BLOGS

The planning system is failing to keep pace with rental demand

The UK has a housing crisis that is, at its core, a supply crisis. Nowhere is this more visible than in the build-to-rent (BTR) sector, where institutional developers are trying — and frequently failing — to move schemes from planning submission to consent within any reasonable timeframe.

The statutory expectation for major planning applications in England is a decision within 13 weeks. For the BTR sector, that figure is little more than a theoretical benchmark. Analysis of planning application data by REalyse shows that, across England's major cities, the average time from submission to planning decision for new-build BTR residential schemes of 20 units or more stands at 13.5 months — roughly four times the statutory target.

At the top end of the spectrum, some cities are taking far longer still. And critically, thousands of units are not sitting in a decision queue measured in weeks, but in years.

Where delays are most acute: a city-by-city breakdown

REalyse planning data reveals a striking disparity in decision times across England's cities, with no clear geographic pattern — delays are acute in both major metropolitan centres and smaller regional cities.

Exeter emerges as the most congested planning environment, with an average BTR decision time of 24 months across the schemes tracked — nearly two full years from submission to outcome. Southall (west London) is close behind at 21.2 months.

Among the larger urban centres, the picture is also troubling:

• Leeds: 16.3 months average

• London (city-wide): 15.8 months across 52 tracked applications — the largest sample in the dataset

• Bristol: 15.8 months

• Reading: 15.4 months

• Liverpool: 14.6 months

The notable exceptions — cities where the planning environment is functioning closer to its intended pace — include Manchester (5.9 months), Salford (8.1 months) and Sheffield (8.4 months). These cities demonstrate that faster consent is achievable, and point to the difference that local authority resourcing, political will, and pre-application engagement can make.

The spread between the fastest and slowest cities is now 18 months — a gap that can determine whether a viable BTR scheme gets built or gets shelved.

Thousands of units stuck in the system — some for years

Beyond average decision times, REalyse data tracks what is actually sitting in the planning queue right now. The picture for schemes with detailed plans submitted and still awaiting decision is stark.

In London, ten schemes submitted between 2024 and 2025 are still awaiting a decision, representing nearly 2,000 BTR units collectively. The 2024-vintage London schemes have been waiting an average of 598 days — well over 18 months — for an outcome.

In Manchester and Salford combined, schemes submitted in 2024 totalling over 900 units are still pending, with average waits of between 544 and 609 days.

Most alarming are the legacy cases from earlier years. A single BTR scheme in Norwich, submitted in 2022, has now been waiting for a decision for 1,566 days — over four years. A scheme in Exeter submitted the same year has been in the system for 1,412 days. These are not edge cases or contested applications; they represent a systemic inability of the planning system to process major residential schemes within any commercially viable window.

Across the pipeline tracked by REalyse, BTR schemes submitted in 2024 and 2025 alone account for tens of thousands of units still awaiting consent — units that are not being built, not being rented, and not alleviating the pressure on tenants today.

The cost to renters: a supply gap feeding soaring asking rents

The planning bottleneck does not sit in isolation. It plays out against a rental market where demand continues to significantly outstrip supply, and where constrained new delivery is keeping upward pressure on asking rents.

REalyse active rental listings data for the past 12 months across England shows that in the most in-demand postcode areas — which also happen to be where BTR development is most concentrated — asking rents have reached levels that reflect a severe structural supply shortfall:

• West London (W): average asking rent of £4,412/month, at £62.70/sqft per year

• City of London (EC): £4,038/month, at £71.02/sqft per year

• South West London (SW): £3,995/month, at £53.19/sqft per year

• Manchester (M): £1,611/month, at £23.32/sqft per year

• Bristol (BS): £1,905/month, at £28.49/sqft per year

Average days on market across all tracked areas sits at just 33 days, indicating that rental stock continues to be absorbed quickly — there is no excess supply anywhere in the system. In Edinburgh (EH), the average is even tighter at 27 days.

Every month of planning delay on a BTR scheme of, say, 300 units is a month in which those homes are not available to renters in markets where availability is already critically low. At average achieved yields tracked by REalyse, each month of delay also compounds the financial drag on developers already working within tightening cost structures.

Policy context: a system under pressure

The planning challenges affecting BTR are not new, but they are intensifying. England's local planning authorities (LPAs) have faced sustained cuts to planning department budgets over more than a decade, with staff numbers falling at precisely the moment when development pipelines — particularly in the residential sector — have grown in scale and complexity.

Major BTR applications are inherently complex. They typically involve Section 106 negotiations, affordable housing contributions, design review, transport assessments and in many cases heritage or environmental constraints. These are not applications that can be rubber-stamped. But a process that routinely takes 15 to 24 months to reach a decision is not merely slow — it is a structural barrier to housing delivery.

The government's Planning and Infrastructure Bill, currently progressing through Parliament, includes measures intended to streamline consents and increase LPA resources through higher application fees. Industry bodies including the British Property Federation (BPF) have argued that fee increases alone will not be sufficient without ringfenced reinvestment into planning departments. The data suggests they are right: the variation between Manchester and Exeter shows that resource and process efficiency matter enormously, and that reform needs to be both funded and consistently applied.

Conclusion: consent times must become a political priority

The headline statistics tell a clear story. An average BTR planning decision time of 13.5 months — rising to 24 months in the worst-performing areas — is not a planning system functioning as designed. It is one that is structurally misaligned with the pace at which the private sector needs to operate, and with the urgency of the UK's rental housing shortage.

For investors and developers, REalyse planning data provides a granular view of where consent timelines are most acute, where pipeline is building up, and where decision-making is functioning more efficiently — enabling more informed site selection, programme planning and risk assessment.

For policymakers, the message from the data is equally direct: until planning consent times are treated as a measurable, accountable component of housing delivery, the gap between scheme ambition and scheme delivery will continue to widen — and renters will continue to pay the price.