Planning permissions have plummeted to their lowest level since 2005 4.3 million homes short !

Planning permissions have plummeted to their lowest level since 2005, with Labour councils among the most frequent rejecters. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) reported a 10.4% decrease in approved applications in England between January and March compared to the same period last year. Over the past 12 months, seven of the top ten councils for rejecting planning permissions were Labour-controlled.

 

In the first quarter of this year, only 67,380 applications were approved by local authorities, down from 75,173 last year. Over the past three years, planning requests have dropped by a third due to rising interest rates and construction costs. Despite his pledge to build 1.5 million new homes, Sir Keir Starmer’s promise was outstripped by the Conservative manifesto's goal of 1.6 million homes over five years.

 

Rishi Sunak acknowledged this week that homeownership has become more challenging under Conservative governance. Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner called this admission a "damning indictment of 14 years of housing failure." The number of approved planning applications for major residential projects, those creating 10 or more homes, hit a decade low in the 2023/24 financial year, with only 3,721 granted in England.

 

Ant Breach from the Centre for Cities indicated that the UK's poor record on house building might worsen without planning reform. He advocated for a rules-based system, like those in other G7 countries, to reduce uncertainty in house building.

 

In Barking and Dagenham, only 61% of planning applications were approved in 2023/24, the lowest rate in England. Across the country, 24 councils, mostly in London, rejected at least a quarter of all applications. In contrast, Liberal Democrat-run Gosport council approved 99% of requests last year.

 

The Labour manifesto promises to use intervention powers to override councils blocking house building. Anna Clarke from The Housing Forum supported this move as necessary despite its potential unpopularity.

 

The Conservative plan includes abolishing EU "nutrient neutrality" rules, introducing a one-off environmental impact mitigation fee for developers, fast-tracking brownfield site development, and requiring councils to allocate land for small, local builders.

 

The Centre for Cities found that the UK housing market lacks 4.3 million homes compared to European counterparts, leading to an average house price of £302,000 in England by the end of 2023, which is 8.3 times the median annual wage—double the affordability ratio of 20 years ago.