The Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) has stated that the average homeowner is moving once every 19 years compared with once every 13 years as recently as 2006.

It published this calculation in its white paper, The new ‘normal’ – prospects for 2017: Is the march back to a sustainable market on track?.

It said that, in comparison, Alok Sharma’s appointment as the new Housing Minister yesterday means responsibility for housing in Westminster has now changed hands six times since 2010 (from John Healey to Grant Shapps to Mark Prisk to Kris Hopkins to Brandon Lewis to Gavin Barwell to Sharma) and makes Sharma the 14th person to take on this brief since 2000.

The continuing changes mean that responsibility for housing within Westminster is changing hands almost 20 times faster than the average home.

Peter Williams, executive director of IMLA, said: “Events of the last week have clearly left a lot of issues on the agenda for the government to tackle – and certainly more than it would have hoped for when Theresa May first moved to call a snap election.

“However, the chronic shortage of housebuilding and the need for a joined-up policy across all housing tenures are recurring challenges that have faced every new housing minister and administration for longer than most people care to remember.

“With talk turning to the need for cross-party agreement and a common approach to negotiating Brexit, it would surely make sense to adopt a similar consensual, non-partisan approach to determining housing policy to put the UK property market on a more stable footing for the long term.”