Construction started on 110,530 homes, 7% up on last year, but 40% down on the March 2006 house building peak.

House building hotspots include the M5 corridor from Devon up to Worcestershire and the areas north of London green belt in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

Starts activity is also rising in some London boroughs stretching along the A303 through Hampshire into Wiltshire, with parts of Leicestershire, south Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire and Derbyshire.

The lowest starts lie in a band stretching from Birmingham up to Manchester and into North Yorkshire, then Norfolk and Kent.

Where the ratio of flats to houses being build hit 50/50 in 2005/6, the proportion of flats is now just under a quarter in 2012/13, according to the Department of Communities and Local Government figures.

Kay Boycott, Shelter’s director of communications, policy and campaigns said: “While the government may trumpet these figures as a growth story, what they really show is that we are still building less than half of the 250,000 homes we need each year to meet demand.

“In an overheating market, house prices are rising at their fastest rate since 2006, yet today’s figures show that we’re building just over half of the number of homes we were then.

“Unless we see radical action from the government to tackle our chronic shortage of homes, house prices and rents will quickly rise even further out of reach for millions of people across the country struggling to find a stable home of their own.”