Developers are often accused of landbanking and a graph showing London’s pipeline of planning consents continuing to grow year-on-year would suggest exactly that.
At the 2016 year-end, the amount of planning consents stood at a record 250,000 homes.
In short, more homes are continually granted consent than started construction.
Last year a total of 37,226 units got off the ground, the highest since London Residential Research started monitoring the market in 1996.
However, many of those homes with planning consent but yet to start are tied up in major regeneration projects.
Schemes such as Barking Riverside and Greenwich Peninsula are huge and will take a full cycle or two to build out. These are essentially new towns of more than 10,000 new homes.
Brent Cross Cricklewood is another with 7,500 homes. There are many others too.
Think Kidbrooke Village, Woolwich Arsenal and Woodberry Down, all around 5,000 homes in size and churning out 200-300 units per annum.
This is simply how the market works, not landbanking.
However, there are some schemes that fall through the cracks and for various reasons don’t see it through to fruition.
Using EG’s LRR data, we have pulled out 200 schemes where planning consent was granted in 2012 or previously and where construction has yet to start.
Without a “material start” consent for these will have lapsed.
Since gaining consent, all sites have been continually visited by LRR’s research team with no construction start to show for.
Encouragingly, they would have been granted consent when planners’ ambitions were arguably less than what they are now and when the housing shortage wasn’t so acute. Therefore, each may provide an opportunity to revise consents with greater densities.
Interested in the data? For access to the full details, including each site’s individual building record, contact Rob Mower on 020 7911 1431, e-mail rob.mower@egi.co.uk.
To send feedback e-mail paul.wellman@egi.co.uk or tweet @paulwellman eg or @estatesgazette
