Planning approvals for new homes at record low, figures show

The number of planning approvals for new homes in England is unacceptable, the new housing secretary has said, after official data showed permission for building homes fell to a record low during Labour’s first year in office.

Fewer than 29,000 projects were granted permission by councils in the year ending June 2025 – striking a blow to the government’s promise to deliver 1.5 million homes by the next election.

Steve Reed, who has taken over from Angela Rayner as housing secretary, said fixing the planning system “won’t happen overnight”.

Conservative shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said that Labour had “promised to ‘build, build, build’ but their flagship planning reforms clearly aren’t working”.

You can see the figures for your local area in BBC Verify’s housing tracker.

About 7,000 applications for housing were granted permission between April and June 2025 – the lowest three-month figure since records began in 1979 and an 8% fall on the same three months of 2024.

An application can be either “minor” for fewer than 10 homes or “major” for 10 or more.

The data shows that both the number of approvals and the overall number of decisions taken by councils have fallen.

But councils are approving a larger proportion of the ones they handle. Around three-quarters of applications decided were approved in the year to June 2025, up from 71% the year before.

Separate data from housing contractor Glenigan suggests 221,000 individual homes were granted permission in the year to June, down from 237,000 the year to June 2024.

Labour promised in its election manifesto to deliver 1.5 million homes in England by the next general election. To get to that, there would need to be an average of about 300,000 new homes per year.

Mr Reed said: “These figures are unacceptable. I will leave no stone unturned to build 1.5 million homes, so families have the key to home ownership in their hands.”

His plans include an overhaul of the Building Safety Regulator’s performance and working with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to unlock house building in the capital.

This is on top of reforms already announced, such as housing targets for local councils that were set last December. The government has also pledged a £39 billion investment over 10 years to build hundreds of thousands of new social and affordable homes.

Government figures used in BBC Verify’s housing tracker suggest the number of new homes receiving their first energy performance certificate (EPC) fell during Labour’s first year in office, with ministers blaming the slowdown on the previous Conservative government. EPCs are a leading indicator of new homes in between the releases of annual statistics.

Government data is not available on applications received for housing but Planning Portal, which people use to apply to their local council for permission, reported a big rise in the number of new homes requested.

Geoff Keal from Planning Portal said that while applications through their service had gone up, getting to the decision stage can take several months.

“Backlogs mean approvals for this wave of applications may not appear until later in the year,” he said.

Housing market analyst Neal Hudson, of BuiltPlace, said: “Labour hit the ground running with their housing policies last year but the issue is they were trying to fix the wrong problem.

“Housebuilders and developers will not plan for and build homes if there’s no one to buy them. Unfortunately that’s the case given current house price levels and mortgage rates, while the government’s affordable homes programme is underwhelming given the aspirations for 1.5 million.”