5 years housing land supply - impossible dream, or a gift to developers? - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

It is very difficult mainly due to the issue of uncertain short term viability.

Purely from a view of getting a Plan through Examination I think one of the most important factors is to get the promoters/developers of the sites that you are including to support your position. The delivery of housing is in the hands of the developer and if you can work with developers to demonstrate phasing and trajectories for sites and they can confirm this at EIP it will help.

It also depends on other factors, some of which you have mentioned, like infrastructure but also the nature of the site andi ts ability to be brought forward in 5 years.

If you can demonstrate the relvant evidence, the NPPF now allows the inclusion of windfalls within 5 years which might help. Although you need caution on this as windfalls are by definition unknown/unplanned and I'd say it's unlikely that you could realistically include any in year 1 because you would already be aware of theplanning application/interest.

Over the past few years viability has been the real key factor on housing delivery (certainly in the north of the country anyway) and that now at least has prospects of improving. Noone actually KNOWS what the economy/market will do and how fast recovery will happen but I think that it is reasonable to have an optimistic approach to development picking up. We are supposed to be 'Planning Positively' so plan for growth and economic recovery and have the view that you are seeking to boost signifcantly the delivery of new homes.

At the end of the day the 5 year suppy is an imperfect tool. 

Hi

Can anyone tell me where the details of the 'Sedgefield approach' came from. Was it an appeal, or local plan EiP? A google search is proving fruitless...

Many thanks

Darren

Darren can't recall exactly but if you check out this appeal decision, the Inspector clearly sets out both approaches and in fact favours the Liverpool method for fairly obvious common sense reasons.  He does also cite two other appeal decisions which favour opposite methods.  Pretty certain there will be a source appeal decision but this might provide a start to track it down. 

Appeal Ref: APP/K2420/A/12/2188915

Land at Shilton Road, Barwell, Leicestershire LE9 8HA

[quote=Mary Elkington]

There is a helpful document on PAS  Ten key principles for owning your housing number which includes a disucssion of "Dealing with the issue of backlog or shortfall" including the sedgefield and liverpool methods.  There are links to some other appeals in the document.

This document makes it clear that the best way to deal with this is to have an updated SHMA.  Of course until this is tested at public hearing (in context of new local plan) you are going to find every appeal has a number of people in suits being paid to argue the toss on residual requirements for housing.

http://www.pas.gov.uk/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=bcdbc05f-0042-4e4c-9258-653ebc11b5b1&groupId=332612

[/quote]

thank you for this steer.  Unsurprisingly, the devil is in the detail, but the detail is still not really in this document is it?  There still seems to be a requirement to somehow 'prove' almost beyond question, that the allocated land is not only immediately available, but is financially and physically developable.  The vague statement made, ask the developers, bears no resemblance to the reality of situation on the ground when it comes to landowners verses developers verses LPA.

Are we in the realms of developers demanding that councils pay the cost of taking an option on land that is seen as in the right place, sustainable and therefore suitable for inclusion in the Local Plan - as was the case under the old system - before they'll agree to support its inclusion?  How else would you identify such land beyond the 5+5% or 20% requirement in lower demand areas, where there may be a very limited pool of potential developers in the first place?

Jut like so many other government policies, this one is skewed towards putting maximum pressure on the high demand, high price areas of the south east. Here, landowners are falling over themselves, to offer up their land for a nice juicy profit with little or no effort on their part, egged on by the developers no doubt, whilst local councils are desperately trying to placate insensed local communities.  This means that those LPAs are likely to be spoilt for choice and have many developers in the queue.  In rural areas, a hundred miles plus from the SE, there's likely to be far fewer developers to choose from, in our case two, potentially reducing to one within 5 years.  Are we going to have to go back to him every 5 years, saying 'please sir, can we have some more?'

Hello,

Does anyone know whether deliverable sites in a SHLAA are acceptable sources of sites in the five year housing supply.

The NPPF doesnt provide specific detail in linking the two, however the definition of deliverable i.e. para 47 footnote 11 is clear cut (suitable, available and achievable) and this underpins the context by which deliverable sites are determined in SHLAAs. However I find developers and agents are rather muddled on the issue and only see those sites allocated in DPs, sites with planning permission and windfalls in respect to SHLAA as being those of inclusion within a 5 year housing supply.

i notice that the beta national planning policy guidance states under "what consitutes a deliverable site in the context of housing policy" that - Deliverable sites for housing could include those that are allocated for housing in the development plan and sites with planning permission (outline or full that have not been implemented).....

however it goes onto further states that "...if there are no significant constraints (eg infrastructure) to overcome, sites not allocated within a development plan or without planning permission can be considered capable of being delivered within a five year timeframe"

Therefore i think it stands to reason that in addition to allocations and planning permissions, shouldnt sites assessed as suitable, available and achievable through the SHLAA be also added to the list of sources for inclusion in the five year supply?

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, plus any examples of 5 year housing supply's which have used deliverable SHLAA sites as part of their statement....and has been part of the evidence base to adopt a recent core strategy would be helpful.

Kim

Hi Kim,

Windfall sites are sites which 'have not been specifically identified as available in the local plan process.

Sites which are specifically identified therefore include allocations, sites with permission, and SHLAA sites. Whether they can reasonably be expected to contribute to the 5-year supply will depend on evidence of their delivery. What do the owners and/or developers of the site say about their deliverability? If there is general agreement from all relevant parties that the site, or part of the site, can contribute to the housing supply in years 1-5, it should be 'allowed' to contribute.

Clearly, not all SHLAA sites will be able to have this degree of evidence or 'certainty'. But I believe that this demonstrates that SHLAA sites can be used in the calculation of the 5-yer supply.

I would also be interested in hearing from authorities who have successfully argued this at examination (or appeal).

Roger, I appreciate this does not answer your original post, but I would certainly encourage you to look at your SHLAA, and to see where the potential sites are, beyond those currently with permission.

Adam

Thanks Adam.

I have had several discussions with our officers on how much weight the SHLAA should/can be given when crunching the numbers.  It would certainly make like much simpler if you could use these land areas as the basis for the 5 year+ housing land supply, but that seems to be no more than was achieved through the old Local Plan system and it's land allocation maps.  These maps weren't produced by pinning a map of the district to the wall and throwing darts at it were they?  Land owners promoted their sites, officers assessed them and the public commented on them - job done!  

Government seems to be over-reaching to say the least and forcing LPAs down the wrong path.  The danger is, that we get marginal sites from a sustainability perspective, because opportunist landowners, or developers throw them into the mix, claiming that they tick all the boxes and LPAs are panicked in to accepting them.

Thanks Adam.

I have had several discussions with our officers on how much weight the SHLAA should/can be given when crunching the numbers.  It would certainly make like much simpler if you could use these land areas as the basis for the 5 year+ housing land supply, but that seems to be no more than was achieved through the old Local Plan system and it's land allocation maps.  These maps weren't produced by pinning a map of the district to the wall and throwing darts at it were they?  Land owners promoted their sites, officers assessed them and the public commented on them - job done!  

Government seems to be over-reaching to say the least and forcing LPAs down the wrong path.  The danger is, that we get marginal sites from a sustainability perspective, because opportunist landowners, or developers throw them into the mix, claiming that they tick all the boxes and LPAs are panicked in to accepting them.

Thanks Roger,

I think a lot of this comes down to what sites end up in the SHLAA. It is unlikely you will have the resources in your authority to fully assess all SHLAA sites for their sustainability (to 'SA' them all). However, you may be able to SA the more 'strategic' ones, along with some of the site 'typologies', such as urban extensions, small/large scale green belt release, infil etc.

This will give you some comfort that SHLAA sites are indeed appropriate for development.

There should also be a good level of community engagement in your SHLAA sites. I know many authorities take their SHLAA 'on the road' to discuss local sites with local people, and Members.

So to use your language, I think a good SHLAA contains sites which land owners have promoted (through, at the very least, the 'call for sites'), officers have assessed (through SA and other policy considerations including likely infrastructure requirements), and the public have commented on (through appropriate engagement).

This will not preclude marginal sites from coming forward, of course. But these will be judged in the same balanced way. Weighing up harm and benefit, and coming to an evidenced decision one way or t'other. It is clear that one of the factors weighing heavily in the balance is whether the authority has a 5-year land supply. Whether this means an authority is panicked into accepting them should come down to their conviction in the evidence/argument they are using to reject the site.

Further to Kim's post and Adam's reply on the question of whether SHLAA sites can be deemed deliverable and hence included in the 5 year supply calculation, I think the High Court judgement by Mr Justice Stuart-Smith into the challenge by Wain Homes provides a pretty good analysis of footnote 11 and the way it should be interpreted.

The test of deliverability, as Adam has said, is intrinsically linked to the extent and soundness of the evidence supporting that the site is available, suitable and achievable (or viable). As a promoter of strategic land I assess very many SHLAAs and 5 year supply calculations and can say that it is often very difficult to test the evidence behind a site being deemed deliverable if it has no extant planning permission. As the Wain Homes judgement concludes, sites without planning permission can be deemed deliverable, but there has to be good evidence that is available for scrutiny to demonstrate the inclusion of the site within the 5 year supply.