Insights
Time to ‘speed up the speeding up’ of Planning, and take advantages of any improvements whilst they last
Time to ‘speed up the speeding up’ of Planning, and take advantages of any improvements whilst they last
14th Jan 2026
Planning in London has, like all other cities and regions, seen a slowdown in housing delivery, in part because of issues in the planning system. However, it is evident that the current administrations are aware of this and are bringing forward initiatives to try and solve it, which is of course welcome (although, in the context of current political uncertainty, it is unclear how long this commitment will last).
Despite media attention for schemes being called in – notably with Data Centres – the planning system seems to be increasingly challenging to navigate in relation to all development. It takes all sorts of development to create long-standing community-focussed neighbourhoods thus planning consents for employment land are also crucial but, of course, the greatest attention has in recent years all been about housing. This has continued since the election, with the Government’s repeated stance on delivering 1.5m homes, with a focus on affordable at the heart of its campaign.
By the end of 2024, just 32,000 homes in London were delivered – one third of what has been determined as required in the capital and almost a one third drop since 2020, despite need in London being at one of its highest levels.
Issues include:
- Complexities of planning system, which should change for the better as the Government’s reforms kick-in over the next year or so, it is unclear as to how long these improvements will last when they come due to the prevailing political climate;
- Planning authorities are under-resourced and, despite the Government’s pledge to recruit 300 more officers over 18 months ago, very few (if any) significant appointments have been made;
- Sites being stalled for so long their consents have lapsed;
- Viability changes in the meantime, due in part to affordable housing ratios and costs and margins being squeezed along the way;
- Extensive consultation requirements with bodies that do not have the resources to deal.
But, with so many potential initiatives announced via the media, what can the GLA and the UK generally do about it?
The main announcements by Government (and the GLA) have been around ‘speeding up the planning process’, but the initiatives announced themselves need speeding up. And herein lies the problem. In creating ‘widespread planning reforms’ to ‘Get Britain building’, unfortunately, despite the best intentions, we have slowed down the building and created short-term delays.
The talent situation is one that needs rectifying. The Government announced in the budget that they will be investing in talent. This will help in the longer-term but right now we need resource, fast. Simplifying the process will also help, with potential government intervention soon to be introduced for any Local Authority that looks to reject a development of more than 150 homes. However, it still takes time to reach that decision in the first place and several hurdles to jump over to get a plan submitted. Like with the proposed site acceleration for railway locations, we need a ‘yes’ list for sites that meet a checklist of criteria across the country to provide more certainty to those that seek to build. But this shouldn’t only be about homes, it takes all types of property to build a community.
We have seen various announcements on proposed measures to tackle the supply issue over the last couple of months, the latest from the GLA looking at temporarily reducing the number of affordable homes needed to around 20% which would be helpful, as a deliverable consent delivering 20% affordable housing is evidently far more effective than a consent that requires 40% affordable housing but doesn’t stack up commercially.
My five key suggestions to make a big impact for planning in the short to medium term are:
- More certainty in the overall planning process, so developers can be more confident in promoting their sites.
- An encouragement of more flexible planning permissions, so they are more robust to changes in circumstances, not least the market.
- More streamlined approach to extensions to planning consents that are due to expire or, and to reviewing viability/affordable housing, again to take in changes in circumstances.
- Simplification of the consultation process for all major schemes.
- A better public resource strategy to deal with the changes and longstanding shortage of LAs across not just planning but all of the infrastructure needs associated with development.
However, despite the overall challenges that developers are facing in navigating the planning system, the Government is talking a good game in terms of improving the system. Planning applications can take a while to pull together, and our advice to our clients is to start pulling applications together now to take advantage of the Government’s initiatives as they come through – in the current political climate, it is uncertain how long these improvements will be in place.
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