Only 30% of Large Scale Residential Development applications made it through to commencement over the past three years.
These are large housing projects comprising of more than 100 units or more than 200 student bed spaces.
These projects make up 60% to 70% of overall planning permissions, and as a result they have a critical role to play in ramping up the country's housing.
This is one of the findings of the Mitchell McDermott Annual Construction Sector Report 2026 which says the figures are a "major concern" and is calling on the Housing Activation Office to prioritise the examination of these schemes.
"There were 63,000 applications over the last four years with only 30% getting to actual site, and this is for reasons of viability, lack of infrastructure, lack of finance," said Paul Mitchell, co-author of the report.
"There's 53 schemes that make up that number, there's another 12,000 which have just recently been granted planning and this is the low-hanging fruit that we really need to focus on to see how we can unlock these and get more homes delivered," he said.
The report also highlights a concerning forecast for the delivery of student beds.
It found that only 657 student beds were delivered last year down 54% on the 1,430 delivered in 2024.
It forecasts that just 422 beds, the lowest in over 20 years, will be delivered this year.
By contrast, in 2020, over 3,485 student beds were delivered.
Currently around 15,000 beds that have been granted planning permission have not progressed to tender or construction stage.
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"We have a demand of 90,000 beds for students, and at the moment we have a stock of 50,000, a shortfall of 40,000, which when the students can't live in a purpose-built student accommodation they live in houses," said Mr Mitchell.
"It was announced earlier this week that new regulations which will allow landlords to increase the rent every three years will only come into effect in 2029. We believe this is a lost opportunity," he said.
" If the government was to allow rent caps to be reset now, it would enable specialist PBSA developers to reinvest much-needed capital and embark on new development," he added. "This could generate between 5,000 to 8,000 new student beds over the next 3 years while increasing student accommodation would also help boost the overall housing supply."
Later today the Central Statistics Office will publish figures showing how many homes were built last year.
Ahead of the CSO figures, Mitchell McDermott estimated that 34,000 units were built, which is up from last year's 30,000 units.
"We need to be delivering more," said Mr Mitchell.
"We we also have put in here on a straight line method, with one-off housing growing at 5%, apartments and housing need to grow 17% year on year to enable us to hit the 300,000 units (by 2030)", he warned.
