Can London Build the Homes It Needs?
Five findings from the Centre for London Housing Summit — and what the data says
Two questions I put to a sharp panel at the Centre for London Housing Summit: can we build the homes London needs, and are we optimistic we will? The answers depend on whether five interdependent parts of the system move together. The Planning London Datahub lets us track whether they are.
The symbiosis problem
London only builds when the whole system moves together. That was the clearest signal from the panel: private developers, housing associations, councils, and community-led schemes are not competitors — they are dependencies. Remove one and the pipeline stalls. Right now, Registered Providers have shifted significant capacity into retrofit and remediation, responding to building safety legislation and cladding remediation programmes. That is entirely rational at the scheme level. But it is removing the RP partner from new-build pipelines at exactly the moment when viability pressures are making affordable housing the hardest to deliver without one.
“The percentage of affordable on a scheme should not be reduced — what is needed is support to ensure RPs are there to take on the units. Break the symbiosis and the whole pipeline stalls.”
— Syreeta Robinson-Gayle, Barrett Homes — Centre for London Housing Summit
New Towns and the 20-year view
Thames New Town was cited as evidence that London can still do large-scale, mixed-community development — if the planning process is structured to outlast political cycles. The challenge is that most planning frameworks are written for a five-year horizon at most, while the viability of a major new settlement depends on decisions made in year twelve or eighteen. The PLD data captures phasing details on consented schemes, and the gap between stated commencement and completion phases on major applications is widening — a signal that long-horizon delivery is increasingly deferred, not just delayed.
Small sites, overlooked land
London CLT has been unlocking garages, car parks, and underused land across seven boroughs — schemes that would never appear on a developer's target list but add up to a meaningful contribution when scaled. The data supports this: small sites (under ten units) account for roughly 44% of all residential applications in the PLD, but only around 8% of total proposed units. The volume is there. The challenge is aggregation — community-led organisations lack the balance sheet to acquire, hold, and develop at the pace the market demands. That is a government financing problem, not a planning one.
“We should be scaling this, not treating it as marginal.”
— On London CLT's work across seven London boroughs
Mixed tenure is not a policy option
Every panellist came back to the same point: mixed tenure is fundamental to London's identity. It is also a public health issue. The data captures tenure intent at application stage — social rent, affordable rent, London Living Rent, shared ownership, market sale, market rent — and the gap between what is proposed and what the 35% London Plan target requires is visible in every borough. The question is not whether mixed tenure matters. It is whether the system is structured to deliver it.
The levers government still holds
Planning reform, direct RP funding, public land development, and a construction skills pipeline: these are not marginal interventions. They are the load-bearing columns of the delivery system. The panel was cautiously optimistic — the will is there across the sector. But optimism without structural support does not translate into consented, funded, and built homes. Stormglass tracks the planning end of this chain: applications, decisions, tenure commitments, phasing. Whether the funding and skills pipeline catches up is the other half of the question.