BLOGS

The planning queue nobody is talking about

The UK's housing crisis is routinely framed as a problem of construction: not enough bricks, not enough land, not enough ambition. But increasingly, the blockage sits further upstream — inside local planning departments struggling to process applications for the very homes renters need most.

Analysis of build-to-rent (BTR) planning applications across England and Wales, drawn from REalyse's planning pipeline dataset covering more than 160 local authorities, reveals that the average time from submission to decision has stretched to approximately 394 days — around 13 months. Against the statutory 13-week target for major residential applications, that represents a delay of more than four times the legal limit.

The figures are not an outlier. They reflect a structurally broken system in which the resourcing of planning departments has failed to keep pace with the complexity and volume of major residential schemes coming through the pipeline.

Where the worst delays are happening

The variation between local authorities is striking — and for developers, consequential.

REalyse data shows Richmond upon Thames topping the table with an average consent time of over 1,900 days — more than five years — for decided BTR applications. Horsham (1,512 days), Basildon (1,457 days) and Cheltenham (1,229 days) follow. Even among more active BTR markets, the delays are substantial: Reading averaged 611 days across five decided applications, Lewisham 945 days across three, and Greenwich 643 days across four schemes averaging 341 units each.

London boroughs with significant BTR pipelines tell a consistent story. Ealing — one of the capital's most active BTR markets, with 17 decided applications in the dataset — recorded an average consent duration of over 506 days and an average scheme size of 253 units. Leeds, a major regional BTR hub with 12 decided applications averaging 325 units, similarly clocked over 500 days from submission to decision.

These are not fringe or unusual projects. They are mid-to-large institutional rental schemes — exactly the category of development the government says it wants more of.

A pipeline under pressure

The scale of what is waiting to move through the system makes the delays all the more significant.

REalyse's residential planning pipeline, encompassing private housing, social housing and BTR activity, shows over 55,000 schemes currently classed as "in progress" — representing more than 4 million units with an average scheme value in the region of £14 million. A further 96,000 schemes — carrying over 427,000 units — have been placed on hold or shelved. That stalled pipeline is not an abstraction: it represents homes that have been scoped, resourced and then frozen, often at significant cost to developers.

For build-to-rent specifically, REalyse data shows schemes currently at the planning-submitted stage averaging nearly 600 units per application — the largest schemes in the pipeline. These are not speculative one-off projects. They are institutional-grade platforms seeking scale, and they are being held up at the very point where the planning system is supposed to provide certainty.

Pre-planning activity tells a similar story, with around 60 schemes in early-stage preparation averaging over 420 units each. Many of these will inevitably spend years in the system before a determination — and some will never reach it.

The resourcing reality

The planning system was not designed for the complexity of modern major residential applications. A standard BTR scheme today will involve affordable housing negotiations, energy performance conditions, highway assessments, heritage considerations, viability appraisals and, increasingly, biodiversity net gain requirements. Processing any one of these takes time. Processing all of them simultaneously, across dozens of live applications, requires planning officers that most authorities simply do not have.

Local planning authority (LPA) headcount has fallen significantly in real terms over the past decade. According to the Local Government Association, planning departments have lost a substantial share of their qualified staff since 2010, a period that coincided with repeated rounds of council funding cuts. Fee income from applications — the primary revenue source for planning departments — has historically lagged well behind the cost of processing complex major schemes, creating a structural funding gap.

The government's Planning and Infrastructure Bill, currently progressing through Parliament as of mid-2025, proposes to address some of this through higher application fees and a new "infrastructure levy" framework. But legislative change takes time to translate into officer capacity on the ground.

In the interim, developers — particularly those backing large-scale BTR platforms — are absorbing the costs of extended timelines through extended land carry, prolonged professional fees, delayed rental income and heightened refinancing risk. For institutional investors with fund return obligations, a 13-month average determination period is a material due diligence concern, not merely an inconvenience.

What this means for renters

The downstream consequence is reduced rental supply in markets that are already severely constrained.

Average asking rents across Great Britain have risen sharply since 2021, with many urban centres — London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh — recording year-on-year increases well above wage growth. Build-to-rent, as a purpose-designed, professionally managed tenure class, was positioned as part of the structural response: adding institutional-grade supply at scale in urban locations where private landlords have been retreating.

REalyse comparables data consistently shows BTR schemes commanding a modest premium to private rented stock — typically 5–10% — in exchange for longer tenancy options, better amenities and professional management. But that premium is irrelevant if the schemes never get built. Every month added to the planning queue is a month in which supply remains constrained, landlord landlords continue to exit, and tenants compete for fewer available homes.

The government's target of 1.5 million new homes over the current parliamentary term requires approximately 300,000 completions per year. England has not reached that figure in a single year since the late 1960s. Planning delay is not the only reason — but it is an increasingly well-documented one, and REalyse pipeline data suggests that tens of thousands of units are waiting in a queue that the system is not currently equipped to clear.

Outlook

The planning system is a constraint on rental housing delivery that sits largely outside the control of developers, investors and renters — yet affects all of them. The combination of staff shortages, fee structures that underinvest in capacity, and the growing complexity of planning conditions has produced average determination times that are structurally incompatible with the housing delivery ambitions set out by successive governments.

REalyse data across more than 160 local planning authorities puts the average BTR consent time at 394 days — over 13 months, and more than four times the 13-week statutory target. Until resourcing, fee reform and process digitalisation catch up with the scale of the task, that gap is unlikely to close. And it is renters, ultimately, who bear the cost of every month that it does not.