Ben Howlett
Chief Executive, CuriaThe Government is right to give mayors greater powers to unblock development. It reflects years of calls from organisations including Curia for a clearer planning system, stronger devolution, and better integration between housing and infrastructure. But London provides an important warning: granting permission is not the same as building homes. As ministers consult on the new powers, they should go further and make greater mayoral authority come with greater responsibility for delivery.
For years, the debate about the UK’s housing crisis has revolved around a familiar problem: everyone agrees that more homes need to be built, yet too often the planning system makes delivering them slow, uncertain, and politically difficult.
Over the past week, the Government has made a significant attempt to change that.
Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook has already introduced a more rules-based National Planning Policy Framework, including stronger expectations for development around well-connected railway stations, greater certainty for strategic development and reforms designed to make planning decisions faster and more predictable. The Government described the changes as creating a clearer basis for decision-making and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
Then, over the weekend, ministers went further.
Under proposals announced on Sunday, elected mayors across England will gain powers to “call in” strategically important planning applications. Developments involving more than 150 homes, more than 15,000 square metres of commercial space or buildings above 30 metres will potentially fall within the new system. Mayors will be able to take decisions away from councils, approve or refuse schemes and grant upfront permission for development. They will also receive greater influence over Homes England investment and new powers to levy development to support major infrastructure.
This is an important change – something that Curia has long advocated for – and one that should be welcomed.
Government has moved towards arguments Curia has made for years
Curia has consistently argued that Britain cannot achieve the housing and economic growth it needs while housing, transport, and infrastructure are considered separately.
Its Transforming Communities work identified planning uncertainty as a fundamental barrier to housebuilding and called for stronger links throughout the housebuilding supply chain – from national planning policy and local authorities through to the businesses responsible for construction. It argued for clearer, longer-term regulation, and a more predictable system.
More recently, Curia’s Building Britain’s Future work called for a clearer and more predictable planning system, better integration between housing and infrastructure, and stronger local capacity to turn national reform into homes, investment and growth.
There is therefore much to welcome in the Government’s direction of travel.
As has been demonstrated in areas such as Greater Manchester, greater strategic authority for mayors can help overcome fragmented decision-making. Transport investment can be linked with housing. Homes England funding can be aligned with regional priorities. Large developments that are important to an entire city region need no longer depend exclusively on the politics of one council boundary.
But giving mayors the ability to grant planning permission cannot be the end of the reform.
Curia has long since advocated for the need to new focus on delivery.
London provides the warning
The Government explicitly says the new arrangements will bring mayors elsewhere in England into line with powers already exercised in London.
That makes London’s experience essential to understanding what should happen next.
The lesson is not that mayoral planning powers do not work. The Mayor of London has used strategic planning powers to unlock schemes that might otherwise have been refused, and London has delivered substantial numbers of homes.
The problem is that planning permission alone has proved incapable of overcoming the wider barriers between consent and completion.
London Assembly analysis found that more than 300,000 homes had planning permission in the capital but had not been built. London Plan monitoring put the approved but incomplete pipeline at 347,111 homes at the end of 2023/24.
That is an extraordinary number.
At the same time, London’s recent affordable housing record illustrates the gap between ambition and delivery. The Mayor’s 2021–26 Affordable Homes Programme originally envisaged 35,000 starts. The target was subsequently reduced twice, ultimately to between 17,800 and 19,000, yet only 14,335 affordable homes had started by March 2026.
There are legitimate explanations. High interest rates, construction inflation, viability pressures, infrastructure constraints, and building-safety requirements have all affected delivery. It would be simplistic to attribute every stalled home to City Hall, councils or developers.
But that is precisely the point.
Planning permission is only one part of the housing-delivery system
If we give mayors greater powers simply to approve applications without giving them corresponding responsibilities and tools to overcome what happens afterwards, there is a danger that we replicate the London problem across England: impressive numbers of homes in the planning pipeline without enough front doors appearing on the ground.
With greater power must come greater delivery responsibility
The Government’s forthcoming consultation is therefore an opportunity to improve the model before it becomes embedded nationally.
The starting principle should be:
Call-in must come with build-out
First, the Government should establish a Mayoral Housing Delivery Duty.
If mayors are to gain greater control over strategic planning, infrastructure funding and Homes England investment, they should also have a statutory responsibility to take reasonable steps to secure delivery against their area’s housing requirement.
Alongside that should sit a Mayoral Housing Delivery Test.
Government should publish comparable annual data for every mayoral strategic authority showing not only how many homes have received planning permission, but how many have started and how many have actually been completed.
For schemes called in by a mayor, that information should be particularly transparent.
A mayor who announces permission for 3,000 homes should still be answering questions three, five, and seven years later about whether those homes have appeared.
Follow called-in developments from permission to completion
Second, every major development determined using mayoral call-in powers should come with a published build-out trajectory.
The Government has already laid much of the groundwork.
Its existing build-out reforms provide for developers to submit build-out statements, commencement notices and annual development progress reports. Ministers have also proposed sanctions against developers who repeatedly fail to build at a reasonable rate.
Those requirements should apply automatically to every major scheme determined through mayoral intervention.
If a mayor calls in a 2,000-home development and grants permission, the public should be able to see when construction is supposed to begin, how many homes should be completed each year and whether delivery is running ahead or behind.
And mayoral responsibility should not disappear once the planning committee meeting finishes.
Where a strategically important site falls significantly behind schedule, the mayor should have a duty to establish why and publish an intervention plan.
Perhaps the problem is a utility connection.
Perhaps it is transport infrastructure.
Perhaps the scheme has become commercially unviable.
Perhaps there is a regulatory blockage.
Or perhaps a developer is simply failing to build.
Different problems require different responses. But the mayor, armed with stronger planning, infrastructure, and funding powers, should be responsible for bringing the relevant organisations together to resolve them.
Give mayors the tools to tackle stalled development
Third, Government should ensure mayors have meaningful escalation powers where development does not proceed.
Ministers have already proposed a Delayed Homes Penalty where developers fall materially behind an agreed build-out schedule without reasonable justification. Existing reforms also envisage stronger completion notices, measures against persistently slow developers and compulsory purchase where stalled development needs public intervention.
These policies fit naturally alongside mayoral call-in.
Where a mayor has taken responsibility for approving a strategically significant development, they should also be able to trigger the machinery designed to get that development moving.
That could mean working with Homes England on viability or infrastructure. It could mean using a development corporation to assemble land. In the most serious cases it could mean completion notices, financial penalties or compulsory purchase.
The intention should not be to punish developers facing genuine economic or regulatory difficulties. It should be to ensure there is always somebody with both the responsibility and the tools to act when thousands of promised homes remain indefinitely on paper.
Tie housing funding to outcomes
Fourth, the Government should use the new relationship between Homes England and mayors to reward delivery.
The weekend’s announcement gives mayors greater influence over national housing investment and says Homes England’s funding and expertise will increasingly focus on priorities agreed with local mayors.
That is welcome.
But a proportion of future devolved housing funding should be linked to demonstrable delivery outcomes.
That does not mean crudely penalising places facing difficult markets. It means rewarding authorities that can show they are converting land, planning permission and infrastructure investment into completed homes, while requiring recovery plans in areas where delivery persistently falls behind.
Government should measure what residents actually experience: homes built, infrastructure delivered and communities created.
Publish the stalled sites
Finally, every mayoral strategic authority should maintain a publicly accessible Strategic Housing Delivery and Stalled Sites Register.
For every major development it could show:
- permission granted;
- number of homes approved;
- expected start date;
- actual start date;
- expected completion;
- homes completed;
- public funding committed;
- reasons for significant delay; and
- action being taken.
That would transform accountability.
The political debate would move away from competing announcements about the number of homes “unlocked” and towards an objective assessment of what has actually been delivered.
The next stage of devolution should be about outcomes
Curia has long argued that devolution works best when national ambition, regional leadership, infrastructure, and delivery are connected.
Its work has also repeatedly highlighted the gap between policy announcement and practical implementation, and the need to strengthen local capability if national reform is to achieve its objectives.
The Government deserves credit for listening to that wider argument.
A more predictable planning system, transport-led development, and stronger strategic mayors could all play an important role in tackling Britain’s housing shortage.
Ministers should now be ambitious enough to finish the job.
London demonstrates why granting more planning powers is not sufficient on its own. The challenge is not merely deciding whether homes should be built. It is ensuring that once permission has been granted, somebody is accountable for overcoming the obstacles that prevent them being built.
So as the Government brings forward the detail of its mayoral reforms, it should establish a simple bargain.
Give mayors the power to call developments in – but require them to follow those developments through. Give them greater control over planning – but judge them on completions. Give them greater influence over housing investment – but require transparent evidence that it is producing homes. And where development stalls, give them the powers and responsibility to get it moving.
That would not reject the London model.
It would learn from it.
And it would ensure that this next phase of devolution is judged not by the number of planning permissions politicians can announce, but by the number of homes communities can actually see being built.
Get involved
Join Curia’s Housing and Infrastructure Research Group members for their next meeting to discuss a response to the Government’s planning consultation. To find out more and get involved, please contact team@curiauk.com