UK House Building: New Homes Completions Rise 12% as Planning Reforms Take Effect
New housing completions in England rose by 12 percent in the most recent quarterly data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, providing early evidence that the government’s planning system reforms and housebuilding incentives are beginning to translate into measurable improvements in housing output. The increase, while welcome, still leaves completions well short of the level needed to achieve the government’s stated five-year target of 1.5 million new homes across England.
The improvement was concentrated in medium-scale private development, where planning permission had been granted under the revised national planning policy framework and where developers had been able to accelerate start programmes following greater certainty about the regulatory environment. Large strategic sites, which require more complex infrastructure delivery and longer lead times, have not yet contributed significantly to the improvement in completion numbers but are expected to add to output in future years as more complex permissions are implemented.
Affordable housing delivery — the proportion of new homes built at below-market rents or prices — remained a concern for planning authorities, with many developers arguing that viability constraints in the current cost environment prevented them from meeting the affordable housing requirements set in their planning conditions without making developments unviable. The tension between viability and affordable housing delivery has been a persistent feature of the English planning system for many years and the planning reforms have not resolved it.
The Homes England national housing agency has been actively accelerating infrastructure funding to unlock stalled sites and has been working with local authorities to improve the pace of processing planning applications on brownfield land, which the government has identified as the priority for new development ahead of greenfield and greenbelt sites.
