Planning permission for commercial property hits six-year low

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  • 26/05/2016
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Planning permission for commercial property hits six-year low
Planning permissions for commercial property development hit the lowest level since the peak of the recession in 2015, attributed to the difficulty small developers have in securing finance.

Peer-to-peer property funding platform Saving Stream, said that 11,300 commercial property developments received planning approval in 2015, the lowest since 2009.

Large developments held steady at 2,000 per year since 2010 but the number of smaller developments dropped from 11,300 in 2010 to 9,300 last year.

Liam Brooke, co-founder of Saving Stream, said the banks aren’t in a position to lend to commercial developers on the scale that they once did, and smaller commercial developments are struggling to get off the drawing board as a result.

“The big listed developers still have plenty of access to finance for large office, retail or industrial developments, but it’s a different story for smaller developers looking to get spades in the ground on more modest plans.

“That’s creating opportunities for all kinds of alternative providers of development finance. While debt funds have muscled in on some of the deals that banks would once have done at the larger end of the market, for smaller developers, peer-to-peer lending has been a vital conduit for funding over recent years.”

He said that peer-to-peer platforms provide individuals with the chance to tap into the development finance market that banks can’t access due to regulatory restrictions.

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