Official figures show new house building starts and completions are at their highest level since 1989 and growing fast for several years.

Countryside campaigners CPRE said the data demolished repeated claims by house builders and commentators that house building stood at an exceptionally low level.

CPRE policy director Neil Sinden said: "We keep hearing that house building is at historically low levels - and planners and people who want to protect the environment and greenfields from a surfeit of sprawl get the blame."

"But this just isn't true for private sector house builders. The planning system is delivering new homes aplenty. The private sector is now building more homes than it has done for most of the post-war years."

Summary figures from ODPM:

Provisional figures for England for 2004/05 show:

• 173,500 starts, up 8 per cent on the figure for 2003/04
• 154,600 completions, up 8 per cent on the figure for 2003/04

But the figures do show a downward trend for new starts in England during the quarter to March 2005:

• 40,300 housing starts, down 5 per cent on the same period in 2004.
• 33,600 housing completions, up 5 per cent on the same period in 2004.

Most of this increased house building activity was in London, said the ODPM, where in 2004/05 there were 23,920 housing completions up 23 per cent on the previous year. Outside London, completions were up 5 per cent.

Provisional 2004/05 figures for Wales show:

• 9,700 starts, down 4 per cent on the figure for 2003/04
• 9,500 completions, up 15 per cent on the figure for 2003/04

The CPRE said it welcomed the particularly rapid growth in house building in London, which it called "a remarkable 71 per cent increase since 2001/02." The campaigners said this demonstrated the vast capacity of our big cities to accommodate more housing, "sparing the countryside from urban sprawl whilst improving the urban environment by refurbishing buildings and bringing derelict brownfield land back into use."

However, John Slaughter, director of external affairs at the House Builders Federation, said the increase was still modest compared with the level of growth advocated in the Barker Review.