Market Insight Report for June 2022

There was a total of 52,645 applications submitted through the Planning Portal in June 2022. This is a reduction of 18% in application submissions when compared to 2021. This follows the 10% drop we saw in May. This is culminating in a 16% total reduction for the year to date.  

We are now half-way through 2022. The graph shows the trend of submissions clearly and how 2022 mirrors the trends of 2021 from January to April, but with a lot less applications.

Apart from the exceptionally high number of submissions last year, 2022 remains higher than the previous years’ submission trends, until June where 2020 overtakes 2022.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the remaining 6 months of the year performs.

The regional view

Similarly to May, all regions throughout England and Wales have seen a reduction when compared to June 2021.  

The regions which saw the lowest reduction rate were the South West, which saw a dip of just 12%, West Midlands was down 14% and Wales, East of England and the South East all saw dips of 17%.

The biggest reduction this month was in London, with a fall of 21%. In June 2021 it received the most applications of all regions, although comparing to this year, received 2,700 fewer applications.

The map below shows the percentage change in applications by region from May 22 – June 22.

Applications by type 

In the first 6 months of 2022, Wales has seen a total of 7,270 application submissions, whilst England has seen 211,370.

This is a good time to measure how each application type is performing against the previous year.

In terms of the smaller proposals for Householder and associated consents and Prior Approval for larger home extensions, these types are down by 25% and 28% respectively.

From this we can conclude that homeowners are continuing to develop their properties albeit on a reduced scale. This could be to adapt properties for a better work/life balance following the changes that the pandemic bought to the world and introduction of hybrid working models across business.

Full Planning and associated consents are down by 18% too which we know covers a wide range of proposal types from smaller schemes to major large-scale developments.

Looking at how June submissions compared to last year, all main consent types are down as expected.

Full Planning Applications  

Applications for Full Planning and associated consents have dropped 18% year-on-year, while Outline applications have seen a 4% reduction, showing a slight 2% increase on last month.

Advertising Applications were the only application type which are seeing an increase in the year-to-date total.

Householder Applications  

Householder applications have fallen by 25% with Lawful Development consents dropping 20%. Larger Home Prior Approval Applications have reduced 28% compared with June last year. 

Planning fee income for online applications 

£24,582,722 of planning fees were processed throughout June 2022. This is a fall of 15% from last June. It is a stark contrast to May’s stats, which saw a 7% increase from May of 2021.

The Planning Portal have access to online application data exclusively available at the point of submission to Local Planning Authorities. The insights this data provides allows you to gain an early insight of what’s being applied for throughout England and Wales. If you would like to access this data on a more granular level, please email communications@planningportal.co.uk.

To access this data first, subscribe to our mailing list here.