes in the year to date, significantly less than the 857 it had budgeted for.

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Source: Shutterstock

Problems getting hold of materials has meant the number of homes built this financial year will be off by more 40%, Sovereign said

The 60,000-home provider said: 鈥淭he development programme has continued to be slower than expected due primarily to resource and material availability issues impacting the whole of the building sector.鈥� It also said development had been hit by the ongoing impact of the covid-19 pandemic.

It is now expecting the development figure for the whole 2021/22 year to be more in line with last year鈥檚 pandemic-hit figure of 1,099 completions. It had originally targeted 1,900 completions for the year.

Mark Washer, chief executive of Sovereign, said in its financial accounts for 2020/21 that it was 鈥渂uilding towards鈥� a target of 2,000 new homes a year.

In 2019/20, the last year before the pandemic, Sovereign completed 1,773 homes.

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