Provision of affordable housing - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Negotiations with developers can often be hard. If you do not have a defined policy to support it, draft outline requirements with justified reasoning in the form of an advice note as soon as possible. It is vital to raise the issue of affordable housing requirement as early on in the process, in pre-application, or putting your advice note on your website / sending it out with any application form or enquiry. This will ensure that developers are aware of the requirement, which is an important step. Member support and understanding is imperative. Ensure they are aware of what you are asking for and why so they can give you the support you need at committee. Once you have these three stages in place negotiations with developers should be more straight-forward. You have already set out your requirement and your reasoning for it. Be clear and consistent in your approach to developers. If they have no good reason for not providing AH, be firm officers will not recommend it and Members will back you. Developers are used haggling with LPA, your requirements should be clear that they are a minimum requirement. Worst case they can appeal, if your requirement is justified it will stand up to it. There is clear national policy support.

I am slightly concerned that both your question and the response given by another member suggest an element of doubt over the achievement of affordable and a need to haggle once discussions open. The fundermental principle here is the policy and without one I would think you are wasting your time unless you find a developer who has suddenyl become a charity! Seriously, the start point is the housing needs survey or in the abscence of one, the current housing waiting lists for your area both council and any housing associations that operate in your area. Having establshed the 'need' the policy needs to be clear, robust and consistently applied to all comers. Only in exceptional circumstances should off site provision be considered and DO NOT under any circumstances allow the developer to convince you that the provision of low cost open market housing satisfies any of the affordable housing criteria. Can I suggest you try to persueded your officers to look at other LPA affordable housing policies rather than inventing their own it is not rocket science despite what they might tell you and even though the percentages might vary, it is not a unique requirement to your area of the country, there are others out there already doing it.

In Staffordshire Moorlands, we have a policy of 33% affordable housing adopted as Supplementary Planning Guidnace. This applies to all developments over 15 houses or 1ha (whichever applies). It works well and there is no disagreement. A strong policy is essential to delivering affordable housing and the fact it is treated as SPG makes it even stronger when it comes to the application stage.