Labour’s housing ambition is clear and its planning reforms are genuine. But new data from IBex’s new build approvals dataset reveals that planning consent volumes under the current government have declined -  and that the homes needed to meet the 300,000-per-year target are still nowhere near the pipeline. The reasons run deeper than planning alone. But you cannot build what has not been approved, and approvals cannot flow freely through an overstretched system. Using our proprietary data, this edition of Build, Baby, Build examines what new build planning approvals reveal about the real state of housing delivery - and why process innovation is a vital place to start.

What Labour Has Promised

Since taking office in July 2024, Labour has made housing one of its most prominent domestic priorities. The government has committed to delivering 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament - over 300,000 per year until 2029. 

To underpin this, the government has introduced a revised National Planning Policy Framework  to restore mandatory local housing targets, committed £39 billion to a new Social and Affordable Homes Programme, created a National Housing Bank to unlock private development finance, and passed the Planning and Infrastructure Act to streamline planning decisions. The policy intent is serious and the direction of travel is right. 

But an analysis of new build consent volumes shows that policy updates and additional funding are not yet translating into more project approvals - and approvals determine how many homes can physically be built over the next two to three years. Planning consent is only one strand of housing delivery; market demand and economic viability can shape what happens between approval and completion. But it is the crucial first step, and the one whose processes must improve if overall output is ever going to match the government's ambition.

It is worth noting that the central government does not directly control local planning authorities. LPAs operate independently, and the pace at which they process applications is shaped by their own resourcing, capacity and local priorities. This is precisely why top-down policy reform alone cannot solve the pipeline problem. The lever that is available is the innovation of manual, repetitive processes within the system itself, reducing administrative burden on already stretched teams.

Ambition vs Reality: Capturing Approval Numbers

If approvals are falling, completions will follow. IBex’s decision-level dataset captures an accurate picture of new build and conversion approvals across the UK. The data analysed here covers the final year of the Conservative government, Labour's first year in office, through to February 2026, allowing a direct comparison of approval volumes before and after the change of government, and a depiction of the most recent consent rates. 

According to our data, between September 2023 and September 2024, 185,440 new build approvals were recorded across England. In Labour's first year, that figure fell by 13.3% to 160,806. The five months between October 2025 and February 2026 saw 63,376 approvals. If we break this figure down into a monthly average of 12,675, that annualises to approximately 152,100, which would represent a further decline by September 2026. Now of course, this is purely a prediction - this period covers the two slowest months for planning activity, and a seasonal uplift in spring and summer may shift that projection modestly upward. But the direction of travel is unambiguous. Reaching 300,000 approvals annually - the volume needed to sustain the government's completion target - would require the pipeline to nearly double from its current level. Nothing in the data suggests that is on the horizon.

It is important to be precise about what this data does and does not tell us. A decline in approvals under Labour does not mean the government's reforms have failed. What it does tell us is that the pipeline feeding 2027 and 2028 completions is thinner than it needs to be, and that the reforms have not yet generated the uplift in consents that the delivery target requires.

System Innovation As a Gateway To More Approvals

Local planning authorities are working hard in difficult conditions. The validation stage is a significant bottleneck in the system. What is needed are tools that reduce the burden at that critical initial point. This is where Planda Portal is making a difference. By validating applications against national requirements before they reach planning teams, it filters out the repetitive, avoidable mistakes that consume disproportionate amounts of officer time. Applications arrive in better condition. Officers spend less time bouncing incomplete submissions back to applicants and more time doing the work that actually drives decisions. The bottleneck does not disappear absolutely, but it narrows - and in a system operating at the margins, that narrowing matters.

A quicker decision can just as easily be a quicker refusal. Improving the efficiency of the planning system is not the divine intervention for increasing the volume of new build approvals. But it does create the conditions under which more approvals become possible. More applications reaching a decision, faster and in better condition, improves the probability of the pipeline growing. It does not guarantee it. But in a system this stretched, removing unnecessary friction is not a minor contribution - it is a precondition for everything else working. Efficiency feeds decisions. Decisions feed approvals. Approvals feed building. Building feeds homes. The chain is only as strong as its first link.

Conclusion

The data doesn’t lie, and it certainly doesn’t flatter. Planning approvals under Labour have fallen. The pipeline feeding completions in 2027 and 2028 is thinner than the government's ambition requires, and not much in the current trajectory suggests that the approvals needed to reach 300,000 new homes delivered annually is imminent.

Closing the gap between ambition and delivery will require action on multiple fronts. Market conditions, viability, land supply and local authority capacity all play their part. No single intervention resolves a challenge this structural. But the planning pipeline has a first link, and that link is the system's ability to process applications - validating them, deciding them, and moving them through without unnecessary delay.

That is where the opportunity lies. Not in replacing the judgement of planners, but in removing the friction that prevents that judgement from being applied efficiently. Tools that validate applications before they enter the system, that reduce avoidable errors, that give stretched officers more time to make decisions rather than manage incomplete paperwork - these are a vital step for the solution.

Labour has set a target of 1.5 million new homes and the planning system must be capable of supporting it. Reforms are creating the framework, but what the process requires is operational innovation to make that framework function.