Kent’s Housing Crisis: 47,839 Approved Homes, But Councils Still Fail The Delivery Test

Kent hasn’t run out of planning permissions. It’s got plenty of paper foundations. The latest Kent housing land supply audit shows 47,839 homes with planning permission across the 12 Kent districts still waiting to be built at 31 March 2025. Of those, 35,040 hadn’t even started, according to the latest data available. That’s nearly three quarters of the permitted pipeline sitting there like pallets of bricks left out in the rain.

The completions figure looks healthier at first glance. Kent recorded 7,660 net dwelling completions in the year ending 31 March 2025, up from 7,107 the year before and above the 10-year average of 7,314. But “net completions” isn’t quite the same as saying 7,660 brand-new front doors popped up from nowhere. It’s the proper planning figure, but it’s still a ledger figure, not a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Canterbury topped the county with 1,232 net completions. Sevenoaks sat at the bottom with 145. Medway recorded 634. That isn’t one neat countywide building boom. It’s a building site where some plots move, some plots stall, and some look as though someone’s lost the keys to the building site.

Now comes the wonky lintel.

On the latest public positions found, nine of Kent’s 12 district planning authorities can’t show a five-year housing land supply. Include Medway, and the figure becomes 10 out of 13. That doesn’t mean developers can build any old thing wherever they fancy. But it means the planning balance tilts in their favour, and once it tilts, councils start arguing from the bottom of the ladder.

The National Planning Policy Framework says the presumption in favour of sustainable development can apply where a council can’t demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites, with the appropriate buffer, or where housing delivery has fallen substantially below the requirement. In plain English, a council without a five-year supply doesn’t lose all control, but it walks into the appeal room with a badly damaged hard hat and bundle of excuses.

The roll-call tells its own story. Ashford has 3.62 years, Canterbury 4.16, Folkestone & Hythe 3.1, Gravesham 3.0, and Maidstone 4.5. Those aren’t small gaps in the brickwork. They’re supply shortfalls in districts already under pressure from targets, stalled sites, infrastructure rows and viability arguments.

The rest of the weak-supply list doesn’t look much better. Sevenoaks has 2.96 years, Swale 3.97, Thanet 3.78, Tonbridge & Malling 2.89, and Medway 3.1. Only Dartford, Dover and Tunbridge Wells publicly show five years or more, at 5.84, 5.8 and 5.60 respectively.

Folkestone & Hythe can’t pretend it’s watching this from the pavement. Its own Housing Delivery Action Plan says the district has only 3.1 years’ worth of housing supply, including the 20% buffer. That puts the district in the very territory where developers can point to national policy and say: your plan isn’t delivering, so our scheme deserves extra weight.

That’s not a rubber stamp.

It’s worse for councils in some ways. A rubber stamp sounds obvious. This is subtler. The “tilted balance” means a council can still refuse a poor scheme, but it needs stronger grounds, better evidence and a planning committee that knows the floorboards won’t hold if it gets cute with the reasons.

The backlog shows where the bricks are piling up. Ashford alone had 9,584 homes with planning permission still to be built, with 8,819 not started. Swale had 7,167 permitted homes still to come, with 6,421 not started. Folkestone & Hythe had 2,704 permitted homes outstanding, with 2,267 not started. Planning permission, by itself, doesn’t put a roof over anyone’s head.

Then there’s Stodmarsh: the blocked drain under the slab.

Since Natural England’s 2020 advice, new housing and overnight accommodation in parts of the River Stour catchment have had to show nutrient neutrality because of nitrogen and phosphorus impacts on the protected Stodmarsh wetlands. That catches parts of East Kent, including areas in Ashford, Canterbury, Folkestone & Hythe, Maidstone and Swale. So while councillors talk about housing numbers above ground, another problem sits underneath the site: what happens to the nutrients once people move in, flush toilets, wash dishes and use water every day.

In Canterbury’s own public explanation, affected schemes for new homes or other overnight accommodation can’t get planning permission unless mitigation has been secured. That’s the simple version. No nutrient neutrality, no clean route through the planning gate. The bricks might be stacked. The drawings might look lovely. But the drain still has to work.

Ashford and Canterbury then helped create Stour Environmental Credits Ltd (SEC), a not-for-profit company designed to sell nutrient credits to developers in the Stour catchment. The idea is straightforward enough: developers buy credits, the money funds mitigation, and stalled schemes can move. In building-site language, it’s new scaffolding around a problem that had stopped work on parts of the job.

But here’s the important snagging point: the exact number of credits bought from Stour Environmental Credits Ltd doesn’t appear in any public material published. Ashford announced on 8 May 2026 that SEC had begun issuing nutrient credits, that the initial mitigation programme should support more than 1,500 new homes, and that the first credit release was already enabling up to 30 dwellings to progress. That is not the same as saying 30 credits were sold.

That distinction matters. SEC’s current pricing says one credit equals 0.01kg. Permanent phosphorus costs £350 plus VAT per 0.01kg, and permanent nitrogen costs £23.50 plus VAT per 0.01kg. So one home doesn’t equal one credit. The number of credits depends on the nutrient budget for that particular scheme, not on a neat one-house-one-token formula.

SEC says credits only arise where mitigation has gone through Appropriate Assessment, has been legally secured, and payment has been made. Credits also attach to a specific planning application and can’t simply be moved about like spare roof tiles. That means there should be a proper audit trail: application reference, developer, nutrient calculation, credits allocated, payment date, certificate, mitigation source and planning decision. The public can’t yet see that full ledger.

This is where the walls start leaning into each other. Stodmarsh can delay homes in parts of East Kent. Delayed homes weaken delivery. Weak delivery feeds five-year supply problems. Five-year supply problems tilt the planning balance. The tilted balance then gives developers more leverage for fresh applications, including schemes councils may otherwise have resisted. It’s a planning system chasing itself round the scaffolding.

Ashford shows the problem in hard numbers. It has the largest permitted-but-unbuilt pile in Kent, with 9,584 homes still to come and 8,819 not started, yet its latest five-year housing land supply figure stands at 3.62 years. That isn’t a shortage of paper permissions. It’s a delivery machine with a spanner in the works.

Canterbury shows the other side of the same wall. It delivered 1,232 net homes in 2024/25, the highest figure in Kent, but its latest cited housing land supply position still sits at 4.16 years, with a 1,225-home shortfall against the five-year requirement. A council can pour plenty of concrete in one year and still fail the five-year test if the future pipeline doesn’t stack up.

So the headline isn’t simply that Kent keeps saying yes to homes. Kent has already said yes to tens of thousands. The sharper question is why so many permissions remain drawings in a folder, why so many councils can’t prove a five-year supply, and why a nutrient-credit market now sits in the middle of East Kent’s building line like a tollgate with no published till receipt.

The public needs the snagging list. Which permissions haven’t started? Which sites can’t move because of nutrient neutrality? Which developers have bought phosphorus credits? Which have bought nitrogen credits? How many credits have they bought? Which planning applications have those credits unlocked? And how much public, council-backed or quasi-public money sits behind the mitigation scaffold?

Until those answers land, Kent’s housing story looks less like a building boom and more like a half-finished estate: foundations on some plots, scaffolding on others, puddles in the trenches, and a glossy board at the entrance promising the homes are coming soon.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime