House-builder Persimmon has seen an 8% upswing in forward sales revenue so far this year and a 12% increase in customer site visits.

Persimmon shareholders meet today for their annual general meeting. In a trading statement the board said business was good but would be better but for continued planning delays.

It said: “We brought forward a healthy order book into 2016 and our strong sales performance over the period has resulted in total forward sales revenue, including legal completions taken so far in 2016, being 8% higher than last year at £2.15bn (2015: £2.00bn). Our weekly private sales rate per site over this period was 6% ahead of last year. We have 7,598 new homes sold forward into the private sale market for 2016 with an average selling price of c. £220,000, an increase of 5.8% over the prior year.

“We are currently developing 370 active outlets across the UK, having opened 75 of the 100 new sites planned for the first half of the year. The group continues to build new homes on all sites where an implementable detailed planning consent has been secured. Planning delays continue to erode the total number of active outlets being developed by the industry, hindering the drive to increase the volume of newly built homes delivered to the market. We are working hard to increase our active outlet numbers towards c.400 by the end of 2016 and will continue to focus on increasing our output to meet market demand.”