APPROVED HOMES WITH NO RECORDED CONSTRUCTION START (2015–21 DECISIONS)
LONDON HOUSING · CONSENTED BUT UNBUILT · DATA TO 2026-08-01
PERMISSION
GRANTED.
Nothing built.
London’s housing crisis is not only a planning-permission problem. 100,477 homes approved by London boroughs between 2015 and 2021 still have no recorded construction start — an average of 7.7 years after the decision. This platform maps where they are, who they were promised to, and which borough they belong to. Every figure is traceable to a published government dataset.
OF THOSE HOMES WERE CONSENTED AS AFFORDABLE TENURES
HOMES BELOW REQUIREMENT ACROSS LONDON, HOUSING DELIVERY TEST 2020–23
AVERAGE TIME SINCE PERMISSION WAS GRANTED ON A STALLED SCHEME
THE MAP · FIVE VERIFIED LAYERS
Where London’s
housing stops.
Every layer is a published government figure, not a model. Boroughs are shaded by decile within London. Switch layers to compare demand, delivery, stalled consents, affordable loss and decision speed. Click a borough to filter the register below.
LOADING BOROUGH GEOMETRY…
FEWMOST STALLED
HOVER A BOROUGH TO READ ITS VALUE · CLICK TO FILTER THE REGISTER · SOURCE: PLANNING LONDON DATAHUB — RESIDENTIAL UNITS, 2015–2021 DECISIONS
PART ONEThe pipeline is full of homes nobody is building.
CONSENTED, NOT COMMENCED
100,477 homes are stuck between yes and a building site.
7,818 residential schemes approved by London boroughs from 2015 to 2021 have no commencement date recorded in the Planning London Datahub.
93,911 of those homes sat on permissions the boroughs have since recorded as lapsed — consent expired before a spade went in. A further 6,566 homes hold live permission with no start logged. Average age of a stalled permission: 7.7 years.
PART TWOThe affordable homes are the ones that vanish.
WHO THE HOMES WERE FOR
20% of the stalled homes were consented as affordable.
19,988 affordable homes were negotiated, approved and never started.
Affordable units are usually the planning gain that justified the density. When a scheme stalls, that gain is not deferred — the permission lapses and the obligation dies with it. Meanwhile the boroughs furthest from their targets in the 2023 Housing Delivery Test were Lewisham (32%), Redbridge (39%), Greenwich (48%). A score below 75% triggers the presumption in favour of sustainable development — the government’s formal sanction for under-delivery.
PART THREESpeed is agreed away, not achieved.
THE 13-WEEK FICTION
Major applications are almost never decided in the statutory time.
Across London, only a fraction of major planning decisions land inside the 13-week statutory period; the rest run on agreed extensions that count as “on time”.
Islington decided 0% of 23 major applications inside 13 weeks, Greenwich decided 2% of 51 major applications inside 13 weeks, City of London decided 2.3% of 44 major applications inside 13 weeks (MHCLG Table P151a, April 2024 – March 2026). Because performance is measured against extensions of time, a borough can report near-perfect compliance while applicants wait years. Delay at the front door and stalling after consent are the same story told twice.
THE REGISTER · 100,477 HOMES
The stalled sites
register.
The 164 largest stalled residential schemes, with full application records retrieved from the Planning London Datahub. Stall risk score combines age of permission (40%), scheme size (30%), affordable share (20%) and the borough’s Housing Delivery Test result (10%). Click any row for a sourced evidence card.
| SITE | BOROUGH | HOMES | AFFORDABLE | PERMISSION | STATUS | STALL RISK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convoys WharfREF DC/13/83358 · SE8 3JD | Lewisham | 3,500 | 525 | 2015 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 81 |
| Phase 6 Kidbrooke VillageREF 14/2554/O · SE3 | Greenwich | 846 | 166 | 2015 | NO RECORDED START | 76 |
| S21: Site bounded by Royal Victoria DockREF 14/01605 · E16 | Newham | 3,000 | 576 | 2016 | NO RECORDED START | 73 |
| Barking ReachREF 16/00131/OUT · IG11 0XF | Barking and Dagenham | 9,891 | 3,776 | 2017 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 72 |
| Gallions QuarterREF 14/00664 · E16 2BF | Newham | 800 | 299 | 2016 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 71 |
| The Waterfront MasterplanREF 16/3025/MA · SE18 | Greenwich | 738 | 280 | 2017 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 70 |
| Green Car ParkREF 15/5550A · HA9 0DL | Brent | 4,115 | 1,473 | 2016 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 69 |
| Land North Of Royal Albert DockREF 14/00618/OUT · E16 | Newham | 845 | 0 | 2015 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 67 |
| Ruby Triangle SiteREF 18/AP/0897 · SE15 1LG | Southwark | 1,152 | 451 | 2019 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 65 |
| Stratford Centre and Morgan HouseREF 14/02289 · E15 1XB | Newham | 587 | 81 | 2016 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 62 |
| Land bound by Waterloo Road to the east;REF P0761.20 | Havering | 2,760 | 1,112 | 2021 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 60 |
| Former Somerfield DepotREF P1813.11 · RM13 8DE | Havering | 497 | 0 | 2015 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 60 |
| Carphone WarehouseREF P/2015/0095 · W3 6UL | Ealing | 764 | 0 | 2016 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 59 |
| Former Felnex Trading Estate Site, 190REF C2016/73625 · SM6 7EL | Sutton | 725 | 150 | 2016 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 59 |
| Sainsbury's, 55REF 4499/15 · IG1 2AA | Redbridge | 683 | 27 | 2018 | PERMISSION LAPSED | 59 |
WHAT TO DO WITH THIS
Stop counting permissions.
Start counting starts.
01 · FOR BOROUGHSPublish a commencement date for every consent. 100,477 homes are invisible in the delivery pipeline because nobody recorded whether they began.
02 · FOR THE GLAReport lapsed permissions as a delivery metric. 93,911 homes expired on paper without appearing in any published shortfall.
03 · FOR CAMPAIGNERSUse the register. Each evidence card carries the reference, the tenure mix and the source dataset, so a stalled site can be raised at a planning committee without new research.