Evidence trail · Growth and prosperity

Turn housing permissions into completed homes

Delivery risk: RedFurther checks needed

Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.

Scoring overview · equal weights

Range if completed: 14 to 20 out of 30 (equal weights). Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit, incremental affordability.

← Back to the planOn its topic page: Housing →

The golden thread for this option, step by step. A dashed step is missing — shown as a gap, never filled in. Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case, and not government policy.

  1. Step 1: Topic headlineIn place

    Housing

    A typical home in England costs 7.6 times annual pay, more than double 1997.

    Priority: Help more people find affordable, secure homes and prevent homelessness. What would change it →

  2. Step 2: Deep diveIn place

  3. Step 3: EvidencePartly in place

    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.

    This is a new scope of A01; the base action’s evidence is not carried over to it.

    8 October research follow-up · AI-assisted

    Permissions are not completions. Infrastructure, finance, build-out and tenure determine whether an additional permission becomes a useful home.

    The proposed design, costing task and safeguards are in the assessment below. These sources do not make an incomplete appraisal complete.

  4. Step 4: Competing optionsIn place

    Funded now (current baseline)
    Not yet stated in the record.
    The change assessed
    Not yet defined.

    Other options assessed on Housing

    • Give families in temporary accommodation a settled home

      Delivery risk: AmberFurther checks needed

      Housing delivery

      Settled homes for families in temporary accommodation

      Owner: Councils and housing providers; relevant national housing bodies. Cost: Capital, finance, refurbishment, rent, maintenance, support and actual avoided temporary-accommodation costs..

      Assessment range and limitations

      Range if completed: 19 to 22 out of 30 (equal weights). Not yet assessed: incremental affordability.

      Topic: Housing

    • Prevent avoidable loss of rented homes

      Delivery risk: AmberFurther checks needed

      Prevention · Evaluation

      Test early rent-arrears/legal advice and targeted assistance for a defined at-risk cohort before homelessness occurs.

      Owner: councils, housing/advice providers and landlords. Cost: Define arrears/risk trigger, legal advice and assistance design; cost staff, grants and sustained tenancies. Assess additional prevention against existing duties. Proposed owners: councils, housing/advice providers and landlords..

      Assessment range and limitations

      Range if completed: 16 to 22 out of 30 (equal weights). Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit, incremental affordability.

      Topic: Housing

    • Protect flood-defence maintenance and appraise schemes by risk

      Delivery risk: AmberFurther checks needed

      Infrastructure · Prevention

      Separate maintenance of existing protection from long-lead new defences and assess each against local exposure.

      Owner: Defra, Environment Agency and local partners in England.. Cost: Incremental lifetime costs and funding not established. Use engineering and risk appraisal; low trial evidence is not grounds to leave essential protection unmanaged..

      Assessment range and limitations

      Range if completed: 15 to 21 out of 30 (equal weights). Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit, incremental affordability.

      Topic: Housing

    Alternatives already on record on the topic page: 34 under its SWOT points and 2 earlier options compared, not scored in the review. See them on Housing.

  5. Step 5: SWOT points it addressesIn place

  6. Step 6: The action and its assessmentIn place

    The action card on Housing: Turn permissions into homes people can live in

    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
    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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation

      Reviewer’s reason: Binding construction/infrastructure constraints; environmental and displacement harms.

    6. Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed

      Reviewer’s reason: Site-level land, infrastructure, finance, construction, affordable-housing subsidy and maintenance.

    7. 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.

    8. 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.

    9. 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.

    10. 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

    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

    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.

  7. Step 7: Measured resultsPartly in place

    Judged on: Net additional completed and occupied homes, affordability and displacement.

    Data source: not yet named. Baseline: not yet established.

    A page measure is not necessarily the option’s metric, and a measure moving is not proof that the option caused it.