London housing starts recover as BSR improves

London housing starts have returned close to their pre-2023 quarterly average as faster Building Safety Regulator decisions begin to remove one of the constraints that has weighed heavily on high-rise residential construction in the capital.

Construction began on 4,570 London homes during the first quarter of 2026, 287% more than a year earlier and close to the 4,593 quarterly average recorded between 2012 and 2022. The improvement follows two years in which housing starts fell sharply as higher financing and construction costs coincided with disruption around the new higher-risk building control system.

Performance at the Building Safety Regulator has also improved materially. During the latest rolling 12-week period, new higher-risk buildings and conversions achieved a 91% national approval rate, excluding invalidations and withdrawals, with a median approval time of 22 weeks.

A year earlier, the equivalent new-build approval rate was 39% and the median approval time was 43 weeks. London recorded 27 of the latest 45 national new-build decisions, with 25 projects approved, giving the capital a 93% approval rate across those determinations.

The improvement matters because Gateway 2 is a statutory hold point. Higher-risk building work cannot begin until the regulator has approved the building-control application, so uncertainty over determination times directly affects mobilisation, procurement, finance, labour planning, and the date on which a contractor can begin converting pre-construction expenditure into physical progress.

For London, the consequences have been particularly pronounced. The capital depends heavily on apartment buildings that fall within the higher-risk regime, meaning a slowdown in Gateway 2 throughput affects a larger proportion of its potential housing pipeline than in markets dominated by lower-rise construction.

The latest figures do not indicate that the backlog has been eliminated. Nationally, the BSR is managing 131 live new-build and conversion applications representing 30,421 residential units. London accounts for 65% of the applications in progress and 58% of the homes represented by those cases.

That leaves a substantial volume of potential construction waiting inside the regulatory process. Greater throughput can therefore create a second capacity issue if several delayed schemes become construction-ready in a relatively compressed period.

Main contractors may be able to increase site activity, but the same projects compete for facade specialists, fire engineers, building-services designers, structural subcontractors, drylining, fire stopping, and other trades whose work is particularly important on higher-risk residential buildings. A regulatory backlog can consequently turn into a procurement bottleneck rather than disappearing altogether.

Gateway 2 has also shifted more technical work towards the front of a project. Structural design, fire strategy, facade interfaces, compartmentation, building services, product selection, and change-control arrangements need a greater level of coordination before construction starts than many project teams were accustomed to under the previous building-control environment.

That change helps explain why approval time is not solely a measure of regulator productivity. Application quality matters as well. The BSR says newer operational arrangements, including in-house multidisciplinary assessment teams and dedicated account management, have reduced setup times and improved decision consistency, while applications submitted during 2026 are moving through the system more quickly than older legacy cases.

Construction businesses have adapted in parallel. Design-responsible subcontractors increasingly need to be engaged early enough for their technical information to form part of the application rather than being appointed after approval against assumptions produced by others.

That affects commercial strategy because earlier specialist appointments can reduce tender flexibility. Substituting a facade, fire protection product, services arrangement, or another safety-critical component later may require formal change control if the revised solution departs from the approved design.

The stronger London starts figure should therefore be treated as evidence of improved movement rather than proof that the housing market has returned to normal. Across England, seasonally adjusted new-build starts totalled 33,960 during the first quarter, down 9% from the previous quarter despite being 18% higher year-on-year.

Financing, planning, sales rates, construction costs, land viability, and infrastructure remain capable of stopping an approved project from reaching site. Faster Gateway 2 decisions remove one important uncertainty but do not compensate for a development appraisal that no longer works.

The position is nevertheless materially better than a year ago. A 22-week median new-build approval time remains significant in programme terms, but it is roughly half the comparable figure from 2025, while the approval rate has risen sharply.

The next test is whether that improvement can be sustained as the live caseload continues moving through the system. London starts are again approaching their longer-term quarterly norm, but maintaining that level will depend on a steady progression of technically mature schemes through Gateway 2 rather than another cycle of stalled applications followed by sudden releases into an already stretched construction supply chain.