SOCIAL MEDIA ZEITGEIST

 

In London’s densely woven urban fabric, infill housing should be one of our most powerful tools for delivering new homes. These small-scale, site-specific developments have the unique potential to revitalise forgotten spaces, adaptively reuse infrastructure, and stitch communities together. They are fast to build, contextually sensitive, and capable of responding to local needs in a way that large-volume schemes often cannot.

Yet, those of us working to deliver infill housing know that the barriers are not physical, or even financial – they’re systemic. We’ve learned the hard way that what should be a nimble process is instead bound up in a planning regime that stifles momentum and bleeds small projects dry.

Our experience of trying to push schemes through planning in London

A prime example of this dysfunction is demonstrated by recent experience with a project on Kingsland High Street in Dalston. It’s a modest but carefully considered development: six new homes positioned above an existing retail unit. The vision was to transform a constrained rooftop and underused yard into a small courtyard community – complete with landscaped planters, natural light, and a contemporary architectural language drawn from the street’s Victorian heritage. On paper, everything we believed was appropriate and proportionate for a project of this type and scale.

From the outset, the scheme was well received in principle. Planners and local conservation groups saw the potential and expressed support. But the reality of the process was grinding – nearly two years of wrangling for a project that technically should have been assessed in eight weeks.

We were asked to produce an exhaustive set of technical documents: construction logistics, air quality, noise assessments, flood risk, and more. These requirements arrived in two distinct waves: one as part of the planning submission, and another as planning conditions after the initial review. Many of the reports felt redundant, echoing information submitted for neighbouring developments.

But duplication wasn’t the only issue; the unpredictability of these demands issued piecemeal, with no clear schedule, made planning extremely difficult.

Some reports took months to prepare, often requiring specialists with limited availability, such as consultants assessing potential Crossrail 2 impacts. Just assembling this volume of information caused significant delays before the application could even be considered – adding cost, complexity, and ultimately making developers think twice.

While the list was extensive, what stood out was the absence of the two elements that truly matter early in the process: the structural design of the project, which straddles an existing retail unit; and the cost projections for construction.

Why do planners take no interest in understanding these essential project-making factors before weighing in with opinions?

Hackney Council also insisted on larger family dwellings, despite this site’s suitability for smaller, starter homes. There was no room for flexibility, even though we had tailored the project specifically to the local market and context.

We did finally achieve planning consent after nearly two years of submitting the application – but the project has been whittled away to the point where it is touch and go whether it will be financially viable to build. We are in the process of going out to tender to sympathetic contractors, who will inevetably have to construct at their own risk too, if we are able to make it happen.

Our Dolben Street development in Southwark is an even smaller project, but one with a similarly frustrating trajectory. Located on a corner near Southwark tube station, this scheme adds just three new triple-aspect flats above a refurbished historic building. The design preserves the character of the original structure while animating the corner with a formal contemporary addition; a corner marker building that enhances the quality of the street, we believe.

And yet, despite its modest footprint, Southwark Council insisted the scheme contribute to affordable housing quotas. In other words, even three flats had to come with a policy burden more suited to a larger housing development.

This insistency immediately made the project unviable financially, and our first time developer lost their courage, and patience.

This kind of rigidity is becoming alarmingly common. Planning policies originally intended for large-scale developments are now being applied indiscriminately to small infill schemes, with little regard for proportionality. The result is a mounting toll on the viability of these projects.

In Southwark, for example, the introduction of the 2022 Local Plan (Policy P1) extended onerous affordable housing requirements to developments with fewer than 10 units.

It was a surprising move, introduced just after two years of COVID, at a moment when small and medium-sized construction was widely seen as a critical engine for economic recovery.

Instead, the policy risks delivering the final blow to precisely the kind of entrepreneurial development London needs most.

A policy shift and signs of hope?

The recent announcements from central government on planning reform for small sites are welcome. The move to cut red tape and make it easier to develop underused plots signals a long-overdue recognition of the problem. This is an encouraging step in the right direction, especially easing the planning burden. But further steps will be needed, including making sure affordable housing policies promote housebuilding, rather than inhibit it.

We’ve found that access to finance is not the principal barrier. While interest rates are high, capital is available. What’s lacking is certainty. And the uncertainty isn’t just about planning timelines, it’s about shifting goalposts, overinterpretation of guidelines, and policy creep.

Planning-related obligations have also grown in complexity in ways that disproportionately burden small schemes. Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), while well-intentioned, often introduces another layer of scope creep, requiring yet further specialist consultancy and expanding the architect’s role beyond what’s viable on tight budgets. In practice, BNG can also conflict with other planning priorities, such as the push for rooftop photovoltaics, as both compete for limited surface area. Fire safety thresholds – especially as they’ve begun to apply to buildings as low as five or six storeys – can further inflate technical demands.

Taken together, these overlapping and sometimes contradictory requirements create an environment where even the most responsible, well-designed small projects are increasingly difficult to get off the ground.

Disproportionate policy burdens are being applied to small sites. For instance, with regards to affordable housing quotas, while the intention may be to support housing access, these demands often render small schemes financially unviable, effectively blocking the very kind of community-led, incremental development that planning reforms are supposed to enable.

Crucially, we need to be more honest and precise about what “affordable housing” means. It’s a term that suggests broad accessibility, but in the UK planning system, it rarely lives up to that promise. Affordable housing, as currently defined, can refer to a wide array of schemes with complex and inconsistent eligibility criteria, varying significantly between boroughs. In some cases, applicants must prove a failed mortgage application just to qualify.

Many of these policies prioritise rental units over homes for sale, further reducing opportunities for ownership and distorting the market by narrowing the supply side. These schemes tend to benefit large, often private-sector providers, who secure long-term government-backed rental income, rather than expanding housing choice for residents.

Even many architects struggle to grasp the full implications of these policies, so what hope is there for transparency or public trust?

If we are serious about unlocking small-site housing and diversifying who gets to build in our cities, we need more than quotas, we need clarity, proportionality, and policies that align with lived urban realities. And that starts with calling things by their right name. What’s marketed as ‘affordable’ frequently just means rental dependence, undermining the possibility of ownership and cross-generational stability.

Rolling consent with proportional scrutiny

If we could change just one element of the current system, it would be the introduction of rolling levels of planning consent, with an early gateway for fast, proportionate approvals.

In practice, this would mean allowing smaller projects to obtain an initial form of consent that is based on clear visuals, site plans, and a concise design statement, and within a strict eight-week timeline.

Secondary technical reports and conditions could follow at later stages, once the project has already received a green light in principle, and developers and investors are encouraged that the project has legs. This approach would preserve design scrutiny and regulatory integrity while reducing the financial and emotional attrition that currently deters so many small-scale innovators.

The role of architects and why it matters

As architects, we are more than service providers. We are often the instigators – identifying underutilised land, proposing creative solutions, and building relationships with small-scale risk-taking clients and developers. We are embedded in our communities. We understand the grain of the city.

But under the current system, our ideas struggle to gain traction. We are blocked not by bad design, but by process. And for those brave enough to self-initiate projects or work in speculative development, the risks are only increasing.

This isn’t just about housing numbers. It’s about the richness and resilience of our urban fabric. Large-volume developers will always build – on greenfields, brownfields, at scale, with risk offset through size. But they won’t populate the alleyways, rooftops, and backland mews with thoughtful, neighbourly architecture. That’s our job. And right now, we’re being legislated out of it.

 

Rebuilding a system that works

We recently came across government statistics showing that the majority of the UK’s new housing – produced by the big housebuilders, accounts for 78% of all new housing in the country. Small developers contribute only 10% of new units, while local authorities are responsible for just 1.4% of housing completions.

I find these figures depressing, particularly when compared to the situation 50 years ago. In the 1960s and 1970s, local authorities delivered 40–50% of housing, while small developers accounted for around 40%.

Has the shift toward large-scale, corporate housing provision resulted in better urbanism? More affordable homes? I don’t think so.

I propose that an expanded ecosystem of smaller developers would be more entrepreneurial, efficient, and community-sensitive – far more so than the current “closed shop” system dominated by very large housebuilders. These corporations are often the only ones with the resources to navigate a planning system that has evolved to accommodate their dominance. Wouldn’t a growing community of smaller developers, supported by local design teams, better represent a broader spectrum of society compared to the interests of blue-chip boards and institutional investors? Just a thought.

Let’s remove arbitrary hurdles for the teams who are ready to deliver. Let’s enable fast, fair, proportional approvals that let infill projects breathe. Because if we continue to strangle the small stuff, then the future of housing will remain a slow process of attrition led by the big guns only. And I am not sure that this is taking us where we need to go.

Olga McMurdo set up MOST Architecture in 2017, having previously worked for OMA, Grimshaw Architects and Zaha Hadid. She won the WAN Female Frontier Award, for best emerging architect in 2023, and in the same year, the studio received its first RIBA London Award for the Charge Cars R&D Factory in Stockley.