<p>As government continues digesting the responses to its planning gain supplement consultation, the latest household projections should give it much pause for thought. Things are going from bad to worse when it comes to meeting housing demand. Ministers have for some time been talking of the need to build at least 209,000 new homes a year by 2016. </p> <p>This was a big ask, since the industry is continuing to produce only around 160,000 new homes a year. Unfortunately, even the 209,000 dearly wished for will now fall well short of predicted demand. Latest household projections indicate that we in fact need to be building 223,000 new homes a year between now and 2026. The latest raft of mergers and acquisitions among volume builders will undoubtedly deplete housing output in the short term. The likelihood of a building boom also diminishes in direct proportion to every new policy directive being loaded onto developers. </p> <p>Both the planning gain supplement and plans to make new homes carbon neutral by 2016 entail significant resources – the cost of the latter currently estimated at around £20,000 per home – which must be factored into land prices. And only so many costs can be …