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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed. Molior recorded just 2,158 private starts in the first half of 2025, around 5% of London’s (low) targets, and still falling. What is going on? I have posed this question to numerous specialists, most of whom cannot comment publicly for professional reasons. This thread is a summary of what I have gleaned.
Four bar charts displaying housing data. The first chart shows quarterly private housing starts in London from 2009 to 2025, with blue bars for quarterly data and an orange line for 12-month rolling data, peaking around 2015 and declining sharply by 2025. The second chart shows housing starts per 1,000 people across English regions in 2024-5, with blue bars for regions like North East, London, and South West. The third chart lists 23 London boroughs in Q1 2025 with zero new housing starts, shown as a bar chart. The fourth chart shows the number of housing units under construction in London boroughs in Q1 2025, with varying bar heights. Source Knight Frank Research using Molior watermarks are present.
Four bar charts displaying housing data. The first chart shows quarterly private housing starts in London from 2009 to 2025, with blue bars for quarterly data and an orange line for 12-month rolling data, peaking around 2015 and declining sharply by 2025. The second chart shows housing starts per 1,000 people across English regions in 2024-5, with blue bars for regions like North East, London, and South West. The third chart lists 23 London boroughs in Q1 2025 with zero new housing starts, shown as a bar chart. The fourth chart shows the number of housing units under construction in London boroughs in Q1 2025, with varying bar heights. Source Knight Frank Research using Molior watermarks are present.
Four bar charts displaying housing data. The first chart shows quarterly private housing starts in London from 2009 to 2025, with blue bars for quarterly data and an orange line for 12-month rolling data, peaking around 2015 and declining sharply by 2025. The second chart shows housing starts per 1,000 people across English regions in 2024-5, with blue bars for regions like North East, London, and South West. The third chart lists 23 London boroughs in Q1 2025 with zero new housing starts, shown as a bar chart. The fourth chart shows the number of housing units under construction in London boroughs in Q1 2025, with varying bar heights. Source Knight Frank Research using Molior watermarks are present.
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David Watson 🥑
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
The headline reason for the collapse of housebuilding is the establishment of a quango called the Building Safety Regulator, whose approval has been required since April 2024 (after a transitional period starting in 2023) for all tall buildings. The BSR immediately became
Two line graphs. The top graph shows two upward trending lines, one red labeled "Applications still open" and one blue labeled "Decisions made per quarter," plotted against time from Apr 2024 to Mar 2025. The bottom graph displays three blue vertical bars showing percentages of applications decided on time, decreasing from 47% in Sep 2024 to 32% in Mar 2025. Text overlays include titles and source attribution to Building Safety Regulator.
Two line graphs. The top graph shows two upward trending lines, one red labeled "Applications still open" and one blue labeled "Decisions made per quarter," plotted against time from Apr 2024 to Mar 2025. The bottom graph displays three blue vertical bars showing percentages of applications decided on time, decreasing from 47% in Sep 2024 to 32% in Mar 2025. Text overlays include titles and source attribution to Building Safety Regulator.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
One problem is that the BSR not only approves applications slowly – it generally doesn’t approve them at all. In fact, the BSR rejects about 70% of applications. This is a staggering figure. The British planning system (itself not always a model of predictability!) rejects just
A bar chart titled "Application acceptance rate." Two blue bars represent the Planning system and Building Safety Regulator. The Planning system bar reaches approximately 89%, and the Building Safety Regulator bar reaches approximately 30%. Y-axis labels show application acceptance rate from 0% to 100% in increments of 25%.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
The next problem will be familiar to some readers: the second staircase regulation, which requires that all tallish buildings have at least two staircases, eating up much of their floorplate. The fascinating thing about the second staircase rule is that the Government knew it was
A document titled "Summary: Analysis & Evidence - Policy Option 1 (Preferred)". It includes tables with financial data for 2023 and 2025, listing costs and benefits in pounds, such as "Total Cost £294.5m" and "Total Benefits £1m". Text details cost-benefit analysis, economic impacts, and building safety regulations.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
Surprisingly, however, developers universally see second staircases as less important than another, less well known, rule: dual aspect. For a dwelling to be ‘dual aspect’ is for it to have windows on two facades. The GLA’s planners think this is a nice feature for dwellings to
Three sketches of building floorplans from 2015, 2016, and 2018, each showing layouts with green and pink areas. Green areas represent single rooms, and pink areas represent dual aspect rooms. Text overlays indicate percentages of dual aspect rooms: 85% in 2015, 50% in 2016, and 35% in 2018.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
At this point, some readers may protest – what about macroeconomic forces? The protest is correct, up to a point. Interest rates have risen, making mortgages more expensive and thus depressing buying power. Various materials have become more expensive because of wars and
A map of England highlighting property price per square meter. Colors range from light yellow to dark red, indicating prices from £1,250 to £19,000+. London shows predominantly dark red areas, signifying higher prices. Belfast, Dublin, Amsterdam, and other cities are visible on the map edges. A legend shows price ranges and colors.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
We return, then, to bad regulations. Next on the list is leasehold reform. In Britain, when an apartment building is sold, the fabric of the building and the shared areas are usually owned by a freeholder, while the individual apartments are sold on leasehold. The numerically
A webpage from the Law Commission with a green header displaying the logo and text "Law Commission 60th 1965-2025." The page title "Commonhold" is visible, along with text about making commonhold a preferred alternative to leasehold ownership. Links for "Home," "News," "Projects," "Law reform," "Careers," and "Contact" are on the left. The text includes references to leasehold and commonhold reforms, dated 21 July 2020.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
Another problem comes in the form of the new landfill tax. At present, potentially toxic landfill is taxed at £126.15 per tonne, while harmless inert waste like soil or concrete is taxed at £4.05, and nothing at all if it is filling up quarries. Almost all landfill from
A 3D rendering of a multi-story apartment building under construction. The structure has four levels with visible floors and columns, supported by red foundation pillars. Two figures stand on different floors, and the word "Foundations" is overlaid in the upper right corner.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
None of this is to mention the various background factors, like the fact that the planning system releases only a thin trickle of sites for development in London, or the enormous ‘affordable housing’ tariffs that the GLA imposes on development. I pass over these because they are
A map of London showing clusters of colored dots and shapes. Red and pink dots are scattered across the city, with concentrations in certain areas. Yellow and orange shapes are visible in specific regions, identified as Strategic Industrial Locations.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
And so we arrive at the remarkable situation, where almost nothing is being built in London. Remember that London is a city where floorspace values are several times higher than they are in most of Britain – higher than they have been in almost any time or place in the history of
An aerial view of London showing a dense cityscape with numerous buildings, the River Thames winding through, and bridges connecting different areas. Skyscrapers and commercial structures are visible, including the distinctive shape of the Gherkin building. Clouds and a blue sky are seen above the city.
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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
Now, nearly all of these factors are specific to London and a few other large cities. Elsewhere, the prospects for building are much brighter. Across the Kingdom, planning consultants are furiously at work, drawing up applications to build on green belt sites marked for release
An aerial view of a residential area with multiple brick houses featuring sloped roofs and solar panels. The houses are arranged in a grid pattern with paved roads, driveways, and green lawns. Surrounding the development are fields and trees, indicating a greenfield site.
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Calum E. Douglas
@CalumDouglas1
In London itself I have no specific knowledge, but in the UK in general I know with a certainty that the cost of raw materials have sky-rocketed, to the point where the cost of the build has risen dramatically independent of the land cost and labour costs. I doubt this is totally
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Galgacus
@Soubriquet_
The elephant in the room has been the effect of help to buy which inflated new build prices that have yet to come down. Of course they cannot now due to increased building costs as outlined in post. Supply has been cut by major house builders to maintain price point and
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Ian
@itodd888
where will you build them? with what transport system will they travel to work?
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TheCheekyChap
@VeryCheeky
Given this
@grok
what will London houses prices do over the next 5 years. Factor in the massive assault on private property and new taxes on citizens
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Peter Bruce
@pdbruce
Now this thread initially made me angry. But then I got incredibly sad, as I think it’s a perfect example of how the UK has completely lost its way through over government and over regulation yet doesn’t seem to see that freedoms and entrepreneurship are where value is created
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Noa Kt 🇨🇺 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇧🇪
@KtunaxaAmerika
It’s been in decline since Cameron was PM. People are too hard on Brown and May, and not hard enough on Cameron and Boris Johnson.
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Flaglandbase
@flaglandbase
The UK white population is as bad as the population of any country that Trump described as "shitholes", but for completely opposite reasons. They tolerate evil just as much as Somalia or Gaza do, just of the opposite kind.
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Greg B
@Geeb944
An entertaining factor is that Evil Ed's net Zero dogma buggers the cement and concrete sector; they are energy intensive products which are carbon intensive too. We're not producing the raw mats. We're losing the actual ability to build anything. It'd be funny if not so scary
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Sam
@spinnock35
Town planner here. Cutting regs won't speed up house building. We have about 6 massive housebuilding companies that have a monopoly on development, with house prices so high it is against their interests to build in any great capacity as new build prices would drop 👍
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Niall
@NiallQuinnithin
Very interesting, thank you. Sitting on the design side of this, the regulations are enormous and the standards ever higher to building = More £££. Lastly, double aspect is also about cross ventilation as well as sunlight but I digress.
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Opi
@Opinu
Name one major city across the world which is not affected by a housing affordability crisis? IMHO anything city-specific comes across as pointing fingers unless all major cities across different countries made the same mistakes in parallel
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John Treble (J3) 🇨🇦🇺🇦
@jtreble_deriv
“Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed.” Interesting thread. We are seeing a similar phenomena in Canada 🇨🇦 - single family home (SFH) construction in Toronto and Vancouver has completely collapsed. Nothing is being built.
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T
@T1494178470877
Hardly surprising, the government not only makes bad laws, they also invent bad Qangos and inevitably hire the same people who can't run an existing qango
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George City FTW
@red4treble
Planning delays and high costs are crippling London’s housing. With 23 boroughs at zero starts, policy is blocking private investment and making it impossible for professionals to deliver.
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Horses Mouth
@straightfromm
Major reform (restrictions) of the BTL market has also had a massive effect. There isn't market size anymore of viable buyers. It has also removed a vital off-ramp for developers with expensive unsold stock, making development much riskier
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Curse of Nephros
@CurseofNephros
Leasehold became untenable because landlords started to abuse the system. Leases got shorter. Ground rent changed to from peppercorn to exponential. Maintenance charges had insufficient exploitation safeguards. Making a profit is fine, but sometimes squeezing too hard backfires.
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dave gray
@daveg561
Should peak again around 4 years from the next real estate cycle start which is around 2029-2030…in the meantime….watch out below…we are slowly topping out in the current real estate cycle
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OpusClip
@OpusClip
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Laura Davies
@lauramdavies
Very interesting thread- a perfect storm born out of largely positive intentions. Do you have any thoughts about land banking?
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MTimC
@MTimC1
The BSR is the response to Grenfell. I don't think that the risks of Grenfell are well measured and balanced vs risk of homelessness.
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Jon Neale
@JonNeale
Very good, but you’re underplaying the macro factors. Development is not just about end values; it’s about whether it’s profitable for me to build (based on what I paid for the site) and whether I can sell the properties within a reasonable time frame.
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Dominic Kelly
@RigaDimd
Thanks for picking through the omnishambles! Is baffling from afar. The path to hell is paved with good intentions…
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Mike Edwards
@open_services
I think that at the present time, the idiots are in charge of our country. However, when it comes to planning in London, it is the gibbering idiots who are in charge. They should all be gathered up and transported to St Kilda and left without a boat.
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Alex Parkin
@ParkinAlex
Meanwhile the housing targets have been recalculated so that rural areas are now expected to build three times as many houses, mainly on food producing farmland. An utter disgrace.
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Mrs Logic 💜🤍💚
@Melanie66972479
Perhaps more fundamentally, no Brits seriously want to live in a block of flats. It’s always last choice. You don’t want to bring up a family in one of those; indeed all the evidence points to high-rise cutting birth rates/family size. It’s only those who have no choice.
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68neetu
@68neetu
Modern Day Serfdom exists through 5 million Leasehold homes in England. Leasehold must be abolished. Extortionate Service Charges are causing the Health (including Mental Well Being) and Finances of Leaseholders to continuously suffer. How many more suicides and bankruptcies
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UpzoneSoHo
@UpzoneH
I think everyone in the UK agrees that homebuilding is filthy and disgusting and only feral animals would want to do something as horrible as build homes. It’s like one of the most immoral and horrible things you can do in the UK
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peter
@peteratarenig
Very interesting - thank you. Extend the themes of the malaise illustrated here across the economy and it isn’t hard to see why this country is going to the dogs for want of some joined up thinking.
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Graham Lancaster
@glancaster2703
The BSR is underesourced and dysfunctional. Some completed buildings have been waiting for 12 months for Gateway 3 sign off. This is wrecking thousands of people's lives. At some point a developer will go bust because of interest costs. And why would anyone build?
@Keir_Starmer
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FI_Redress
@fi_redress
The tide is out and you’re shouting from the beach that the lifeguards have somehow blocked the water from coming in? The alternative to the private profit based cycle (tides?) is for govt to commission anti cyclical building —> council housing, at volume, and to high standards.
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