Market Insight Report for May 2022

There has been a total of 57,438 applications submitted through Planning Portal in May 2022. This is a reduction of 10% in application submissions when compared to 2021. This is culminating in a 15% total reduction for the year to date.

As we expected, May application figures were fairly strong. They were down only 10%, compared with the 20% drop we saw in April.

New prior approval forms?

During May we introduced 12 new prior approval forms to our planning application service. These forms went live on 19 May, and for the last 8 working days of May, we saw 91 applications submitted using these forms. 56 of these were for ‘Change of use - commercial/business/service to dwelling houses’.?For more information about this, you can catch up on our webinar here.

The regional view

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

The regions which saw the lowest reduction rate were the South West, with a dip of –5%, and London and Wales, both at –6%.

The biggest reductions can be seen in Yorkshire and The Humber at -13%. The North East, North West and South East all at –12%.

There has been a decline in online application submissions across all regions throughout May 2022 when compared to 2021.

Applications by type

All main consent types fell compared to May 2021.??Telecoms applications seem to be on the rise again, with –26% compared to –50%.

Full Planning Applications

Applications for Full Planning and associated consents have dropped 7% year-on-year, while Outline applications have seen a 15% reduction, showing a slight 2% increase on last month.

Householder Applications??

Householder applications have fallen by 17% with Lawful Development consents dropping 10%. Larger Home Prior Approval Applications have reduced 22%. This is much closer to the average drop of 10% than we have seen in recent months.

Planning fee income for online applications

￡27,629,829 of planning fees were processed throughout May 2022. This is actually 7% higher than last May, even though we have seen applications down 10% overall. This again indicates a shift in application types, with larger schemes being submitted rather than the vast number of Householder applications seen throughout the pandemic.

Statistics also show that 26% of LPAs received more or the same number of applications as May last year, whereas 74% received fewer applications than last May.??

A spotlight on London illustrates the variation across different authorities. Of the top 50 LPAs nationally, Islington saw the biggest increase in applications - they were up by 33%. Bromley, on the other hand, saw the biggest drop in applications, down 23%.??

Only 10 out of the top 50 LPAs saw increases in their applications this May compared to May last year.

Planning Portal have access to online application data exclusively available at the point of submission to Local 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 [email protected].

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