Only 52% of homes granted planning permission since 2012-13 have actually been completed, data from the Local Councils Network (LCN) has revealed.
Despite 62 surveyed councils approving more than 633,000 units, only 331,300 have been delivered. Currently, more than 200,000 homes hold valid planning consent where construction has yet to begin.
LCN chair Richard Wright argued the findings proved the planning system was not the bottleneck.
He said: ‘Councils are approving twice as many homes as are built. With construction never starting on hundreds of thousands of approved homes, even a modest improvement in build-out rates would make a significant contribution towards meeting national and local housing targets.
‘Asking councils to approve even more housing applications, when we already approve about nine in every 10, is missing the point to a complex problem.'
