5 Year Land Supply - working out the extra 20% buffer - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Pity at the national level no guidance has been issued which has resulted in a lot of wasted time and debate. Removal of all guidance from PINS site has not helped either. But Graeme you might be mixing up requirement and supply here. Your overall plan requirement remains unchanged by NPPF and your 5 year residual requirement is calculated in the normal way by deducting completions and dividing by the years remaining. This will get you to your 5 year requirement. You then need to demonstrate capacity on specific deliverable sites now to meet either 105% or 120% of that requirement. In effect you are identifying a larger pool of sites now from which your 100% requirement should be met. And yes you do need to largely identify sites although NPPF has now re-introduced the possibility of using windfalls if you have history of them coming forward in your area.

Andrew, yes I know the NPPF says the buffer should be added to the housing supply not the requirement (this point has been made several times before on these forums). That's great if you've got an adopted Local Plan with sites phased later or reserve sites that can be brought forward into your 5YHLS. However, I'm still unclear how you should calculate your 5YHLS in a situation where you have a 5-year housing shortfall but no further identified and available sites that can be brought into the equation. In this situation, surely it makes sense to add the required 5% or 20% buffer into the housing shortfall (ie adjust the shortfall upwards) ? I'd be interested to see any examples of 5YLHS calculations involving shortfall where the buffer has been factored in that have been accepted by Inspectors in planning appeals. On a slightly different topic, I'd be interested to hear how other Councils are calculating their 5-year requirement. Are other Councils still using the 'forward look' approach (as previously endorsed by CLG and PINS) where the 5-year period starts from the start of the next monitoring year (ie 2013-2018) or calculating from the most recent monitoring date (ie for the period 2012-2017)?

We have moved back to look at the 5 years from the monitoring date. So our five year supply runs from April 2012. Inspectors seem to have little time for the alternative approach, which frankly required even more crystal ball gazing than the rest of the 5 year supply. Robert on your first paragraph sadly I am not clear what you are getting at? A five year supply is made up of sites whether with permission, SHLAA or allocations where there is certainty (!) of deliverability. I know NPPF talks of sites from later in the plan period but how many adopted allocations plans are there - very few I guess. If you cannot get these to stack up to 105 or 120% you fall short. I'm not clear what you mean by "add the required 5% or 20% buffer into the housing shortfall (ie adjust the shortfall upwards) ?

Ok I’ll give a simple example! Let’s assume that District A has consistently failed to meet its housing target over several years. The adjusted 5-year housing target is now 1,500 homes, but the identified 5YHLS at the start of the monitoring period is only 1,000 dwellings leaving a shortfall of 500. Two months later District A permits an application on a large windfall site for 500 dwellings, thereby increasing the identified supply to 1,500 dwellings. District A then receives a further windfall application for 300 homes which the Council refuses. Assuming that the application site is sustainable & deliverable within 5 years, one would presumably expect the Inspector to allow the appeal by referring to the NPPF requirement for a 20% buffer (given District A’s previous record of persistent under-delivery). The 20% buffer means that, whilst District A’s adjusted housing target is 1,500 homes, it is effectively being required to demonstrate an identified supply of at least 1,800 homes. Therefore, in practical terms, the 5YHLS shortfall at the start of the monitoring period is actually 800 dwellings, not 500. Therefore, unless my logic is confused here, it surely makes sense to add the 20% buffer onto the 5-year housing requirement at the beginning of the monitoring period. This would then indicate the actual level of 5YHLS needed to satisfy NPPF requirements.

Robert being pedantic at no time does District A actually have the 5 year supply plus 5% or 20% as required by NPPF. So refusal of a suitable and deliverable site unless very well justified would be risky. But you are correct if you take the persistent under-delivery into account then you need a supply of 120% against the requirement of 1500 units. So you would need to demonstrate from sites and where justified windfalls a SUPPLY of 1800 units. So your logic is ok. I think there is still some danger in confusing requirements and supply. You are still aiming to only deliver 1500 units in the 5 years, that is the target requirement figure. I think there is plenty of scope for confusing people into believing you need completions of 1800 which you do not. Just find some way to say that you need a 5 year supply of X plus 20%. In your example supply at the start of period is 1000, well under the 1500 (100%) 5 year supply needed and 1800 (120%) supply needed.

A slightly different question on the same topic. Does the 20% buffer apply simply to the 5 year requirement (based on the annual housing requirement in our soon to be adopted CS)? For information, this requirement already includes the historic backlog we accrued against RSS from 2003-2010 as our Inspector ruled this had to be incorporated... Or is it 20% of the 5 year requirement, PLUS the new backlog we have already accrued against our new requirement from the Core Strategy, since the base date of 2010?

Graeme the use of the phrase "buffer" should provide the clue. As I read it, surely it is simply ensuring you have sufficient supply from which your actually requirement can be met. In effect having a supply of 120% makes it more likely you would achieve your planned requirement of 100%. Your 5 year requirement and indeed your overall plan period figures have not changed, but you need to demonstrate 5 or 20% additional supply now. This could involve (assuming your plan is in place and works in this way) saying some sites reserved for later in the plan period would be available now. My plea for CLG /PINS to provide guidance on this whole issue is still there!

In reply to Gemma, I am most interested in the fact the inspector has seen it appropriate to incorporate your historic backlog for 2003-2010 into the target. The backlog across our Partner LPAs is substantial and we will be arguing at Examination that it could not realistically form part of an achievable target. Can I contact you to find out more about how / why the Inspector reached his decision? My e-mail is (without the underscores) j_goodall_@northampton.gov.uk. In answer to your question, I am sure you should be adding any backlog since your Core Strategy base-date (against either target) to the residual housing total. To not would seem to be delaying achievement of the plan total as quickly as may be possible. Assuming you are doing the 5-year supply from April '12 (rather than the alternative forward looking '6-year' supply from April '13) any shortfall from 2011/12 or previously should be added to the target. If you went for the 6-year approach you might need to predict your +/- performance against target for 2012/13, which could be open to challenge. The choice then is are you spreading shortfall over the whole remaining plan period (something I tend to advocate on achievability grounds in the current market) or just the next 5 years. If it's spread over the whole plan period then the requirement for the +20% on top of the shortfall should surely only be calculated for that part of the backlog you are seeking to meet in the first 5 year period.

Jon and Gemma a quick query. The conventional way of calculating the residual requirement will already take into account any surplus or deficit of completions against your plan target so I am not clear why you would add the backlog to residual requirement? Under provision means the build rate is too low and you have too many units left to deliver in too short a time period. Doing the maths simply demonstrates that your annual requirement will need to rise if you are meet the plan total over the plan period and the five year requirement (as 5 times annual residual requirement) will rise accordingly. Doing it this way does effectively assume the deficit or indeed surplus will be taken into account over the life of the plan and I would agree with Jon that it would be illogical if you are not meeting targets now to assume you will within the 5 year period without good evidence say of new sites definitely coming on stream. And remember the only proof of achieving what the plan sets out to do will be at the end of the plan period! So to answer Gemma's question yes you need to demonstrate supply 20% above your residual 5 year requirement, not your original plan 5 year figure. I would suggest like Jon the new plan requirement is calculated to assume any deficit is taken into account over the life of the plan. So simply plan total requirement minus completions to date, divide this by the years to run results in annual provision. Multiply by 5 and you have your new requirement. Supply must be 20% higher than this. And to answer my own question if you add the backlog to your original 5 year plan requirement you will of course come up with a new 5 year requirement where all the backlog is intended to be met within 5 years. Of course using a residual way of calculation will mean over time your requirement figure becomes ridiculously high if completions fall through the floor and are never achieved. Guess that would point to a plan re-think unless there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the market can deliver in which case you need to find land and why developers are not building…maybe something called recession.