Planning applications for major housing projects have fallen by more than a fifth in the past year, a study has revealed.

Applications for large projects in England and Wales fell from 4,413 in October 2007 to 3,444 last month, a drop of 22%, while applications for home improvements dropped even more dramatically, by 29% in the past 12 months, from 33,384 to 23,777.

The trend in planning applications for smaller projects showed a similar pattern, falling by 19,224 to 14,170 鈥� or 26% 鈥� in the past year.

Adam Valentine, research director at Barbour ABI, said: 鈥淥ctober saw a 27% drop in planning applications year on year, compared with October 2007. Furthermore, looking at the data for the past two months, there is a greater fall in the number of home improvement planning applications than in overall numbers of planning applications.鈥�

Valentine said that, even though recent changes to the planning process mean that fewer home improvements need to submit a planning application, this showed the continuing effects of the slowdown in construction.

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