All pieces
Private developers build most new homes, and fewer households have a mortgage.
In 2000, 42% of households in England were buying their home with a mortgage. In 2024-25 it was 29%. Private developers still account for almost three in four new homes, and they build at the pace they can sell. Councils completed 2,660 homes last year, against 115,840 in 1977-78, and housing associations completed more than in any year since the series began in 1969-70. This is who builds homes in England now, and who else could if fewer households can borrow.
The cost of building a home is at a record high, the Treasury says, and house prices have not kept up.
The Budget on 28 October says building a home costs more than ever, because of materials, labour and regulation. The cost of new housing work in Great Britain rose 13.6% between December 2022 and June 2026, while the average price of a home in England rose 1.2%. These are the government's own figures for each part of the cost, and what the Budget changed.
What the new Framework says about neighbours, and the design guidance it relies on that is still a draft.
The December 2024 Framework asked for a high standard of amenity for existing users. The August 2026 Framework drops that phrase and adds a test on daylight and sunlight for neighbouring residents. Privacy is mentioned once. The guidance that is meant to fill the gap, on design and placemaking, was still a consultation draft on 29 October 2026, and the draft leaves separation distances to local design codes. Cotswold's 2018 design code sets 22m between facing windows.
190,000 fewer homes in the forecast, and the costs it found outside the planning system.
The Office for Budget Responsibility published its forecast alongside the Budget on 28 October. It now expects 190,000 fewer net additional homes over its forecast than it did in March, and it kept its view that the 2024 planning reforms will raise housebuilding. It put the cut down to weak demand, rising building costs and a decade of rules and taxes outside the planning system. This is what the Budget did about each, and what the forecaster made of Your First Home.
The most homes for sale at this time of year since 2014, and fewer buyers.
Rightmove reported on 19 October that more homes were for sale than at this time of year in any year since 2014, with sales agreed 8% lower than a year earlier. Bank Rate has been 3.75% since December, but the average two-year fixed mortgage rose from 3.93% in January to 5.13% in September. Lenders told the Bank of England that demand for loans to buy a home was at its weakest since 2023, and that they approved a smaller share of applications without tightening their rules. New homes are built at the pace they sell, and that is where the market meets the planning system.
Four counts of one housing pipeline, and why they disagree.
Councils in England decided 1,026 applications for major housing development between April and June 2026, the fewest in any quarter on record, which begins in 1979. In the same quarter building control returns recorded 35,910 new homes started (seasonally adjusted), 20% more than a year earlier, while counts from the National House Building Council and Glenigan fell. The government's own release says the rise in starts is in part due to one regulator. This is what each count measures, and what the house builders' federation and the government have each said about the pipeline.
Three more months to finish a plan, and the minister who directed what Southend submits.
On 23 October 2026 the housing and planning minister gave local plans whose final consultation ends by 31 December until 31 March 2027 to be submitted under the old system, and said there should be no expectation of a further extension. The same day he directed Southend-on-Sea City Council to publish the draft it had sent him, site BG1 included. Seven of the ten councils sent published ministerial letters on their plans this year appear to have an earlier submission date that the extension does not reach unless he amends it.
Who decides an 840MW solar farm, and why the date keeps moving.
The Botley West solar farm in Oxfordshire, 840MW on about 1,400 hectares, is decided by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, not by the councils that host it. The Planning Act 2008 allows 3 months from the Planning Inspectorate's report. That report arrived on 10 February 2026, and the deadline is now 10 November, after two resets. This piece sets out how the national route works, what councils and courts can do inside it, and the case each side makes.
The fewest major housing decisions since 1979, and the larger schemes coming forward.
Councils in England decided 1,026 applications for major housing development between April and June 2026, fewer than in any quarter since the government's quarterly returns begin in 1979. Fewer schemes are coming forward, but the outline applications that do arrive propose more homes than at any point in the four years those figures cover. The stage at which a scheme is fixed in detail is the one that is shrinking.
The minister's universal tilt, and the first appeals that decide who it reaches.
On 6 October the housing and planning minister told the Planning Inspectorate that a universal tilt in favour of granting permission applies to development the new framework supports. A site has to qualify before the tilt applies. Eight appeal decisions issued since 17 August show inspectors reading the qualifying words in different ways. One found an unmet need from a very marginal housing supply and a need for affordable housing, in a district that, on that inspector's figures, passed both of the framework's named tests.
Who decides a planning application from 31 October, and the call-in that ends.
From 31 October, national regulations set the rules for which planning applications councillors may see. Householder schemes, up to 9 homes on a small site and a list of routine applications must be decided by officers. Most other applications go to committee only if two named people agree. The councillor call-in, and rules that sent an application to committee once enough people objected, end that day.
The planning system was rewritten to say yes, and the state is now financing every link in the chain.
Since July 2024 the government has restored mandatory housing targets, made the presumption in favour of development permanent and moved planning decisions away from committees. Alongside that, a change to the fiscal rules let it lend, guarantee and invest in housing on a scale grants never allowed. This is how the two halves fit together, and who carries the risk.
Your First Home, and why a housing target runs through the mortgage market.
On 26 September the government announced a 20% equity loan for first-time buyers of new homes, and called it a stimulus for the market. Homes are built at the speed they can be sold. This is how the scheme fits the machinery that sets that speed, and what the last scheme like it did.
The local plans racing the December deadline, and why they arrive already weakened.
82 councils have been paid to submit local plans under the old system by 31 December 2026. Each will be examined against a framework that no longer decides planning applications, and adopted into one that says any policy materially at odds with it should carry very limited weight. Nobody has defined what that means.
The Housing Delivery Test results, and the third of England that cannot say no.
The government published two measurements at once on 17 August, ending a twenty month gap. England as a whole delivered 92% of what it was required to. Even so, 93 of the 301 authorities measured came in below 75%, the point at which national policy treats an unmet need for housing as proven.
Who is still consulted on a planning application, and the clock on their advice.
On 17 August the government confirmed it will narrow the list of bodies a council must consult, with regulations to follow, and the new framework told councils not to wait for advice past the deadline. The bodies that carry the most weight in an objection were left alone, which is the part worth knowing.
The site that is both an application and an allocation, and why allocation now changes the test.
The new framework shields an adopted local plan for five years, so every council in England has a reason to adopt one quickly. It also treats an allocated site as part of the settlement, which switches a live application from the harder national policy to the easier one. Those two facts are about to meet each other in a lot of places.
How a parish council objects to housing under the new framework, and the ground that still works.
The tilted balance has gone, and with it the argument most objections were built around. What replaced it hands a parish council two things it did not have before, and takes away one it relied on. A practical guide to which ground is worth standing on now, and which is not.
Speculative sites and allocated sites under the new framework, and why allocation moves the boundary.
From 17 August 2026, housing outside a settlement is decided by category rather than by weight. Land that is allocated, or that has permission, counts as part of the settlement before anything is built. This is what that does to a speculative application on the edge of a Cotswold town, and to the 150 homes at Lechlade.
The new National Planning Policy Framework, and what happened to the tilted balance.
England's planning rulebook was rewritten on 17 August 2026, the first full rewrite since 2012. Paragraph 11(d), the provision that has decided contested housing appeals for eight years, does not appear in it. Here is what replaced it, and what did not change.
Hope value, and the new power for parish councils.
A change in section 113 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 lets land be bought compulsorily on behalf of a parish or community council without paying for the planning permission it does not yet have. Every explainer on this site tells parishes what they cannot do. This is the first thing in years that hands them something.
Biodiversity net gain, and what changed for small sites and self-builders.
Three things changed in biodiversity net gain on 6 August 2026. Almost all the coverage reported one of them, and it was not the one that takes a policy away from the people the government says it wants to help.
Migration, asylum dispersal and rural housing targets, and what the tables actually show.
A widely held explanation for why rural England is being told to build is that the homes are for people arriving from elsewhere. The figures are all published, so the claim can be tested rather than argued about. In one district the answer is unusually clear, and it is not the answer either side expects.
The Building Safety Levy, and why it costs twice as much on a green field.
From 1 October 2026 almost every new housing scheme in England carries a new charge, calculated per square metre. On land that has never been built on, the rate is exactly twice the rate on land that has. Here is where that money actually comes from.
What happens to a local plan when the council is abolished.
The government has told councils facing abolition that reorganisation is no excuse to stop making a local plan. Two districts have read the same instruction and done opposite things. Neither of them is obviously wrong, and the difference decides who spends the next several years without a plan.
The seven new towns, and the list that is already overdue.
Twelve locations became seven in March. The consultation closed in May, the final list was promised for summer, and summer is nearly over. What is proposed is around 191,000 homes at a 40% affordable target, which would be the most ambitious social housing commitment in decades if the mechanism that usually erodes it can be avoided.
The Housing Delivery Test, and why the results have not been published since 2024.
The Housing Delivery Test can strip a council of its power to refuse. The last time the government published the results was December 2024, and the page where they appear carries no explanation for the gap.
Water scarcity and housing targets, and the figure everyone is quoting from last year.
61,600 homes in the East and South East cannot be built because there is not enough water. That number is real, it is serious, and it was published in January 2025. It has been recycled as current all summer, and nobody appears to have refreshed it.
The 150 homes at Lechlade, and the growth the council had already counted.
Cotswold District Council says it is in a housing emergency, and that emergency is the reason 150 homes may be built on a sensitive field in Lechlade. The same Council has already written this growth into its own forward plan, before the application to build it has been decided. This is an account of what the developer's own documents say, and what the Council has done with them, as the application file stood in late June 2026.
The tilted balance is not a verdict, and how some councils have beaten it.
When the Wern was lost on appeal, it read like proof that a town council fighting speculative housing is wasting its breath. The law says otherwise, and so do councils that have won. But only on particular ground. A guide for town and parish councils in districts with no five-year housing land supply.
How land gets its value, and who keeps it.
The arithmetic underneath the English housing crisis.
A unanimous refusal, overturned by the tilted balance.
Refused by the councillors, the officers and the council's own evidence, then granted outline permission for up to 54 homes at appeal, where the tilted balance set the local plan aside.
The neighbourhood plan, and what it can actually do.
The most democratic tool in the planning system, and the one with the least power when the system is under pressure.
The infrastructure that doesn't exist yet.
How water, roads, schools, and GP surgeries are supposed to arrive alongside new housing, and why they don't.
Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy.
Two mechanisms for making developers pay for what development needs, and why both are under strain.
The Local Plan, and why most of England does not have one.
The document that decides where houses go, how it gets made, what happens when it fails, and what happens without it.
Viability, density, and why every estate looks the same.
The product range, the economics behind it, and a planning system that cannot demand anything better.
What "affordable" actually means, and what it costs.
The gap between what the planning system calls affordable and what a local worker can pay.
The five-year supply, the tilted balance, and why your council can't say no.
The mechanism that hands control to developers when a council falls behind.
What the standard method is, and what it is not.
A formula, a set of inputs, and a missing cap. Three things, in order.
The Housing Algorithm.
How a government formula is overriding local democracy, ignoring physical reality, and reshaping rural England.