Redbridge built 337 homes against a target of 1,409, has no five-year land supply, and 3,582 approved homes sit unstarted. What that means for applications.

There are two ways to describe planning in Redbridge, and both are true. One is a borough with 36-storey towers approved in its town centre and a £500 million urban village going up in Goodmayes. The other is a borough that has not hit an annual housing target since 2006/07 and completed 337 homes in the last year it published figures.

The gap between those two pictures is the whole story, and the council documents it itself. This page sets out where the Local Plan stands, what the borough is actually required to build, what it is building, and the schemes that matter.

The plan, and where its review has got to

The Redbridge Local Plan 2015-2030 was adopted at Full Council on 15 March 2018. It replaced the old Core Strategy along with the separate Area Action Plans for Ilford, the Crossrail Corridor and Gants Hill, and it is still the plan against which every application in the borough is decided.

A review is under way, but slowly and on a timetable the council itself will not guarantee. Its Local Development Scheme of March 2025 sets out the review running from 2025/26 through to 2028/29, and states in terms that “this is an indicative timeframe, because the plan-making provisions associated with the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 are yet to be confirmed”. The named risks are the same three that are stalling plans across London: shifting government policy, the coming National Development Management Policies, and a new London Plan.

Alongside that, the GLA is preparing an Ilford Opportunity Area Planning Framework, with input from the council and Transport for London. It will come forward as London Plan Guidance rather than as a Redbridge document, and it will set the strategic framework for homes, jobs, transport and infrastructure in Ilford. The council says it will then consider whether to adopt it.

What the borough is required to build

The London Plan sets Redbridge a minimum of 1,409 new homes a year. That figure took effect in 2021/22; before that the target was 1,123 a year.

The most recent Authority Monitoring Report, published in May 2025 and covering the year to 31 March 2024, records what was delivered against it:

  • 337 homes completed in 2023/24. That is 23.91% of the target.
  • Of those 337, only 188 were new build. The rest were 55 conversions, 61 changes of use and 36 other gains, less three demolitions.
  • 26 affordable homes were completed in the whole year, down from 31 the year before. The Local Plan’s own policy seeks 393 a year, and the council notes that at the current target it should now be seeking 493. It delivered 5% of that.
  • Over the five years 2019 to 2024, 1,987 homes were completed against a requirement of 6,473, a shortfall of 4,486.
  • Redbridge has not delivered its annual housing target since 2006/07.
Redbridge housing: target, completions and approved but unstarted homes Three horizontal bars comparing Redbridge housing figures for 2023/24. The annual London Plan target is 1,409 homes. Actual completions were 337, which is 23.9% of the target, and only 188 of those were new build with 26 affordable. Planning permissions granted but not commenced by 31 March 2024 stood at 3,582, roughly eleven times the number of homes completed. A fourth bar shows the 2,420 homes a year the council calculates it would need to build from 2024/25 to catch up. Redbridge has eleven times more approved homes unstarted than it built Homes, 2023/24 financial year (Redbridge Local Plan Authority Monitoring Report 2023-24, published May 2025). Homes completed337 2023/24, of which 188 new build Annual target1,409 London Plan minimum, from 2021/22 Needed to catch up2,420 a year Council's own figure, 2024/25 to 2028/29 Approved, not started3,582 Permissions uncommenced at 31 March 2024 Of the 337 homes completed, 26 were affordable. Local Plan policy seeks 393 affordable homes a year. The constraint in Redbridge is not permission. It is schemes with permission that nobody has started.
Redbridge granted permission for 433 homes in 2023/24 and had 3,582 already approved and unstarted. The bottleneck sits after the decision, not before it.

The consequence: the presumption applies here

Because it cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, Redbridge is subject to the presumption in favour of sustainable development. The council spells out what that means in practice: when it determines a housing application, “housing policies in the Local Plan are considered out of date and only limited weight can be applied to them”.

That is the single most important fact on this page if you are objecting to, or promoting, a housing scheme in Redbridge. The borough’s own adopted housing policies carry reduced weight until the supply position recovers, which in turn depends on homes being built rather than merely approved.

The real bottleneck is build-out, not permission

The monitoring report is unusually blunt about where the problem sits. At 31 March 2024:

  • 3,582 approved homes had not been commenced. That is roughly eleven times the number completed in the year, and the council says it “points to housing development schemes with permission not being started early enough by developers”.
  • 1,270 homes were under construction, down sharply from 2,525 the year before.
  • 1,083 homes were started during 2023/24, down from 1,932 in 2022/23. A fall in starts feeds directly into the next year’s completions.
  • Only 433 permissions for housing were granted in 2023/24, against 3,382 in 2022/23. The earlier spike came from eight schemes of more than 50 units, the largest being the 1,280-home Goodmayes Tesco site.

To close the gap, the council calculates it would need 2,420 completions a year between 2024/25 and 2028/29 to reach the ten-year London Plan target of 14,090 homes. That is more than seven times what it delivered in 2023/24.

Two schemes that will decide the next decade

Harrison Gibson, High Road, Ilford: 326 homes, all social rent

The former Harrison Gibson furniture store on High Road has been one of Ilford town centre’s most conspicuous derelict buildings for years. Permission was granted on 13 May 2025 for a clustered tower scheme rising to 30 storeys and delivering 326 apartments, all of them for social rent, with the London Borough of Redbridge as the client and AHR as architect. It also includes commercial and community space and is intended to reconnect Havelock Street with the town centre.

A council-led, wholly social-rent scheme of that size is a direct answer to the affordable delivery figure above, where the borough managed 26 homes in a year. It is also, so far, a permission rather than a building.

Lorimer Village, Goodmayes: 1,280 homes

The largest thing approved in Redbridge in recent memory. Weston Homes and Tesco were granted permission on 27 May 2021 to redevelop the 10.4-acre Tesco store and car park at 822 High Road, Goodmayes into a £0.5 billion mixed-use village: 1,280 homes across 14 blocks of 10 to 22 storeys, a replacement Tesco, commercial space, a village hall and a community hub. 35%, or 415 homes, were classed as affordable. Revised plans submitted in October 2023 removed the proposed primary school on the grounds of reduced demand.

The programme was an eight-year phased build with final completion scheduled for late 2030, which puts it squarely in the middle of the period in which Redbridge needs 2,420 homes a year to catch up.

Also in the pipeline

Ilford Retail Park, 261-275 High Road, returned to the planning committee on 11 March 2026 with a section 73 variation and a reserved matters application covering layout, scale, appearance and landscaping, under an outline permission dating from 2020. Reserved matters are the stage at which an approved scheme starts to become a real building, so it is the kind of item worth watching in a borough whose problem is unstarted permissions.

What this means if you live here

  • If you are objecting to a scheme, know that the council’s own housing policies carry only limited weight while the presumption applies. Objections that rest on housing policy alone are weaker here than in a borough with a five-year supply.
  • If you are watching the town centre change, the towers are not an aberration. Ilford is a designated Opportunity Area with a GLA framework in preparation, and tall buildings in the town centre are the mechanism by which the borough is expected to make up a 4,486-home shortfall.
  • If you are buying, the delivery figures show up in the sold-price record: just five of the 2,110 residential sales in the borough in the year to June 2026 were flagged as new build. See Ilford house prices.
  • Where to check an application: Redbridge’s planning register is at planning.redbridge.gov.uk, and committee agendas, reports and decisions are published on the council’s democratic services site.

Frequently asked questions

What is Redbridge’s housing target?

1,409 new homes a year, the minimum set by the London Plan, in force since 2021/22. Before that it was 1,123 a year.

How many homes did Redbridge actually build?

337 in 2023/24, the most recent year in the published Authority Monitoring Report. That is 23.91% of the target, and only 188 of them were new build. Over the five years to 2024 the borough completed 1,987 homes against a requirement of 6,473.

Does Redbridge have a five-year housing land supply?

No. It cannot demonstrate one, and it is therefore subject to the presumption in favour of sustainable development, under which the Local Plan’s housing policies are treated as out of date and given only limited weight.

When will the new Redbridge Local Plan be adopted?

There is no fixed date. The council’s Local Development Scheme of March 2025 shows the review running to 2028/29 and states explicitly that the timetable is indicative because the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 plan-making provisions have not been confirmed.

What is being built in Ilford town centre?

The largest approved scheme is the 326-home, all social rent redevelopment of the former Harrison Gibson building, rising to 30 storeys, permitted in May 2025 with the council as client. Ilford is also a designated Opportunity Area, with the GLA preparing a planning framework for it.

How many approved homes in Redbridge have not been built?

3,582 had permission but had not been commenced at 31 March 2024, about eleven times the number completed that year. A further 1,270 were under construction.

Sources

Monitoring figures are published annually and lag by roughly a year. Always check the council’s current planning register before relying on the status of any individual scheme.