The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ “Planning applications in England: July to September 2023” report indicates a downturn in planning activities across England.
District level planning authorities saw a 12% reduction in received planning applications, amounting to 87,800, and a 13% decrease in planning decisions, with 85,600 applications decided.
The report further reveals a 14% decrease in granted decisions, totaling 73,500, which equates to 86% of all decisions. This figure represents a slight drop from the previous year. Additionally, the rate of major applications decided within 13 weeks or the agreed timeframe improved slightly to 88%.
A 10% reduction was noted in both residential and commercial development applications granted. Householder development applications, which constitute over half of all decisions, saw a 19% decline compared to the same quarter in the previous year.
For the year ending September 2023, there was a 13% decrease in granted decisions overall and an 8% decrease in residential applications granted.
Industry experts have weighed in on these findings. Graham Cox from Self-Employed Mortgage Hub observes: “Lower planning applications are unsurprising given the rapid transition to a high-interest rate environment over the past year. Residents and developers alike have paused works, waiting for cheaper build, material and finance costs.”
Samuel Mather-Holgate from Mather and Murray Financial points to policy issues, saying: “Residents have been worn down by councils knocking back applications for spurious reasons. The Tories have let down Britain when it comes to housing and have made it easy for objectors to block developments.”
Michelle Lawson from Lawson Financial highlights potential reasons for the decline, noting: “Either it is freeing up the departments due to changes and relaxation introduced regarding permitted developments, or developers are holding back on projects due to raw material costs and the difficulty finding skilled workers in the current climate.”
Gary Bush, financial adviser at MortgageShop.com concluded: “The data on homeowner and builder/developer planning applications July to September 2023 doesn’t surprise us when taking into effect the mortgage rate market this year – already stretched households have hunkered down to ride out the storm.
“The data does confirm that for the applications that have been received the level of approvals hasn’t really changed and from our experience in working with our clients we have evidenced a quite flexible response from council planning departments of late.
“With the mortgage rate war continuing at steam towards the beginning of 2024 we expect to see an increase in planning applications for both householder improvements and new builds.”
