Despite its average selling price of homes falling by 8% and operating margins decreasing from 14% last year to 12%, CALA’s revenue for the year rose 27% to £749.9 million, lifting pre-tax profits to £68.5m (2016: £60.1m).

The group attributed the sale price fall to a move away from the £1m home segment.

Over a ten-year period, CALA’s volumes have now grown by 67%.

Further increase in the Group’s owned and contracted land pipeline to 15,836 plots at 30 June 2017 (2016: 15,399 plots).

Around 83% of the contracted land pipeline, with a GDV of £4.3 billion, now has a planning consent or is adopted in a local plan. A total of 34 new sites were contracted during the year, projected to deliver 3,199 homes with an estimated GDV of £1.25bn.

Workforce increased to 936 employees (2016: 810).

Commenting on the results, Alan Brown, chief executive of CALA Group, claimed the UK’s housing shortage is being compounded by “unnecessary delays to the planning process”.

He said: “I am delighted with the excellent results we have achieved at CALA in the twelve months to 30 June 2017, in particular, the exceptional progress in transforming the size and scope of our business which has seen us deliver our fifth consecutive year of record revenues and profits.

“Since the 2007/2008 industry peaks, we have achieved volume growth of 67%, significantly ahead of our major listed peers while still delivering consistently strong customer service and investing in our land pipeline.

“Following our record performance in 2017, we remain on course to achieve our stated strategic aim of building approximately 2,500 units per annum by 2020 and have the infrastructure in place to deliver on these growth plans. We have entered the new financial year with strong trading momentum and, in the first ten weeks of 2017/18, net private reservations are up 34% on the same period last year with an average weekly reservation rate of 0.64 private sales per development.

“Although we welcomed some of the proposals in February’s White Paper around planning reform and the general direction of travel to improve the rate of delivery of new homes, we are still encountering unnecessary delays in the planning system owing to both understaffed local planning departments and a sizable disconnect between national housing policy and local government activity. As a result, despite the well-publicised housing shortage in the UK, local authorities continue to cause unnecessary delays to the planning process. While we have grown significantly during the period and remain on course to achieve our growth ambitions, our output would have been considerably higher had we not encountered some entirely avoidable issues stemming from these delays.

“Although CALA has the land pipeline and infrastructure already in place to continue to play a growing role in delivering the homes that the UK needs, a more progressive and constructive approach to planning from local authorities will enable the UK housing industry as a whole to deliver more homes and address the UK’s housing shortage.”