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Slump in new homes makes housing target a stretch

Given the UK recently got much closer to the government’s target of building 300,000 homes a year than is acknowledged, you might think that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill announced in the King’s Speech this week would be enough to get new home construction over the line. But a slump in housebuilding this year is likely to mean the government presides over the lowest number of new homes in eight years in its first year in office.

Meanwhile, strong GDP growth and stubborn services inflation mean that we now think that August will prove too early for the Monetary Policy Committee to lower Bank Rate. But given signs pay growth will soften ahead, we only suspect that the first cut will only be delayed until the September meeting.

We apologise to clients of our UK service for the delay to their receipt of the Rapid Response email alerts earlier today. Our email sending platform experienced an outage due to the widespread third-party IT issues.

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