The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU) set up to provide advice on making homes affordable today released its latest advice on how many homes England needs by 2020.

The range of extra homes the unit says are needed by 2020 is between 2,957,000 and 3,475,900. That means an addition to the housing stock of between 240,100 and 297,700 each year to 2016, says the report.

That rather begs the question of whether we will have an industry in a fit state to meet those targets when we come out of this downturn.