London Builds Up While Amsterdam and Tokyo Build Smart: How the Capital Stacks Up on Housing

London approved just 35,000 new homes in 2025, against a stated annual target of 52,000 set by the Mayor's London Plan — a shortfall that has become the central embarrassment of Sadiq Khan's third term and the clearest measure of how far the capital lags behind comparable global cities. The figures, published by the Greater London Authority in June, landed the same week the Starmer government's Planning and Infrastructure Bill reached its committee stage in the Commons, promising the most significant overhaul of English planning law since 1947.

The timing matters. Europe's major cities are not standing still. Amsterdam completed 7,200 new dwellings in 2025 on a city roughly one-tenth of London's population, a proportional output that dwarfs anything the capital has managed this decade. Tokyo, perennially cited by urbanists, issued building permits for over 140,000 units across the Greater Tokyo Area last year alone, a pace sustained by near-automatic zoning approvals for mid-rise residential blocks that would face years of planning inquiries in Southwark or Lambeth. The contrast is not flattering to London.

What the Government Is Promising — and What's Actually Moving

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, if passed in its current form, would strip back local authority veto powers over housing developments in designated Growth Zones and create a new national infrastructure body to fast-track approvals. Whitehall officials have pointed specifically to the Lower Thames corridor and the Euston to Old Oak Common stretch along the HS2 route as early candidates for the new streamlined process. Transport for London's Opportunity Areas framework, which has been in place since 2011, already designates 47 zones for intensified development — but critics at the London Assembly have noted that fewer than a third have hit their housing targets in the current planning cycle.

Silvertown Quays in Newham, a scheme that won planning consent in 2018 and has been mired in financial restructuring ever since, is the most cited example of the gap between ambition and delivery. Across the river, the Brentford regeneration zone near Kew Bridge has moved faster, with Berkeley Homes and the council delivering roughly 900 units since 2022 — still well short of the 2,500 originally promised by 2026. Meanwhile, average asking prices in Newham reached £480,000 in May 2026, according to Rightmove data, up 12 percent in two years despite the construction promises.

What Tokyo and Amsterdam Get Right That London Keeps Getting Wrong

The gap between London and its peers is not simply about money or political will — it is structural. Tokyo's zoning system, governed nationally rather than borough by borough, means a developer submitting plans for a six-storey block in Shinjuku faces a predictable process with defined timelines. A comparable scheme in Islington or Haringey will typically encounter a discretionary planning committee, community consultations, heritage assessments, and the possibility of judicial review. Each step adds months, sometimes years, and cost.

Amsterdam's model is different again: the city controls land through long-term leasehold, which gives the municipality direct leverage over what gets built and at what density. The Zuidas business district expansion, completed in phases since 2019, delivered 4,000 homes alongside commercial space because the city could dictate terms to developers. London's Mayor has limited compulsory purchase powers and no equivalent land bank policy, despite calls from Shelter and the London Housing Panel to create one. The current government has said it will review Compulsory Purchase Order rules as part of the wider Planning Bill, but no legislative text on that specific provision has been published.

For Londoners watching this play out from rented flats in Peckham or Tottenham, the practical question is whether any of this translates into homes they can actually afford before this Parliament ends. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent no earlier than spring 2027. Even optimistic projections from the Centre for Cities suggest meaningful new supply from reform-accelerated schemes will not hit the market before 2029 at the earliest. That is a long wait in a city where the average private rent reached £2,100 per month in June 2026, the highest on record.