Planning applications hit a four-year high — but England's approval pipeline is still shrinking
A four-year high masks a deeper pipeline problem
Recent Planning Portal figures point to residential applications in England reaching their highest volume in four years, reviving hopes that the development pipeline is finally turning a corner after two years of subdued activity. For developers, lenders and investors who have spent the past 18 months underwriting against a shrinking opportunity set, that headline is welcome.
But a rising number of applications submitted is not the same as a rising number of homes approved, or built. REalyse's planning dataset — which tracks residential schemes from submission through decision to construction start — shows a more complicated picture underneath the headline. Approval volumes and units reaching site have both fallen materially since peaking in 2022, and the current uptick in submissions has yet to show up as a comparable recovery in either grants or build-out.
This matters for anyone pricing risk or opportunity against future supply. An application surge that doesn't convert into approvals, and approvals that don't convert into starts, leaves the supply pipeline thinner than submission counts alone would suggest.
What REalyse data shows on approvals and build-out
Looking at residential planning consents across England over the past five years, the pattern is one of a sharp 2022 peak followed by a steady decline. REalyse data shows total units granted planning permission fell from roughly 207,000 in 2022 to around 123,000 in 2025 — a drop of over 40% in just three years. Applications granted followed the same trajectory, down from close to 15,700 in 2022 to under 9,000 in 2025.
Units that went on to reach a confirmed construction start have tracked this decline almost in lockstep, falling from roughly 194,000 in 2022 to around 122,000 in 2025. In other words, the gap between "granted" and "started" hasn't widened dramatically as a proportion — but the absolute volume of homes moving through the pipeline has contracted by more than a third from its post-pandemic high.
That's the context that matters for the current applications surge. If submissions are now recovering from a low base after three years of decline, the more relevant question for developers and lenders isn't whether applications are rising, but whether that translates into more granted units and more schemes breaking ground over the next 12–18 months. On REalyse's numbers, the 2022–2025 experience suggests conversion from approval to delivery has stayed broadly consistent — the real constraint has been the shrinking volume of schemes entering the pipeline in the first place, likely reflecting higher build costs, tighter viability margins and slower local authority decision-making.
Where the pipeline is picking up fastest
Beneath the national numbers, REalyse's local authority-level data shows the recovery is uneven, with some areas seeing proposed unit volumes scale up considerably year-on-year even as the national grant total has softened. Among authorities with a meaningful base of activity, Reading, North East Lincolnshire and Ashfield stand out for scaling up the size of units proposed in live applications, alongside strong growth in Brentwood, Tendring and Milton Keynes.
Several of the fastest-growing areas — Milton Keynes, Slough, Medway — sit within commuter-belt and Thames Estuary growth corridors that have long been targeted for large-scale housing delivery, suggesting some of the recent momentum is concentrated in areas with existing strategic allocations and Local Plan support rather than a broad-based national rebound. Richmond upon Thames' appearance among the fastest-growing authorities is notable given London's historically slower approval rates, and worth watching as a potential signal on whether the capital's planning bottlenecks are easing.
For investors and developers, this pattern reinforces a familiar discipline: national headlines about application volumes are a starting point, not a substitute for local authority-level due diligence. Comparing a target site's district against local grant rates, average unit sizes in recent consents, and typical time-to-start gives a far sharper read on whether a "surge" is real in a given market or a statistical effect of a handful of large schemes.
Outlook: watch conversion, not just volume
The Planning Portal's four-year-high in applications is a genuine and encouraging signal that development interest is returning after a difficult stretch for viability. But REalyse's data on the 2022–2025 period is a reminder that submissions sit at the very start of a long chain — decision, grant, start, completion — and that each stage has historically leaked volume along the way.
For lenders and institutional investors underwriting against future supply, the more useful metric over the coming quarters won't be application counts, but whether grant volumes and construction starts begin to climb back toward 2022 levels, and whether that recovery holds consistently across regions rather than concentrating in a handful of growth corridors. Tracking local authority-level conversion rates from application to start will be the clearest test of whether this planning surge becomes a genuine delivery story.
