London Planning Committee Report 2025

Cavendish’s London Planning Report 2025 – The Year of Lost Affordable Housing

Planning in London is complex and getting ever more challenging especially given recent changes to building regulations and the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator.

However, despite the almost universal political mantra to ‘build more homes’, almost all significant residential applications are subject to delays and uncertainty.

Since 2019, Cavendish has monitored the role of London’s planning committees in driving housing supply, giving us a unique insight into the Boroughs that are open to growth, and those which are not. Our 2025 report into last year’s committee decisions sets out continuing trends and new challenges, as well as the headline number of new homes given the green light in 2024.

London’s lost affordable housing  

In 2024, new housing consents of all types and tenures flatlined at 30,154 – up just 694 compared to the 29,460 given the go-ahead in 2023. However, last year will go down as the year of lost affordable housing, with approvals for this type of home dropping from an already low 9,150 in 2023 to 9,069 in 2024.

When the number of affordable housing is compared to 2022, the fall over the last two years is 48%.

The habitual underperformance of many London Boroughs that we’ve been monitoring over the last 6 years is now beginning to affect housing starts. This will inevitably feed into housing completion numbers in the coming months, creating a real political challenge not just for our Boroughs but also those at City Hall, and the new Labour Government in Westminster.

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