South Cambridgeshire District Council publishes its 5 year housing land supply position. Now, Government requires all Local Planning authorities to demonstrate sufficient supply of land to provide 5 years worth of housing. The report shows that the Council jointly with Cambridge City, have 6.1 years of housing land supply for 2021-2026 period.
It was great to see the Local Press carry this important story. It puts to bed all the rumours that had been initiated and carried by the Conservative opposition group over the past year. One could be forgiven for thinking they wanted the figure to be lower than the minimum 5 years. Those who were around pre-2018 when the Conservatives ran the Council and did not meet the threshold will remember the carnage that it brought to some villages as developers bombarded the council with speculative applications, a lot of which got approved at appeal. This meant permission was given for about 4,000 houses in potentially non-sustainable locations, including 200 in Caldecote.
What is 5 Year Housing Land Supply?
A 5 year housing land supply (5YHLS) is a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide 5 years’ worth of housing. Also it includes an appropriate buffer ranging from 5% to 20% and is measured against one of two criteria. So the first is the housing requirement in the adopted local plan policies. And the second is the local housing need figure calculated using the standard method. This requirement is stated in Paragraph 73 of the National Planning Policy Framework. The published figure of 6.1 years takes effect from 1 April 2021.
What is the purpose of 5 Year Housing Land Supply?
The purpose of the 5 year housing land supply is to provide an indication of whether there are sufficient sites available to meet the housing requirement in adopted strategic policies for the next 5 years. It is important when dealing with planning applications and appeals because it shows that current local plan policies are up to date.
What is 5 Year Housing Land Supply for Greater Cambs?
Why Greater Cambridgeshire?
Greater Cambridge is the geographical area defined by the combined areas of South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council.
Furthermore, when the current adopted local plans for both councils were examined, the Inspector instructed the Councils to create a new joint local plan. So the adopted Cambridge Local Plan 2018 (Policy 3) and the adopted South Cambridgeshire Local Plan 2018 (Policy S/12) state that “the housing trajectories for Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire … will be considered together for the purposes of phasing of housing delivery, including for calculating 5 year housing land supply in development management decisions that concern housing development”.
5 Year Housing Land Supply Calculations
The South Cambridgeshire Local Plan 2018 sets a housing requirement of 19,500 dwellings to be delivered between 2011 and 2031. The new housing trajectory shows that 23,097 dwellings are expected to be delivered in South Cambridgeshire between 2011 and 2031.
Cambridge Local Plan 2018 sets a housing requirement of 14,000 homes to be delivered between 2011 and 2031. The new housing trajectory shows that 14,129 dwellings are expected to be delivered in Cambridge between 2011 and 2031.
Therefore, together the Local Plans set a housing requirement of 33,500 homes between 2011 and 2031 for Greater Cambridge. The new housing trajectory shows that 37,226 dwellings are expected to be delivered between 2011 and 2031. The Greater Cambridge housing trajectory shows that anticipated housing delivery within each Council’s area is more than its respective housing requirement.
The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) calculates how many houses are built on a 3-year rolling scale. The HDT report published in January 2021 shows South Cambs achieved 114% and Cambridge City 176%. The Councils therefore are able to use a 5% buffer for the 5YHLS supply calculations.
The Councils have taken a very robust and conservative approach to assessing how each of the sites in the Greater Cambridge housing trajectory will be developed and delivered. You can read the full report for the 5 Year Housing Land Supply here on the Greater Cambridge Planning website. The report is 568 pages long and has a full list of all the sites that have been used in the calculations.
The table below demonstrates how the 5YHLS figure of 6.1 years is calculated for the 2021 to 2026 period.
If you don’t want to read the whole 568 pages, then concentrate on pages 12 to 49. Those pages give more flesh to the summary I have given so far.
Conclusion
I hope that this 5YHLS figure of 6.1 years reassures residents that we can continue to apply our Local Plan policies in deciding planning applications. It also means continuing with our ambitions to build more affordable housing, delivering homes in sustainable locations and protecting our green belt. Because met and exceeded the minimum threshold, we can make these decisions without fear of rampant speculative and unsustainable development being imposed on villages and towns.