Results for the half year to June 30 2014 show Persimmon made an underlying pre-tax profit of £212.9m from £135.3m last time on turnover of £1.2bn from £900m.

Chairman Nicholas Wrigley said: ” We remain focussed on mitigating build cost pressures and working with our supply chain partners and site teams to deliver efficient build costs.”

That strategy was helped by a 37% increase in output at the firm’s Space4 manufacturing facility which produced insulated panel frames to construct 2,483 new homes in the first half of the year.

Persimmon built 26% more homes during the year to June and expects to start work on another 100 sites during the rest of 2014.