Application numbers in England and Wales – 63,873 applications submitted throughout June 2021.

Typically, we see a slight drop in application numbers between the months of May and June, however, this year saw a negligible increase of 376 between the two months. In June, 63,873 applications were submitted, compared to 63,497 in the previous month. As reported last month, May figures were actually slightly lower than we would have expected and so it seems possible that this is simply a flattening of the usual curve, most likely due to the number of working days in the relevant months which fluctuate year-on-year.

The national graph represents the number of online planning application submissions via the Planning Portal each month since the beginning of 2016.

In terms of a comparison to 2020, June 2021 saw a 17% increase on June 2020 volumes. This was compared to a 52% increase between May 2020 and May 2021, reported in last month’s issue.  This narrowing of the percentage increase between the same month year-on-year is, however, unsurprising as last June was the beginning of the uptick in application numbers. The swell of applications created by the first lockdown and pent-up demand continued to ramp up through July before quietening slightly for the usual holiday period in August.  We would therefore expect this year to return to a more usual pattern next month.

This analysis is part of the Planning Portal Planning Market Insight Report. The Planning Market Insight Report is the earliest source of planning market data available, and each issue features key high-level statistics as well as deeper analysis of a specific sector or topic.

You can access the full report here:

The above article was provided to us by the Planning Portal.