Nearly one in five councils miss government housing delivery targets
Some 67% of local authorities delivered at least 95% of their housing requirement in the three years to March 2020.
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Some 55 local planning authorities (LPAs) delivered less than 75% of their housing requirement in the three years to March 2020, according to the latest Housing Delivery Test from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG).
The 55 LPAs delivering less than 75% will now face presumption in favour of sustainable development. This policy approves any development unless their adverse impacts "significantly and demonstrably" outweigh their benefits. As a result, these areas face having less sway over planning decisions.
Elsewhere, 19 LPAs saw delivery fall between 75% and 85% of housing need, therefore requiring the addition of a 20% buffer to their calculation of five year housing land supply. Some 33 local authorities, meanwhile, delivered between 85% and 95% of need and will be required to write an action plan outlining how they will increase delivery.
The remaining 67% of local authorities delivered at least 95% of their housing requirement in the three years to March 2020. The results will apply until the publication of the 2021 test, which is scheduled for November.
While the 2020 test was largely unaffected by Covid-19, to reflect the temporary disruption experienced during the first lockdown. MHCLG tweaked the methodology slightly with the period for measuring homes required in 2019/20 reduced by one month.
It is likely the rules will have to be relaxed further for the 2021 test.
Eastbourne and Epsom and Ewell were the worst performing areas, the 2020 HDT figures show, delivering less than 35% of their housing requirement. Further analysis shows that 55% of the LPAs facing presumption in favour of development are located in London and the South East.
Roland Brass, a Partner in the Knight Frank Planning team, points to the fact that many of the worst performing LPAs also have outdated Local Plans – which set out a local authority's policies and proposals for land use in their area - in place.
“A consistent and flexible housing land supply is clearly vital to achieve a strong housing delivery over time. The Government announced yesterday that 40 of the 55 authorities who delivered less than three-quarters of their housing need have a Local Plan that is more than five years old. Therefore, in the short term, before new Local Plans are sufficiently advanced, we expect to see more opportunities for planning applications for housing in these presumption LPAs, the majority of which are located across the South East, East and London, in particular Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Surrey,” Roland says.
According to MHCLG, nine in ten local planning authorities have now adopted a Local Plan. Last year, the government set a deadline of December 2023 for all authorities to have up-to-date Local Plans in place.
You can see how each Local Authority has performed in the below searchable table.