Planning Approval Hotspots: Where Developers Are Building in 2026

Across 44 counties in England — Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Bristol, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cardiff, Cheshire, Cornwall, County Durham, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, East Riding Of Yorkshire, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater London, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Newport, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Powys, Shropshire, Somerset, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Swansea, Tyne And Wear, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Worcestershire — we identified 8,160 relevant planning applications with a combined estimated gross development value (GDV) of £13.3bn and 41,287 residential units in the housing delivery pipeline.

Of these, 550 have been approved by the local planning authority and 7,519 are awaiting a decision.

Data is sourced directly from local planning authorities' public registers via the Idox Public Access and Civica Portal360 planning portals, covering live application status rather than a lagging published index.

Maidenhead leads with an estimated pipeline GDV of £2.1bn across 4,201 units. This signals significant developer confidence in the area and substantial demand for development finance.

The planning pipeline breaks down by development type as follows:

Demolition_rebuild: 398 applications, 662 units
Conversion: 736 applications, 588 units
Other Relevant: 4,625 applications, 3,830 units
New Build: 504 applications, 5,003 units
Change of Use: 955 applications, 792 units
Other_residential: 454 applications, 29,704 units
Mixed_use: 13 applications, 5 units
Prior_approval: 366 applications, 696 units
Hmo: 17 applications, 7 units
Heritage: 1 applications, 0 units

Conversion and change-of-use schemes often offer faster routes to completion and may be funded with bridging finance for acquisition followed by development finance for the build.

A strong planning pipeline indicates where lenders are likely to have appetite. Towns with high GDV pipelines typically attract more valuer activity, creating better comparable evidence for loan applications. For developers seeking mezzanine finance to stretch their equity, demonstrable local demand is a key factor in lender appetite.

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