The secret to London’s last housing boom? Less paperwork
The last time London built enough houses was almost 100 years ago, when planning applications were just three pages long and took just weeks to approve, finds Sam Dumitriu
Labour were elected on a pledge to build 1.5m homes. And Mayor Sadiq Khan has clear instructions from the Deputy PM: “build more homes!”
In fact, London must now build at least 88,000 homes each year. But at the moment, the capital isn’t even hitting its current 52,000 home target.
Right now, the Mayor is busy rewriting the London Plan. It will need to be a major rewrite. Data from real estate experts Molior suggests London is going backwards. In the first quarter of 2025, construction started on just 1,250 homes.
The last time London got close to building 88,000 homes was almost 100 years ago in the 1930s. Back then a cocktail of low interest rates, abolition of rent control and simple planning rules brought housebuilding to record levels.
How simple are we talking? To find out Britain Remade visited Waltham Forest’s planning archive. After weeks of back and forth over email, researcher Ben Hopkinson was finally granted permission to rummage through a dozen boxes of planning applications from the last 100 years or so of building in Leyton and Walthamstow.
One thing stood out about London’s last building boom: how little paperwork it involved. In fact, it takes more effort to get permission to look at a planning application from the 1930s than it did to get permission to actually build a block of flats in the 1930s.
Approved in less than three weeks
The planning application for Seton Court, a four-storey block of eight flats in Leytonstone, was submitted on April 8th 1937. It was literally rubber stamped “Approved” just under three weeks later. Slightly more time than it took to get permission to rummage through Waltham Forest Borough Council’s archive.
Planning decisions in 1937 were fast because planning applications in 1937 were simple. Extremely simple in fact. Seton Court’s planning application was just three pages long: a one page form and two pages of drawings.
Hopkinson, now Head of Housing and Infrastructure at the Centre for Policy Studies, told me: “Seton Court’s planning application wasn’t uniquely short. Many applications from the same era were similar in length. Yet with each decade page counts grew as policies got evermore complicated.”
In the same borough is 22 Sutherland Road. Over a year ago, its owners applied for planning permission to knock it down and, in its place, build a four-storey block of 14 flats.
This wouldn’t be unusual for the area. Just a 10 minute walk from Blackhorse Road tube station and a stone’s throw from the Blackhorse Beer Mile, Sutherland Road is part of one of the Mayor’s designated Opportunity Areas where development is encouraged. There are multiple brand new developments up the street including a four-storey block of flats literally opposite number 22.
So what does it take to get planning permission to build 14 flats 10 minutes from the Victoria Line? Answer: 1,250 pages covering everything from sunlight and crime to heat pumps and wildflowers. The combined length of the 73 separate documents submitted was 25 pages longer than War and Peace.
In fact, seven times more pages were dedicated to bats for this development than pages total for the flats from 1937.
What does it take to get planning permission to build 14 flats 10 minutes from the Victoria Line? An application 25 pages longer than War and Peace
More than a year on, Waltham Forest Borough Council still haven’t made a decision.
This isn’t a one-off case. Architect Russell Curtis recently listed 43 separate assessments that were required for a 20 home development in Croydon. They included a ‘microclimate wind assessment’ and a ‘public art strategy’.
Now only the biggest developers have a hope of navigating the system and staying solvent.
Some argue that the planning system isn’t a barrier because most planning applications are accepted. But, when even small developments require applications as long as the King James Bible, projects will only come forward when developers are near-certain of a yes.
At a recent meeting of the London Assembly’s planning and regeneration committee deputy mayor Jules Pipe said London’s 88,000 homes a year target would be merely ‘an intellectual exercise’ without money to back it up.
I am afraid the Deputy Mayor is 100 per cent wrong. When developers are willing to produce 1,000 page planning applications just for the right to tear down a building and build a slightly taller building in its place, it is a sign that the barrier to new homes isn’t a lack of money. It’s a Kafkaesque planning process that says no to just about everything.
Sam Dumitriu is head of policy at Britain Remade