BLOGS

The pipeline is shrinking — and the data makes it stark

The UK has an acknowledged housing crisis, but the scale of the delivery collapse is only fully visible when you look at the planning pipeline from end to end.

REalyse planning data covering residential applications submitted since 2019 shows a dramatic and sustained fall in the number of schemes being granted consent. In 2019, over 25,600 residential planning applications received approval, covering more than 520,000 proposed units. By 2025, that had dropped to fewer than 11,700 granted applications — a fall of more than 54% in six years. Units associated with those consents fell in near lockstep, from over 520,000 to approximately 229,000.

This is not a blip. It is a structural collapse in the front end of the supply chain.

Decision delays have compounded the pressure

Speed of decision matters enormously for developers managing finance costs and market timing. When the system slows, the economics of schemes deteriorate.

REalyse data shows average planning decision turnaround times climbed from 164 days in 2019 to a peak of 194 days in 2021 — an increase of nearly five weeks — before settling back to around 178 days by 2023. The 2021 peak reflected the compounding effect of Covid-related local authority backlogs on top of an already stretched planning system, with some major schemes waiting well beyond the statutory eight-week and thirteen-week targets.

For a developer carrying bridging finance or a land option, an extra two months of uncertainty is not an administrative inconvenience — it is a material cost that erodes viability. On a scheme of 200 units at current build costs of roughly £2,000–£2,500 per square metre (consistent with BCIS published benchmarks), every additional month of delay can add hundreds of thousands of pounds to the project's cost base before a single brick is laid.

The Government's Planning and Infrastructure Bill, introduced in 2025, signals a political acknowledgement of this problem. But legislative intent and on-the-ground delivery capacity are different things, and local authority planning departments remain chronically under-resourced.

A massive stalled pipeline is locked across every region

Perhaps the most telling indicator is not the rate of refusals — which has remained relatively stable — but the sheer volume of units that have been proposed but are going nowhere.

REalyse data on residential schemes of 50 or more units currently classified as "In Progress" or "On Hold" reveals a pipeline of staggering scale. Central London alone accounts for 399 such schemes with over 330,000 units in limbo. Greater Manchester holds a further 195 schemes totalling nearly 88,000 units. Strathclyde (Glasgow city region) has 290 schemes and over 86,000 units stalled. Kent, the West Midlands and Essex each contain stalled pipelines of over 68,000 units.

These are not failed applications that have been refused and removed from the system. They are consented or active schemes that have not started construction — held back by viability failures, finance constraints, or market conditions that have shifted since the original planning permission was secured.

Crucially, the average scheme size sitting in the stalled "In Progress" category — around 91 units per application in 2025 — is dramatically larger than the average scheme being granted and progressed at roughly 20–25 units. The larger, more complex and typically more affordable-housing-rich schemes are the ones most likely to be stuck.

Viability pressures are hitting affordable housing hardest

Build cost inflation has been persistent. According to the BCIS General Building Cost Index, construction costs rose sharply through 2021–2023 driven by labour shortages, energy prices and materials costs. Although cost growth has moderated since, the base has reset at a significantly higher level, squeezing the margins on schemes that were underwritten at pre-2021 cost assumptions.

This creates a direct problem for affordable housing delivery. Section 106 agreements and Community Infrastructure Levy obligations are typically agreed at the point of planning consent. When build costs rise in the intervening period — sometimes by 20–30% on labour-intensive residential schemes — developers seek viability reviews. These reviews frequently result in affordable housing quotas being reduced, deferred, or eliminated entirely.

REalyse data shows new build transactions averaging around £409,000 in 2024 and £415,000 in 2025 — price points that reflect the cost pressures baked into the market. At these levels, schemes must command significant sales values to cover elevated build costs and landowner expectations, making the cross-subsidy model underpinning affordable housing delivery increasingly fragile.

The consequence is a growing gap between planning policy ambition and what schemes can actually deliver. Local authorities are granting fewer applications, those that are granted take longer to start, and when they do, affordable obligations have often already been negotiated down.

Regional supply is diverging — and not in the right direction

The stalled pipeline is not evenly distributed, which matters for regional equity. London and the South East hold the largest volumes of units in limbo, but Scotland's planning data tells a significant story too: Strathclyde and Lothian together account for over 152,000 units in schemes that are not progressing. Wales and Northern Ireland face their own affordability and viability dynamics, with Co. Antrim alone showing nearly 19,000 units stalled across 90 schemes.

This divergence means the areas with the greatest housing need — high-cost cities, constrained commuter belts, undersupplied urban cores — are precisely the areas where the delivery pipeline is most locked.

For investors and lenders tracking forward supply, a stalled pipeline is not a neutral signal. It is a leading indicator of continued undersupply, sustained price support in established stock, and ongoing rental yield resilience in markets where new completions are failing to meet demand. REalyse's planning and pipeline data allows investors to track exactly where these conditions are most acute and which schemes are most likely to convert to actual starts.

Outlook: structural fixes needed, not just target-setting

The Government's ambition of 1.5 million homes over this Parliament will not be achieved through headline targets alone. The data reveals three interlocking problems that require structural responses: a planning system that is too slow and too resource-constrained to process applications efficiently; a viability framework that is systematically eroding affordable housing delivery; and a pipeline of consented schemes that cannot start because the economics no longer work.

Until build costs stabilise at levels compatible with viable scheme delivery, and until planning departments are given the capacity and tools to make timely decisions, the gap between housing need and housing supply will continue to widen — with consequences that reach well beyond the property market into affordability, labour mobility and community cohesion across every region of the UK.