A01v2Delivery risk: RedGate: pending
Turn housing permissions into completed homes
A new scope of action A01 (A01v2); A01 itself is unchanged and nothing is inherited from it.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Population not yet defined. Jurisdiction: not defined.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline not yet stated
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Housing
- In the national plan: Growth and prosperity list
- Previous version: NP5: Publish what is ready to build — projects and housing sites — with each blocker’s owner and cost (4 October 2026 slate, superseded 7 October 2026).
- The evidence trail for this option →
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Permissions are not completions. Infrastructure, finance, build-out and tenure determine whether an additional permission becomes a useful home.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Choose named stalled sites, identify the binding constraint and compare infrastructure support, acquisition, contractual build-out and no additional intervention.
- Test whether it works
- Additional occupied homes by tenure and date, relative to the site’s funded baseline; track displacement from neighbouring sites and affordability of the completed homes.
- Establish the cost
- Land, enabling works, finance, construction, subsidy, maintenance and the public share of risk. Keep grant, loans and guarantees distinct.
- Protect against harm
- Retain building safety, environmental mitigation and affordability obligations; do not book the whole national housing ambition as the effect of this option.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Turn housing permissions into completed homes: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Select sites; resolve land, planning, utilities, transport and viability; commission tenure mix and delivery agreements. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Reviewer’s reason: Housing constraints and modelled supply responses support the case; no evaluated national effect for this exact site-unblocking package.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Reviewer’s reason: Binding construction/infrastructure constraints; environmental and displacement harms.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Site-level land, infrastructure, finance, construction, affordable-housing subsidy and maintenance.
Delivery capacity (Ca)1 of 3 — Binding scarce resource
Reviewer’s reason: Select sites; resolve land, planning, utilities, transport and viability; commission tenure mix and delivery agreements.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Net additional completed and occupied homes, affordability and displacement.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: Planning authorities, housing bodies, developers and utilities; devolved responsibility; Site-specific investment appraisal
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 13.6–19.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 15.6–18.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: RedReview’s claim: Red. Best the recorded evidence allows: Red.
Review’s reason: Binding construction/infrastructure constraints; environmental and displacement harms.
Why it is not Green yet
- Delivery obstacle: Binding construction/infrastructure constraints; environmental and displacement harms..
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Site-level land, infrastructure, finance, construction, affordable-housing subsidy and maintenance.
Funding status: not established in review.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Planning authorities, housing bodies, developers and utilities; devolved responsibility (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- not assessed
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Not defined in the review.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Risks and residual harms: Binding construction/infrastructure constraints; environmental and displacement harms.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Net additional completed and occupied homes, affordability and displacement.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Net additional homes: latest 208,600 (2024–25); baseline 248,591 (2019–20) (England).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Net additional completed and occupied homes, affordability and displacement.
Housing constraints and modelled supply responses support the case; no evaluated national effect for this exact site-unblocking package.
SWOT points it addresses
- England added 208,600 homes, against about 300,000 a year implied by the government’s 1.5 million ambition.
- The planning reforms are in force: the National Planning Policy Framework was revised in December 2024 and replaced by a new version on 17 August 2026, and the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 became law on 18 December 2025. Their effect on the number of homes built has not yet been observed.
- Build-cost inflation, shortages of materials and labour, stretched planning teams and delays with utilities can mean fewer completions than planned — as the NAO found for the last programme.
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Select sites; resolve land, planning, utilities, transport and viability; commission tenure mix and delivery agreements. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Site-specific investment appraisal
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.