Delivery shortfalls relating to 5 yr land supply - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Ive read this recovered appeal and think you may have read to much into what the inspector has said in paras 118-120 http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planning-callins/pdf/1943891.pdf By '5 year correction' it seems clear from the context the inspector meant having to continually raise the 5 year requirement because of annual shortfalls. It is also clear from context that the inspector applied the standard residual method and still found a shortfall. Rather the inspector said that 'PPS3 recognises[suggests] that management action to redress the situation could be taken within a five year supply period'. That is, to give an example, if you were in phase one of a plan and three years in if you were short in that phase take management action to restore a 5 year supply from the current date. So the issue is not the number of years it is divided by rather bring forward housing from a later phase to an earlier one to make good a shortfall. In practical terms though the results will be similar.

Dean you are caught in the impossible 5 year residual method problem - the fewer units that developers build the more land has to be provided. Looking very briefly at the report even your current annual requirement is well beyond what has been built in your borough historically. I hope you are working very hard towards a more sensible figure when RSS finally goes. I am very concerned about the Inspector's general comments about meeting requirements including shortfalls within the five year period..."this requires that there should be sufficient sites within the first five years of a rolling five year programme to meet the identified requirements and reduce the shortfall in historic delivery. It has been supported on appeal [ND2]." I understand the Inspector's overall view that unless action is taken early to increase supply you end up storing up an even larger deficit. But does PPS3 say the five year supply has to meet both requirement and the underdelivery? I can't find it. I imagine almost all authorities have under-delivered in the last few years which would point to this applying in many authorities. If this is now national policy authorities need to be advised of it. So a response from DCLG would be helpful...and a letter from the Chief Planner but I wouldn't hold your breath. Looks to me like you have no choice but to find more land until you can get an adopted figure which is possibly more achievable. Not exactly localism or anything close to realism - rather a difficult message to sell to members and the public... we need to grant more permissions because we are building too few and the market isn't there. Interested to hear anything back from DCLG and whether the promised new approach to housing supply cited in various impact assessments around the Localism Bill will contain guidance of use on this subject. does it say this and near enough all guidance on calculating supply has been removed because it mentioned the Regional word.

Had a reply from DCLG to the question of whether shortfall on housing completions need to be made up within the following 5 years or can be divided over the remaining plan period. DCLG response: 'PPS3 does not specify how the shortfall should be met, other than to say local authorities should take appropriate management action (para 65)'. Not exactly a helpful response :(

Dean, we have had this same debate at appeals as we spread the shortfall over the remainder of the plan period. If you want to discuss this further let me know. andy.darcy@southnorthants.gov.uk

Just to add to this discussion, a Secretary of State decision in June 2011 on a site in Andover (ref 2140942) considers the question of how any shortfall in delivering the housing requirement should be dealt with over the remaining years of the Plan. In the Andover appeal the SoS at paragraph 11 of his decision fully endorsed the Inspector's conclusions that the shortfall needed to be remedied in the short to medium term rather than over the Plan period. The Inspector concluded that whether or not the shortfall should be addressed over the next 5 years or a "slightly longer period" he found that spreading the shortfall over the Plan period was not acceptable and therefore agreed with the Appellant that the shortfall should be added to the 5 year requirement. As the SoS endorsed this approach it is the clearest indication from DCLG of how the shortfall should be dealt with. Using the same analogy, in times when build rates exceed demand such as in the early 2000s many authorities took action by restricting supply and even imposing a housing moratorium. The consideration is therefore two-way and if build rates are lagging behind the requirement due to the effects of recession linked to viability issues in bringing forward high density schemes and many brownfield sites then the supply needs addressing by releasing deliverable sites to ensure that a rolling 5 year supply of sites is maintained and that any latent deman can be addressed.

To up-date my reply above, the Secretary of State has just released a decision on a site near Barnsley which reaffirms that any shortfall in housing land supply from previous years needs to be taken into account in the calculation of 5 year land supply and it can't be left to later years in the Plan period. The link to the decision is http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planning-callins/pdf/2069099.pdf

There are precedents for Inspectors tolerating Core Stategies managing the housing supply to spread a shortfall over longer than 5 years, expressed in the houisng trajectory. If I remember rightly, South Lakeland is an example. It follows that this can be done within the plan period, by adjusting the housing trajectory (via the Annual Monitoring Report for example), and development control decisions being based on that. Such an adjustment could be justified by market conditions and by reference to any undesirable consequences that might flow from accelerated release. That is my interpretation of the DCLG response. Note Andrew Chalmers' quote of the Inspector stating that action should be taken in 5 years to reduce the shortfall, not eliminate it. To my mind, an Inspector basing a decision on an assumption that a shortfall should be entirely dealt with by adding it to the 5 year requirement would be exceeding his or her authority, given that PPS3 does not explicitly insist on that. Guidance from PINS might be of more value than anything you are likely to get out of DCLG.

Chris, I'm certainly no planning lawyer but I do know that appeal decisions are material considerations whether or not they are determined by Inspectors on behalf of SoS or by the SoS himself. As such whether or not you or I agree with an individual decision is of little consequence, the fact that it has been made and can be used as evidence in other similar situations is all that matters. PPS 3 is advice from the Government on planning policy and as such is a material planning consideration. Whilst it certainly does not explicitly say that shortfalls have to be added to a 5 year requirement neither does it give any tacit support to Councils adjusting the housing trajectory to deal with the shortfall in later years of the Plan. As we planners say, each case has to be judged on its merits and every Council will have different pressures and challenges. PPS3 advises in paragraphs 62-67 on how to manage delivery and advises on various options dependant upon the severity of the supply situation. These options include using development control decisions to increase supply against adopted policy as well as partially reviewing Development Plans. Whether one option is better than others is a matter of opinion based upon the particular circumstances of each authority as you correctly say. The appeal decisions in Mansfield, Barnsley and earlier in Andover were all endorsed by the SoS and in my view have to be afforded significant weight in the way the 5 year supply should be dealt with albeit read in context. I'm certainly not putting myself forward as a fan of decisions made by DCLG especially as my Company has been on the wrong end of one in Cheshire, but I'd have to respectfully disagree with you that guidance from PINS is of greater value than that from DCLG. As an executive agency of DCLG PINS have to act on advice from DCLG not the other way around. Whether we like it or not, policy statements and appeal decisions from DCLG are material planning considerations and if they interpret the advice in PPS3 in a certain way then that in uitself is a material consideration. To the best of my knowledge none of the appeal decisions I have referred to have been challenged by the Councils concerned, but in any event I have to respectfully disagree with you and say that these decisions are, in my view, perfectly lawful providing the evidence supported the Inspectors' conclusions. There again, as I saud at the start I'm not planning lawyer!