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Sir Keir Starmer’s government will need to increase the number of planning permissions granted in England each year by more than half to hit its housebuilding targets, according to data that highlights the scale of the challenge.
The number of homes given planning permission in England last year fell to the lowest since 2014, figures from data provider Glenigan show. This will need to rise by 53 per cent to hit the 370,000 planning permissions target that Labour set under its national planning policy late last year.
“The latest planning figures show that housing supply in the short and medium terms is at critical crisis levels,” said Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation industry group, which publishes the data.
Starmer’s administration has made boosting housebuilding a key pledge since it was elected last July, promising 1.5mn new homes over five years.
Ministers have said they need to overshoot on the number of planning permissions granted to reach that level of supply — the highest in a generation — since not all homes given permission are ultimately built.
Labour blames planning changes made by the former Conservative government, under pressure from anti-development MPs, for the downturn in housebuilding. The contraction in activity also reflects the impact of higher interest rates.
Glenigan’s figures, which are also used in official statistics, show 242,610 homes were granted permission in England in 2024, down 2 per cent from the year before. But the data also shows permissions picked up in the final quarter of the year.
Labour’s reforms to the planning system have been praised by the housebuilding industry, but both the HBF and the National Housing Federation have said these measures alone will not be enough to reach the 1.5mn target.
Critics of the commercial housebuilders, who provide the vast majority of the UK’s new homes, say these companies deliberately build slower than they could do to control supply and achieve higher selling prices.
The industry argues that building rates are limited by buyer demand, and say the solution is for the government to help buyers with a loan scheme similar to Help to Buy, which ran from 2013 to 2023. First time buyers in particular have struggled with affordability given the higher mortgage rates over the past two years.
Companies say local authorities are already responding to the pressure from Westminster following the planning reforms.
Graham Prothero, chief executive of MJ Gleeson, which has housebuilding and land promotion divisions, said authorities are increasingly approving developments to keep control of decision-making, rather than facing appeals over their heads to central government.
He said the progress on planning on the ground “is more positive than you think. We are seeing it”.
The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “This government inherited a broken planning system . . . We have already taken decisive steps to get spades in the ground.”
