Planning delays near 12 months as SME housebuilders are squeezed

Planning delays are taking close to a year between application and the grant of full planning permission in England, according to new Savills analysis that warns smaller housebuilders are carrying a disproportionate share of the financial pain.

The property consultancy says its analysis of Glenigan data shows a wait of nearly 12 months. That is an observed elapsed time in Savills’ research, not the statutory period for determining an application, and it should not be read as meaning every full application in England takes a year.

The finding matters because small and medium-sized housebuilders tend to have less financial headroom, fewer active sites over which to spread risk and greater reliance on development finance. Savills says lenders are increasingly pricing the possibility of planning delays into their decisions, tightening access to finance just as weak new-build sales are slowing the recycling of capital.

What Savills has actually measured

Savills published its new analysis on 30th September 2026, building on its August Land Matters: Removing Barriers to Housebuilding research.

Its wording is important. Savills says it now takes nearly 12 months between an application and the granting of full planning permission in England. It expressly says that period does not include obtaining outline permission, pre-planning requirements, securing access to a site or connecting utilities, each of which can add further time and cost.

There are limits to how far we can take the figure. On the public material reviewed by Planning Geek, Savills does not state whether the nearly 12 months is a mean or median, the period of applications analysed, the development-size thresholds used or how extensions of time were treated. It identifies the geography as England but does not publish sub-regional exclusions on the pages reviewed. We have therefore not filled those gaps by assumption.

Nor is the figure a replacement for the statutory determination periods. Government guidance says the normal limits are eight weeks for non-major development, 13 weeks for major development and 16 weeks where Environmental Impact Assessment is required, unless a longer period is agreed in writing with the applicant.

That distinction between statutory targets and real-world planning delays is central to this story.

Why official performance figures can still look much faster

The latest MHCLG planning application statistics show that 91% of major applications were decided within 13 weeks or an agreed time between April and June 2026. Look only at the statutory 13-week period, however, and the figure falls to 19%.

MHCLG also says 77% of major decisions involved what it calls a performance agreement, an umbrella measure covering Planning Performance Agreements, extensions of time and Environmental Impact Assessment cases. An application can therefore count as being determined within the agreed time while its calendar journey extends well beyond 13 weeks.

There is nothing contradictory in those two datasets. They answer different questions. The official performance series asks whether a decision met the statutory or agreed timetable. Savills is reporting the elapsed period it found between application and full permission in its Glenigan analysis.

This is also why the near-12-month figure should not be used as a shorthand claim that councils have a 12-month statutory determination period. They do not.

Why planning delays become a finance problem for SMEs

For an SME developer, time rarely sits in a planning silo. A delayed permission can flow straight into the land contract, loan facility, consultant appointments and build programme.

Interest and carrying costs continue while capital is tied up in a site that cannot yet progress. A site acquisition conditional on planning may need an extension. Option and promotion agreements can begin to run towards longstop dates. Consultant budgets can rise as technical work is refreshed, negotiations continue or an application changes over time.

The delay can then reach the construction side. Tender prices may expire. Contractors may no longer have the same availability. A Section 106 agreement can extend the route to a decision, while the timing and form of affordable housing obligations can affect both viability and lender confidence.

Even once full permission is secured, the cashflow problem may not be over. Reserved matters, where an outline consent came first, pre-commencement conditions, highways or utilities work and other approvals can sit on the critical path before construction can start.

That matters more to smaller builders because there are fewer schemes over which to absorb the shock. The National Housing Bank’s own SME guidance recognises the same structural problem: a housebuilder’s equity can remain trapped through a project’s lifecycle, limiting its ability to acquire and operate a second site.

Savills says development finance lenders are now pricing potential planning delays into risk assessments. That can mean more expensive or more constrained finance, more contingency required at appraisal stage and a scheme that becomes harder to make stack up before a spade enters the ground.

A counterpoint is the reported expansion of Goldman Sachs funding for SME lender Quantum. It shows institutional appetite for specialist development lending, although additional lender capacity does not automatically translate into loan drawdowns or new site starts.

The financing concern is echoed by lender LendInvest. Writing in August about SME housebuilders and planning delays, Chris Semple argued: “A ten-home scheme now clears substantially the same bureaucratic ground as a two-hundred-home one, without the balance sheet to absorb the wait.”

SME housebuilders are already operating with less room for error

Savills says the number of SME housebuilding firms has fallen by around 60% since 1995. Its Land Matters work also found that SME sales rates in 2025 were typically 30% to 40% below those achieved by larger developers in comparable markets.

Its 30th September analysis says average weekly sales rates for SMEs have fallen below 0.4 homes per outlet, slowing cash receipts and the recycling of capital into the next site.

The Home Builders Federation’s Q2 2026 SME Developer Sentiment Survey reinforces the planning concern. HBF’s own published survey says 74% of respondents identified planning process delays as one of their three most significant supply-side constraints, behind development viability at 75%.

The survey ran from 8th to 22nd May and received 110 responses from developers building anywhere from a handful of homes to around 500 a year. It was open to all SME homebuilders, not just HBF members, and respondents operated across English regions and Wales.

There is a small source discrepancy worth recording. Savills cites the HBF survey as showing 77% of developers identified planning delays as a major constraint. HBF’s primary published Q2 page gives 74%, so Planning Geek has used the HBF figure.

There is also a newer HBF measure. Its Q3 2026 SME survey, published in August, found planning process delays were cited by 68% of respondents, again second to development viability at 75%. That does not alter Savills’ elapsed-time analysis, but it is the more recent HBF reading of how SMEs rank planning delays among their current constraints.

One HBF survey respondent said: “SMEs are one of the few parts of the industry still willing to take on difficult, constrained and technically challenging sites.”

The scale issue also shows up in the land pipeline. Savills estimates there are about 3.6 million plots in the wider UK planning pipeline. It says large housebuilders control around 30% and SME housebuilders around 10%, with the balance held by a mixture of land promoters, developers and other parties.

Those are Savills figures and describe a broad UK pipeline, not a measure of homes with immediately implementable full permission.

This is different from the falling housing pipeline story

Planning Geek reported separately that housing permissions and approved projects have fallen sharply. That story is principally about the volume of permissions entering the pipeline and the record-low number of approved schemes.

This Savills analysis is about something different: how long schemes can take to move through planning, how the cost of that time lands on a developer and why a smaller balance sheet makes the same delay harder to absorb.

Recent corporate results also show why that distinction matters. Vistry has been resetting its land exposure and private-sales mix, while Henry Boot’s Hallam Land business has continued investing in planning promotion despite weaker residential land sales. Permission, land value, finance and the eventual route to sale are related, but they are not the same commercial test.

The pressure is not confined to SMEs. Housing Today reported in September that Barratt Redrow had reduced its housebuilding forecast, citing “continued planning delays and a consequent reduction to expected sales outlet openings”. For smaller builders, the same planning delays can be harder to absorb because fewer live sites are available to spread the risk.

For an SME operating one or two live sites, the relationship can be much tighter. A planning delay on one project can restrict the cash available to secure the next.

What Savills wants government to change

Savills’ recommendations go beyond asking councils to determine applications faster. They are proposals from the consultancy, not Planning Geek policy.

It wants the National Housing Bank’s lending offer for SMEs expanded and more up-front infrastructure funding made available to ease cashflow and viability pressure. The Bank already offers SME accelerator loans, lending alliances and other development finance products, but Savills argues for further support.

On demand, Savills supports an equity-loan intervention for new-build purchasers. The Government announced Your First Home on 26th September, with final detail due at the Budget. Savills’ blog refers to the scheme as “Your First Move”, but the official Government name is Your First Home.

For Section 106, Savills proposes greater flexibility including cascade mechanisms, wider acceptance of Discounted Market Sale and temporary grant funding to part-fund obligations where that helps unlock stalled schemes.

It also wants early allocations under the 2026 to 2036 Social and Affordable Homes Programme so Registered Providers can increase delivery and provide more counter-cyclical demand for affordable homes.

Those proposals are commercially significant for SMEs because delays do not stop at the committee resolution. A permission subject to a Section 106 agreement can still carry timing and funding uncertainty while the agreement is negotiated and an affordable housing delivery route is secured.

What practitioners should take from the evidence

The practical lesson is to programme planning delays and planning risk in commercial terms, rather than treating the statutory determination period as the likely end date.

• Build realistic planning headroom into acquisition contracts, options, promotion agreements and longstop dates
• Stress-test interest, holding costs and consultant budgets against a longer planning programme
• Keep tender validity and construction inflation in view if the planning timetable moves
• Address Section 106 and affordable housing delivery risk early where it can affect lender drawdown or viability
• Programme reserved matters, pre-commencement conditions, highways, utilities and other post-permission steps separately
• Explain to clients and lenders that “within agreed time” in official statistics does not necessarily mean a short calendar journey

None of this means every English full application takes nearly 12 months. Savills has published a striking elapsed-time finding, but not enough public methodology to justify turning it into a universal average.

What the evidence does show is why planning delays have become a balance-sheet issue as well as a planning one. For smaller builders with capital concentrated in a handful of sites, another month in the system is not merely another month on a programme. It can determine whether the next site can be bought, financed or started at all.