Angela Rayner suffers fresh blow as planning approvals are 'not being delivered'

Angela Rayner has suffered a fresh blow after an industry expert claimed that major projects like the planned third runway at Heathrow "simply won't happen" as building firms cope with huge extra costs. Steven Mulholland, CEO of the Construction Plant-hire Association, said: “The latest 2.6% inflation rate still outpaces the Bank of England’s target – and without global drops in oil prices, it would be even higher. Costs are rising across every part of the UK supply chain, with construction hit hardest."

Roofing Today highlighted earlier this month Glenigan Construction data, which showed project starts are down 21% year-on-year, and decreased by 4% against the preceding three months in the first quarter of 2025. Specialists say the review, which focuses on the three months to the end of March 2025, "suggests major schemes are stalling as the new starts shrink". Mr Mulholland added that "while planning approvals are up, fewer are being delivered".

"That’s not the sign of a healthy industry," he said.

Government data suggests that, during April to June 2024, authorities granted 70,200 decisions. This was down 7% from the same quarter a year earlier.

This represented 86% of all decisions, which was unchanged from the same quarter a year earlier. In the year ending June 2024, meanwhile, authorities granted 280,000 decisions, down 11% from the year ending June 2023.

In March, it was reported that the number of housing projects granted planning permission in England in 2024 hit a record low.

Just more than 30,000 projects got the green light, which was the lowest full-year figure since records started in 1979.

“National Insurance increases, rigid net zero targets and looming changes to Business Property Relief are piling pressure on the very businesses that generate employment, growth and tax receipts.

"If Labour is serious about growth, it must urgently take stock of the damage its policies are doing – because major infrastructure projects like Heathrow’s third runway simply won’t happen if the firms and supply chains needed to deliver them no longer exist.”

An increase in employers' National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage announced by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves in October, kicked in at the beginning of April.

In March, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) halved the UK’s growth forecast for 2025 from 2% to 1%. But it added that it would be higher than anticipated for every year until the next General Election in 2029.

The government emphasised that month that the forecast also found housebuilding will be at its highest level in over 40 years a result of ministers' planning reforms by 2029/30.

The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said earlier this month on the local election campaign trail: “We are not a Government that is just going to sit back and hope.

“I strongly believe that is how politics has failed our communities for so many years, because in the past politics has tried to manage crises, and that has only led to managed decline.

“What we’ve got to do, what we’re offering is fundamental change, rewiring the state completely, ripping up regulation that stops it being a force for good.”