IN Brief:
- Only 408 sites of 10 homes or more secured approval in Q1 2026, the lowest quarterly total in HBF’s dataset.
- Private housing projects of three or more homes fell to 1,220 approvals, 17% below Q1 2025.
- Approvals covering 216,141 homes over 12 months remain well below the combined annual housing requirement cited by HBF.
The Home Builders Federation has recorded the lowest quarterly number of larger housing sites gaining planning permission since its dataset began in 2006, adding another weak indicator to England’s residential development pipeline.
Only 408 sites of 10 homes or more received approval during the first quarter of 2026, 13% fewer than a year earlier. HBF says the equivalent quarterly figure approached 1,000 sites in 2016, leaving the current rate at less than half the level seen a decade ago.
Across private schemes of three or more homes, 1,220 projects gained approval during the quarter. That was 14% below the final quarter of 2025 and 17% lower than Q1 2025, while the number of private homes contained within those approvals fell 12% quarter on quarter to 46,547.
The annual comparison in unit numbers was less severe, but four developments of more than 1,000 homes each supported the overall total. That concentration makes the number of individual sites particularly relevant because a handful of major consents can maintain national unit figures while regional pipelines continue to contract.
Including other forms of housing approval, slightly more than 54,000 homes secured permission during the quarter. Over the 12 months to the end of March, approvals covered 216,141 homes, which HBF calculates at 58% of the combined annual requirement of 370,000 homes.
Permission is only the first stage of the development pipeline, but falling site numbers reduce the pool from which future starts can emerge. Each lost or delayed scheme removes potential work for groundworkers, building-services contractors, product manufacturers, merchants, housebuilders, and specialist subcontractors further down the programme.
Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation, said the industry remained constrained by market conditions and viability pressures, adding that “the new and improved planning system is still not delivering”.
The government’s revised National Planning Policy Framework is now in force, but the HBF figures pre-date its implementation and show the scale of the pipeline weakness it is intended partly to address. A clearer route to permission can improve one stage of development without resolving whether approved schemes are commercially capable of reaching site.
Finance costs, infrastructure requirements, affordable-housing obligations, remediation, regulation, labour, materials, and sales conditions all influence that calculation. HBF has previously estimated that additional policy and regulatory costs have added around £76,000 to the cost of a new home since 2020, although the exact impact varies sharply between schemes and locations.
Construction-start data has also remained weak, illustrating the gap between consent and actual workload. An outline permission, reserved-matters approval, technical design package, tender, and mobilisation are separate events, and the interval between them can lengthen considerably when a scheme’s viability deteriorates.
That delay is particularly damaging to smaller regional contractors and suppliers because a national headline unit total gives little indication of where work will be available. A small number of very large developments can support aggregate statistics while leaving fewer medium-sized projects entering procurement across individual towns and counties.
Small sites are not replacing the missing volume. HBF says developments of one or two homes accounted for only 3% of permissions, with an average of roughly 1.1 homes per site. The housing system therefore remains heavily dependent on larger allocations progressing from planning through to construction.
Local authorities face a similar distinction between permission and delivery. Councils can allocate land and determine applications, but build-out rates are influenced by land ownership, infrastructure, financing, market absorption, development costs, and the time required to clear conditions and legal agreements.
That becomes particularly important under the Housing Delivery Test, where authorities are measured on completed homes rather than the volume of land or planning permissions in their pipeline. Increasing approvals may improve the future position, but only occupied dwellings count towards delivery.
The latest figures therefore point to a pipeline problem at two levels. Fewer larger sites are gaining approval, while many consented developments continue to face commercial and technical barriers before construction starts.
The next few quarters will show whether the revised planning framework can lift the number of sites progressing through the system. A recovery dominated by a handful of strategic schemes could improve the headline number of approved homes while still leaving regional construction pipelines thinner than the national totals suggest.
