Britain is unlikely to return quickly to the peak rate of housebuilding during the boom of the past decade, the chief executive of Taylor Wimpey has said. Despite reporting a rise in demand for new homes that was better than expected – running at nearly a third higher than the dark days at the end of 2015 – Peter Redfern said that planning requirements would hold back a wholesale recovery in building volumes. Mr Redfern said: ‘At the peak, the industry in the UK was building 170,000 units. That has halved and last year the industry completed around 85,000 to 90,000 units. It will be a very long time before we get back to those high volumes because of the constraints on land availability and the planning system.’