When at the end of February The Times asked if the Department for Communities and Local Government was sticking with the official Government target of building 240,000 new homes a year by 2016, the answer was a resounding yes.

Last year about 166,000 new homes - for both private ownership and social housing - were built.

Official figures out today reveal that construction orders for both the private and social housing - the so-called public housing and housing associations - have fallen off a cliff since January.

Private housing orders are down 29 per cent during the first quarter this year compared to last year while social housing orders are down 36 per cent.

The value of total private housing new builds outnumbers the total value of social housing new builds by about eight to one. As construction costs have hardly moved over the past year it is fair to assume that in aggregate the total number of new housing starts has fallen by about one third.

With housebuilders slowing their rate of construction or, like Persimmon, putting a stop altogether on opening new sites, it is highly likely the rate of decline in new building starts will continue for the rest of the year.

Given that most housebuilders began to put the brakes on new construction late last summer, a 33 per cent annual decline in new build starts later this year will actually represent a far larger fall in the underlying volume of houses being built.

Mike Farley, chief executive of Persimmon, last week told The Times he believed annual housing completions could easily fall to 110,000 over the coming year. That would represent a decline in completions of ... one third. Over the next two years, without a sudden improvement in the economy, the number of completions will reflect the number of building starts.

Mr Farley's prediction last week may have seemed like doom mongering. Today's figures from the ONS however give his forecast far greater creedence.

It is time then once again for Ms Flint to get to grips with market forces, listen to the housing and construction industry, read the official statistics and for the Department for Communities and Local Government to revise Government targets.

Without a revision to Government housing targets the Treasury will simply have to slash the price it expects for thousands of acres of land

Only then will the housebuilders want to take the risk of continuing to buy land and build new homes in a market where house prices are on the slide amid a drought of mortgage finance.

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