The Construction Products Association (CPA) has forecast that new home starts this year will drop to their lowest level since 1945. It expects 147,000 homes to be started, down 27% on last year. Private sector housing starts are forecast to be down by 30% to the lowest level since 1992 whilst the social housing programme is failing to grow in line with government’s plans for 45,000 new homes a year by 2011. Housebuilding industry stakeholders expect the slump to potentially be even worse, with starts at around 100,000 homes.<br><br>Chief executive Michael Ankers commented: “The impact on the new build housing market has been more severe than any of us anticipated. To be starting fewer new homes than at any time over the last 60 years illustrates the scale of the problem we now face. Unless something is done urgently to address this problem, the capacity in the industry will be cut to a level which will take a long time to build up and it will not be able to meet the inevitable pent up demand for new housing.” The situation could lead to the loss of around 100,000 jobs across the industry. The CPA expects the situation to “deteriorate …