The Government launched the Housing White Paper: ‘Fixing our broken housing market’, to much fanfare in February. Whilst a welcome and frank acknowledgement of some of the barriers to housing delivery, it was short on quick fixes and big on further consultation. A key tenet was how to streamline the local plan process and secure a more consistent approach to calculating housing needs and assessing viability.
The Government published a consultation on measures to boost housing supply in England; Its proposals include:
- a standard method for calculating local authorities’ housing need
- how neighbourhood planning groups can have greater certainty on the level of housing need to plan for
- a statement of common ground to improve how local authorities work together to meet housing and other needs across boundaries
- making the use of viability assessments simpler, quicker and more transparent
- increased planning application fees in those areas where local planning authorities are delivering the homes their communities need
The consultation document includes a helpful table showing what the application of the standard methodology for calculating housing need would mean for different local planning authorities – a selection of which are set out below
| Local Authority | Existing identified need (based on most recent assessment) | Application of new methodology |
| Bournemouth | 979 | 1,022 |
| Christchurch and East Dorset | 626 | 792 |
| Eastleigh | 630 | 715 |
| Guildford | 654 | 789 |
| Hart | 382 | 292 |
| Hastings | 404 | 280 |
| Havant | 450 | 463 |
| North Dorset | 330 | 366 |
| Poole | 710 | 782 |
| Portsmouth | 740 | 835 |
| Purbeck | 238 | 168 |
| Southampton | 1,115 | 942 |
| South Somerset | 607 | 734 |
| Taunton Deane | 512 | 627 |
| Test Valley | 590 | 569 |
| West and Weymouth & Portland | 755 | 780 |
| Wiltshire | – | 2,227 |
For more information, please contact Chapman Lily Planning.