Recovery in property development in London from COVID19? Insight from application received in Camden

No. of applications received can reflect the impact of the pandemic on market confidence, potential pipeline and the income of the planning department. However, not much open data is available. The excellent live API data from Camden Council perhaps can shed some lights.

1. No. of all types of applications received in Camden in Apr and May were 20.64% and 40.81% below the lowerest records of the same months in the last 10 years. [Bottom-left]

2. The drop in full planning applications was more significant.

No. of full planning applications in Apr and May were 32.95% and 51.04% below the lowerest records. [Bottom-right]

3. No clear rebound has been observed. The bi-weekly sum of applications received continued to drop. Only 108 applications were received between 25/05 and 07/06, which were similar to 109 applications received during the previous two weeks. Only 24 applications were received last week. [Top]

4. A similar trend was observed in the no. of full planning applications. Only 19 applications were received between 25/05 and 07/06, which were smaller than 24 applications received during the previous two weeks. Only 7 full planning applications were received last week. [Top]

Methodology

Dataset: Camden Planning Applications API

Timespan:

2010–01–01 – 2020–06–13 (Data prior 2010 is incomplete and so was not used)

Box plot and bar chart:

Applications received each day were summed up to a monthly sum. It enables a month-to-month comparison between 2020 and the 10-year trend (2010–2019).

Line chart:

Applications received each day were summed up to a bi-weekly sum. This helps reduce the noise associated with the weekly sum while reflecting the latest emerging trend.

Software:

Python (Notebook and the stats can be found here)