Re: managing the 5 year housing land supply. - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Andy, The answer is YES. We use the managed annualised requirement to calculate our 5 year land supply at Fareham and I know a number of other authorities do the same. This is considered standard practice. I can also tell you that I have used this arguement at appeal for a number of private client and won. What I would say though is that if you've under delivered on your plan requirement to date and your concerned that you don't have a 5 year land supply, it may be possible to argue that an assessment should be based on the RSS average annualised requirement rather than the managed annualised requirement but only where you are confident that significant allocations will come forward before the end of the plan period to compensate for the shortfall in housing delivery achieved so far. Hope this helps. Oli

Andy, Further to Oliver's response, at Wokingham through the Council 's submitted Core Strategy (since adopted in Jan 2010), the authority proposed a re-profiling of the RSS requirement. Even allowing for a past under provision in achieving strategic targets, the inspector through the Core Strategy examination allowed the authority to continue under performing the RSS during the earliy years of the Core Strategy. This was because the authority was committed to achieving the requirements of the RSS (together with earlier under provision) and that he understood that the Council's re-profiled housing targets associated with the proposed delivery approach would address the issue. Hope that helps. Graham

This is an interesting conundrum and one I struggled with last year. To add to the confusion I would point towards PINS guidance at http://www.planning-inspectorate.gov.uk/pins/advice_for_insp/advice_produced_by_dclg.htm Which for me says use the RSS figures as per Para 5 (ii) and this was updated in March this year. I am also aware that Leeds CC have had/have some appeals running where this has been an issue, the outcome(s) of which I do not yet know. This is an area of unnecessary confusion to my mind and the sooner it is resolved with clear unambiguous guidance in one place the better.

It is our understanding in Pendle that the wording in Para 5(ii) of the PINS guidance which states "... adjusted to reflect the level of housing that has already been delivered ..." indicates that you should use the 'managed' annualised requirement to calculate your 5 year housing land supply. However, we would agree that the guidance for calculating the 5 year supply should have been clearer from the outset.

The 'Growth Fund document 2008' provides guidance on housing land supply specifically for growth areas and points, it does not claim to be of general application or somehow clarify PPS12. However, the key words are on page 12 FAQ A: phasing can only be introduced for the purposes of the 'requirement' when phasing is contained within the RSS or LDD. There is no phasing in the EoE or SE Adopted RSSs so I'm not sure how it was accepted in Wokingham. That CS (Policy CP18) does include phasing but it is not clear from the Inspector's report (paras 4.12, 4.13) that this was tested. The same Inspector at Aylesbury CS Hearing accepted that the SEP has no phasing so that AVDC could not rely on phasing to calculate its 5 year supply. This topic is often critical but guidance is not sufficiently precise. It is also strange that trajectories often rely on what housebuilders tell the LPA, and they have reason currently to blame the market for low delivery. This results in portions of permitted sites not being included in the 5 year supply, thus more sites being required (with no guarantee that they will deliver any faster). Hives Planning have much experience in this field and offer a service principally to LPAs to produce objective trajectories in AMRs. Please contact me.

It should be noted that the PINS advice for which Andrew Byrne provides a link and to which John Halston also refers, has now been removed from the PINS website. So can we use a managed profile to calculate five year supply or not?