Has Planning Reform Made Housing Delivery Easier?

At UKREiiF in May 2025, Matthew Pennycook announced a bargain with the development sector: the government would reduce cost and risk through planning reform; in return, developers would be expected to deliver better homes and places. We consider the statistics which reveal the extent to which this has been achieved.

Since being elected in July 2024, the government has done much of what the planning and development industry has said was needed. Mandatory housing targets have returned, the NPPF has been revised, restrictions on the Green Belt have been eased, the Planning and Infrastructure Act has been passed and reforms to local plans and planning committees have also moved forward. But housing delivery is judged by homes, not policy direction.

The headline still lags behind the ambition

The ultimate test is the government’s 1.5 million homes target, which translates into 300,000 homes per year during the five-year parliamentary term. At this point, progress towards that target looks slow: just 342,100 net additional homes were completed between 9 July 2024 and 15 March 2026, in sharp contrast to the 504,000 homes that would be required to keep pace with the target.

Figure 1. Delivery against an illustrative 1.5m trajectory

Source: MHCLG housing supply indicators Q4 2025

Starts are moving ahead of completions

As might be expected, however, the number of starts paints a more positive picture. In England, new build starts reached 124,860 in the year to December 2025, up 15% on the previous year. Q4 2025 starts were 37,300, up 24% year-on-year. But completions have not followed. New-build completions in the year to December 2025 were 142,040, down 8%.

Some lag is to be expected, as sites take time to move from start to completion. But the target will ultimately be met through completions and net additions, not starts. Inevitably, some starts will face longer than expected delays, sometimes because of policy change. For example, MHCLG notes that the Building Safety Regulator reporting changes affected the quarterly starts profile. We should therefore treat the starts data as encouraging, but not yet decisive.

Figure 2. Starts versus completions - 12-month rolling totals

Source: MHCLG live tables on house building

The planning funnel remains narrow

Planning application statistics at a local level are more concerning. In Q4 2025, local planning authorities (LPAs) in England received 76,300 applications, decided 72,700 and granted 63,000. All three indicators were down year-on-year. Planning consents for residential development specifically were also down: 28,400 in the year to December 2025, 6% lower than the previous year.

The speed with which planning applications are decided also remains a concern. In Q4 2025, 91% of major applications were decided within 13 weeks or an agreed extended period, but only 20% were decided within the statutory 13 weeks. Extensions of time and planning performance agreements can help complex schemes through a stretched system. They should not be mistaken for a system that is routinely faster.

Figure 3. Planning speed - statutory deadline versus agreed timescale

Source: MHCLG planning applications Q4 2025

HBF’s New Housing Pipeline data gives a further warning: it shows that residential units approved in Great Britain fell from 77,284 in Q4 2024 to 45,075 in Q3 2025. While this is industry evidence rather than official MHCLG data, the trend is striking: if the permissioned pipeline weakens, starts will struggle to keep improving.

Figure 4. The pipeline squeeze - residential units approved

Source: HBF Q4 2024 pipeline; HBF Q1 2025 pipeline; HBF Q2 2025 pipeline; HBF Q3 2025 pipeline

Affordable housing is the stress test

Affordable housing is where the bargain becomes most challenging. Officially, 64,762 affordable homes were delivered in England in 2024-25, up 1%, and the highest figure since 2014-15. Social rent completions also improved, reaching 12,198.

Yet the future is concerning. Affordable housing starts were 45,418, the second-lowest comparable year since 2016-17. S106 nil-grant homes accounted for 36% of affordable completions, down from 45% in the previous year. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that about 240,000 social and affordable homes were delivered through S106 over the previous decade, around 44% of the total. If registered providers lack the capacity to take units and private schemes cannot carry the same obligations, affordable delivery becomes a viability issue as well as a grant issue.

Development hinges on viability

This is why planning reform, while necessary, is not enough. The HBF claims that £76,000 has been added to the cost of building a new home since 2020: this includes taxes, regulation, materials, labour and site-specific mitigation. While the precise impact may be debated, few practitioners would dispute the impact of rising prices.

Planning policy can reduce issues with allocating or acquiring land or gaining planning consent, but policy alone cannot create buyers with deposit capacity nor lower build costs; neither can it expand the subcontractor base or repair housing association balance sheets. It also cannot instantly increase capacity in ecology, building control or the Building Safety Regulator. Despite recent improvements, official Gateway 2 data to late March 2026 showed a 61% 12-week rolling approval rate and a median approval time of 22 weeks for new-build Innovation Unit applications.

Figure 5. NHBC registrations - false dawn or stabilisation?

Source: NHBC Q1 2025 registrations; NHBC Q2 2025 registrations; NHBC Q3 2025 registrations; NHBC Q1 2026 registrations

London shows the compound effect

London provides a telling snapshot of what happens when several constraints coincide. NHBC has recently reported that Q1 2026 registrations down 37% in London, in comparison to an increase of 27% in the North West. It is worth noting that when looking at national statistics, averages can therefore obscure as much as they reveal. There is no question that the housing slowdown in London is significant: appropriately, an ‘emergency’ support package has been put in place.

Figure 6. Geographical divergence - NHBC registrations, Q1 2026

Source: NHBC Q1 2026 registrations

The Government and Mayor’s package, which includes a time-limited route at 20% social and affordable housing on eligible private land and a £324m City Hall Developer Investment Fund, is effectively an acknowledgement that the previous balance was not producing enough building. It is pro-delivery pragmatism, but it also shows how far the market had moved from viability, and its impact is yet to be determined.

What would count as success?

By this time next year, we would judge progress by a small number of tests: annualised starts above 150,000 in England, rising residential grants, stronger pipeline figures, recovering affordable starts, more predictable Gateway 2 timescales and visible improvements in local planning authority and statutory consultee capacity.

Our view is that Labour has created better policy conditions for housing delivery than it inherited. It has restored national direction and given development a clearer planning argument. But it has not yet created the full delivery conditions. The next phase is harder: turning a more permissive system into viable, funded, buildable schemes that can withstand market conditions and still produce better places.