Covid-19 has knocked the government further off course from its housebuilding targets, a study has revealed, with only 94,000 new homes built during the first nine months of 2020. The first wave of coronavirus led to the temporary closure of construction sites last spring, leaving output well below the 300,000 new homes a year which the Conservatives pledged in their manifesto, according to research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank. The government aims to deliver a million new homes by the end of the parliament, a target the Foundation described as “highly ambitious” even before the pandemic. Lindsay Judge, research director at the Resolution Foundation, said: “If the government wants to hit its welcome target, it should turn to the social housing sector – which historically has provided up to one-in-three new homes – to provide the supply that millions of families in Britain need.” England’s annual housing output has only surpassed 300,000 on six occasions since the end of the second world war. Building activity plunged last March, when construction sites were closed as the coronavirus outbreak first took hold, causing private housing output to slump by 60% in April. However, construction rebounded once sites reopened with new safety measures in place, and output had returned to its pre-pandemic level by September. The thinktank warns that the housebuilding sector faces other challenges over the coming year. The housing market has boomed since the summer thanks to the stamp duty holiday, although house prices are expected to fall when the temporary tax cut ends on 31 March. A decline in house prices, combined with rising unemployment and falling household incomes would suppress new private housebuilding activity in the short term, according to the Resolution Foundation. The UK’s ability to build new homes may also be restricted by availability of migrant construction workers, many of whom travelled home during the pandemic. The thinktank said this could be felt most keenly in London, where, before Covid, over half of construction workers were migrants, adding that it takes time to train new workers to fill the gap.