This is not a monopoly market
The housebuilding market in Britain is genuinely fragmented. According to the Competition and Markets Authority's 2024 market study, the largest single developer — Barratt — has just 8% of the market. Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey each have 6%. A full 61% of all new homes are built by firms outside the top 11. No single company, or group of companies, has the market power to set house prices nationally.
For landbanking to systematically drive up prices, developers would need the ability to restrict supply across entire markets. In a market where the majority of homes are built by hundreds of different firms, this is not possible.
of all new homes in Britain are built by firms outside the top 11 developers. Source: CMA Housebuilding Market Study, 2024.
Independent reviews have repeatedly found no evidence of systematic hoarding
The landbanking claim has been investigated many times by independent bodies — and repeatedly found to lack evidence. The Office of Fair Trading concluded in 2008 that it could find no evidence that home builders hoard land. The Calcutt Review reached the same conclusion in 2007. The Kate Barker Review of housing supply dismissed it. Lichfields, commissioned by the Home Builders Federation and the Land Promoters and Developers Federation, has published two detailed studies tracking what actually happens to planning permissions over five-year periods — and found that the vast majority of sites are built out without significant delay.
A 2012 report for the Mayor of London found that 45% of housing planning permissions that went unbuilt were owned not by developers at all, but by owner-occupiers, historic landowners, government bodies, and investment funds. The developers, it found, generally wanted to build as quickly as possible.
Two separate "Tracking Progress" reports analysed planning permissions across multiple local authorities over five-year periods. Both found that the gap between permissions granted and homes built is explained by the complexity of the planning process, viability issues, and infrastructure delays — not deliberate hoarding. The reports concluded that landbanking as a systematic practice is a myth.
Where landbanking does occur, the planning system itself is the cause. Because planning permission is so uncertain and expensive to obtain, developers must hold large land banks simply to maintain a pipeline of buildable sites. If planning were faster and more certain, land banks would shrink — because developers would not need to hold so much land in reserve just to keep building.
The real bottleneck is planning
A site that receives planning permission does not become a buildable home overnight. It typically takes three to five years to move from acquiring land to opening a site and starting construction — through detailed planning, infrastructure agreements, discharge of planning conditions, and procurement. A land bank is not a hoard: it is the pipeline a developer needs to keep its workforce employed and its business running.
The solution to slow build-out is faster, more certain planning — more land allocated, fewer conditions, quicker decisions. Blaming developers for rational behaviour in a dysfunctional planning system misdiagnoses the problem and lets the real cause off the hook.
Where we stand
The planning system is the bottleneck, not developers. Independent reviews — the OFT, the CMA, Lichfields, the Calcutt Review, the Barker Review — have all reached the same conclusion. The landbanking myth is a distraction from the real barrier to housebuilding: a planning system that makes it too slow, too expensive, and too uncertain to build. YIMBY Glasgow endorses the reforms that would actually make a difference: faster planning decisions, more land allocated for housing, and a simpler obligations framework.