Record permissions despite Q2 dip

Planning permissions continue to be granted at record high levels according to the latest Housing Pipeline report from HBF and Glenigan which reveals that permission for more than 350,000 new homes were granted in England in the year to June.

Today’s report shows that for the year up to June 2018 354,646 plots were granted planning permission on 20,076 sites, the first time for a decade that more than 20,000 sites have been granted planning permission in a 12 month period. HBF says that over the course of the past ten years the average permissioned site has increased in size by 58% from 19 units to 30 but that today’s figures reflect the first fall in average site size for annualised planning permissions for almost five years. This, it argues, should assist SME builders and better enable them to play their part in delivering increases in supply.

However permissions granted in Q2 of this year – the latest quarter in the report - are down 15% on last year at 77,704. “While it is difficult to attribute this to any single factor, it may have been, in part, as a result of uncertainty over the future of Help to Buy post-March …