YORK housebuilder Persimmon has reported an “encouraging” start to 2015 with forward sales totalling £2 billion.

Speaking at the company’s Annual General Meeting, held a York Racecourse yesterday, chairman Nicholas Wrigley reported upwards trends for the company, with figures topping last year’s data.

With forward sales up seven per cent, weekly private sales rates were up six per cent, with a 20 per cent increase in the number of visitors to the company’s home finder website.

Mr Wrigley reported 7,375 new homes sold forward into the private sale market for 2015 with an average selling price of about £207,900, which is four per cent higher than last year.

The only statistic down on 2014 is the company’s cancellation rate.

Mr Wrigley said: “ We continue to work hard to increase further the number of homes we are building to drive our current year legal completion volumes ahead of the previous year’s total of 13,509 homes.

“As anticipated, it has become increasingly difficult to secure planning consents for sites as May’s General Election approaches. While we would expect such delays to be short term in nature, they are hindering the expansion in the number of active outlets required by the housebuilding industry to support an increase in the volume of newly-built homes delivered to the market.

“Nevertheless, as a result of our strong prior investment in new land, we remain confident of having about 400 active outlets open by the middle of the year.”