About
Dr. Nikhil Datta, Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, has undertaken a crucial research project to address inefficiencies in the UK’s planning system, which hinder housing supply in the face of rising demand. The research, “Five Facts on the UK Planning System”, examines 18 million planning applications spanning from 2000 to 2023, revealing significant roadblocks in approval processes for large-scale housing developments. This research builds a comprehensive dataset and looks to inform housing policies and facilitate targeted interventions to increase housing availability in the UK.
Challenge
Severe housing shortages in the UK are largely driven by bottlenecks within the planning system. Local authorities regularly miss government housing targets as large-scale developments, essential for addressing rising demand, face bureaucratic delays, infrastructure dependencies, and community opposition. The research required accessing vast amounts of public data hosted on websites across local councils in England. However, maintaining access across multiple platforms posed a challenge as some sites blocked requests or restricted data extraction after only a few queries. To overcome this obstacle, Nikhil partnered with Bright Initiative to utilize Bright Data’s Proxies, which ensured uninterrupted access to valuable publicly available planning data.
Impact
Dr. Datta’s research has already provided critical insights into the underlying issues of planning restrictions in the UK. Key findings indicate that while larger projects have lower refusal rates, they frequently face longer bureaucratic delays, disrupting housing supply. Utilizing Bright Data’s tools, the project successfully standardized and cleaned datasets across local councils, detailing approval and rejection statistics, timelines, and decision-making trends. The study aims to empower local authorities with actionable statistics via a publicly available database and a policy brief to guide interventions. This work represents a significant step toward enabling accurate, data-driven decision-making to address the housing affordability crisis in the UK.
