BLOGS

England's planning reset: what changed and why it matters

The publication of the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December 2024 marked the most significant shake-up to England's planning system in years. The Labour government's flagship housing agenda set a national target of 370,000 new homes per year — a figure that reintroduced mandatory, algorithm-driven local housing targets after the previous administration had made them advisory. For councils across England, the message was clear: update your local plan, meet your numbers, or face the consequences.

The "consequences" are not trivial. Authorities that cannot demonstrate a rolling five-year housing land supply (5YHLS) — a test reinstated with greater force under the new NPPF — are now more exposed to what planners call the "tilted balance." Under this rule, planning permission for residential schemes is harder to refuse when a council's plan is out of date or its land supply is inadequate. In practice, it opens the door to speculative development applications in areas that had previously kept tight control on new homes.

The result is a planning landscape in motion: councils racing to adopt or review local plans, developers repositioning strategies, and a residential pipeline that reflects both opportunity and uncertainty in almost equal measure.

The pipeline in numbers: submissions are rising, but decisions lag

REalyse data tracking residential (C3) planning applications submitted across England between January 2024 and May 2026 reveals a market in transition. Monthly submission volumes have remained broadly consistent — averaging around 100 applications and just under 1,000 units per month — but with notable spikes that track closely to key policy moments.

November 2024, the month before the final NPPF was published, saw the highest single-month unit submission count in the dataset, at approximately 1,746 units. This is consistent with developers and applicants rushing to bank applications ahead of new rules taking effect. By April 2026, the number of applications submitted reached 181 in a single month — the highest application count in the entire 29-month window — suggesting the new regime is beginning to draw forward pipeline supply.

The chart below illustrates how submitted units and granted units have tracked across the period.

(Monthly Residential Planning Activity in England — Jan 2024 to May 2026)

One important caveat: granted-unit counts for early 2026 appear low relative to submissions. This reflects the typical lag between application submission and decision-making — a gap that can stretch from several months to over a year for larger schemes. It does not signal a sudden wave of refusals.

Where approvals are concentrating: London and the urban cores dominate

Not all geographies are benefiting equally from the planning uplift. REalyse data for 2024–2025 shows that residential units granted are heavily concentrated in major urban areas, with Central London accounting for by far the largest share of approved units in the tracked period.

The West Midlands and Greater Manchester follow, together reflecting the government's push to direct growth toward existing urban areas under the new standard method — which disproportionately increases targets for high-demand cities where housing affordability pressure is most acute.

(Residential Units Granted by Region — Top 12 Areas, 2024–2025)

Outside the major conurbations, areas such as Essex, Lancashire, Bedfordshire and Kent are also registering meaningful approval volumes — largely driven by greenfield and edge-of-settlement schemes that benefit from weak or out-of-date local plans. This is precisely the dynamic the government's reforms are designed to encourage: in the absence of an up-to-date local plan, the tilted balance makes refusal harder to sustain at appeal.

Local authorities: scheme size matters as much as volume

At the local authority level, the data reveals a sharp divergence in how different councils are generating pipeline units. Merton in South London granted 803 units from just six applications — an average of nearly 134 units per scheme — pointing to a strategy of backing large-scale residential developments rather than incremental permissions.

By contrast, Leeds — one of England's largest cities — recorded 211 units across 29 applications in the same period, an average of just over seven units per permission. This reflects both the complexity of delivering housing in established urban environments and the ongoing pressure on major cities to significantly scale up ambition under their revised local plans.

Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Slough and Salford all feature in the top tier by units granted — a cluster of cities where regeneration-led housing delivery and relatively permissive plan policies are combining to unlock sites.

The stalled pipeline: on hold, shelved, and cancelled

Not all of what enters the pipeline is moving toward delivery. REalyse data for 2024–2025 shows that while the vast majority of tracked residential units — around 89.5% — are classified as in progress across the 1,308 active applications, a meaningful tail remains frozen or cancelled.

Some 745 units spanning 603 separate applications are recorded as on hold or shelved. The high application count relative to unit numbers here is telling: these are predominantly small schemes — individual plots, small conversions, minor residential developments — where viability concerns, planning uncertainty, or funding gaps have stalled delivery. Under the new planning regime, some of these could be unlocked if councils adopt more permissive local plan policies to meet their mandatory targets.

More concerning for the pipeline are 11 cancelled applications representing 245 units — larger schemes where the development proposition has collapsed entirely. For investors and lenders tracking active land supply, monitoring the movement of shelved and cancelled schemes is an increasingly important layer of due diligence.

Local plans: the front line of the housing debate

The housing target question ultimately comes back to local plans. As of mid-2026, a significant proportion of English councils are operating under local plans that are either out of date (typically defined as more than five years old without a formal review) or in the process of being replaced. The government's December 2024 NPPF gave authorities 18 months to begin the process of updating plans to reflect the new standard method targets — a deadline that is already concentrating minds in planning departments and cabinet rooms across the country.

For some councils, the numbers are deeply uncomfortable. The new standard method — which calculates housing need based on affordability ratios and stock growth factors — has produced target uplifts of 20–50% or more for high-demand areas relative to previous figures. In some London boroughs, the implied annual targets have more than doubled. Councils are now weighing legal challenges, negotiating with the Planning Inspectorate over exceptional circumstances, and in some cases accelerating local plan reviews to try to regain control of the development narrative before speculative applications flood in.

The practical implication for developers and investors: areas with weak or transitional local plans are fertile ground for strategic land promotion and speculative residential applications. REalyse's planning pipeline data enables users to identify which authorities are plan-light, where applications are succeeding at appeal under the tilted balance, and where large-site allocations are beginning to move through the system.

Outlook: a system under pressure, with selective opportunity

England's planning system is being asked to do something it has consistently failed to do for decades: translate policy ambition into delivered homes at scale. The new NPPF creates real structural pressure on councils to act — but pressure alone does not build homes. Viability, infrastructure funding, land values and build cost inflation remain the friction points that separate a granted permission from a completed dwelling.

REalyse data shows that while application activity is rising and approvals in key urban areas are gathering pace, a meaningful share of the pipeline remains stalled. The gap between what is being planned and what is being built is not closing as fast as the government's targets imply.

For developers, investors and lenders navigating this environment, local plan intelligence has never been more commercially valuable. Knowing which councils are scrambling to meet targets — and which schemes are positioned to benefit — is now a frontline competitive advantage.