Affordable Housing Securing Planning Consent, 2005-2008

ANNEX

• Survey Background: The 'Affordable Housing Securing Planning Consent' survey is a new survey, this being its second publication. It gathers information about all planning applications, that contain provision for affordable housing, that were granted planning permission during the reporting period. Planning Authorities are asked to record information on active affordable housing provision i.e. - provision that involves intervention, either by way of public subsidy or through negotiations/contributions agreed with private developers. The return does not report information on housing provision where the market price of the local area makes it affordable to people on modest incomes without any intervention.
• Survey Operation: Planning Authorities have been asked to complete an application-based register (in excel format). For each Planning Application (with provision for affordable housing) granted planning consent during 2005/08, Authorities have provided various details about the nature of the provision. This includes number of units, location, tenure type, size and the nature of the affordable contribution (i.e. who is making the contribution towards affordable housing and how?). Further information on the operation of the survey and the types of contribution that are recorded within the Registers, can be viewed from the Guidance Notes issued to Planning Authorities. The link below is for the 2005/07 notes, but an updated version for 2007/08 was distributed in May 2008.
  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning/PlanningConsentGuidance#top

• Survey of Consents: It is important to remember that this survey is of Planning Consents for new affordable housing provision. It is not a survey of newly built affordable units or units under construction. The survey seeks to gather information on the flow of new affordable housing provision coming through the first stage of delivery, i.e. receiving planning consent. Whilst it is likely a proportion of those affordable units granted planning consent during 2005/08 are currently under construction (or have even been completed), there may be others where construction has yet to proceed. Information on actual Affordable Housing completions can be accessed from the Housing Statistics web-pages (link below)
  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Housing-Regeneration/HSfS

• Survey Results: It is important to take care when interpreting survey results as some applications (though granted planning consent) will not yet have final details of affordable provision agreed. Furthermore the nature of some agreed provision may change prior to the commencement of new construction. Some Planning Authorities had difficulty supplying information for every variable in the Register, hence there is a degree of estimation for some returns. One Planning Authority (Moray) has not submitted any data, and two authorities Argyll and Bute, Clackmannanshire) did not supply data for 2007/08. As events proceed, the quality of response for those areas that have estimation, and developments where some aspect of provision is not yet fully known, will improve in future surveys.
• Chart / Table 2 - Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD): The SIMD 2006 project identifies small area concentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland. It contains 37 indicators in seven domains: Current Income, Employment, Health, Education, Skills and Training, Geographic Access to Services, Housing and Crime. Further information on the SIMD 2006 project can be found on the Scottish Government's web pages at - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD/Overview

• Table 3 - Urban / Rural Classification System: The 2007/08 Scottish Government urban/rural classification system classifies areas of Scotland into 6 categories. These are 1) 'Large Urban Areas' (settlements of over 125,000 people), 2) 'Other Urban Areas' (settlements of 10,000 to 125,000 people), 3) 'Accessible Small Towns' (settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and within 30 minutes of a drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more), 4) 'Remote Small Towns' (settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more), 5) 'Accessible Rural' (settlements of less than 3,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more) and 6) 'Remote Rural' (settlements of less than 3,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more). Further information on the Classification system can be found at the link below:
  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/07/29152642/0

• Table 6 -Mixture of Affordable/Market Unit Applications: Care should be taken when interpreting this table as it draws on a relatively small base of applications granted consent during 2005/08. To construct this table all Planning Applications granted consent in the survey register that fulfilled the following conditions were selected - 1. The affordable housing provision is being contributed by a private developer (and falls within CONTRIBUTE1 codes of 2, 3 and 4 of the survey guidance), 2. The application site in question contains a mixture of both affordable and market-price units (and hence the affordable units are on-site), 3. There is a reasonable level of confidence that the full extent of affordable units being contributed have been captured within the survey reporting period. In terms of Point 3, there have been some instances of large developments for which more than 1 application contains an on-site developer contribution of affordable housing. However, because it is thought likely that part of this contribution has fallen outwith the survey reporting period (and hence hasn't been recorded), those developments have been deliberately excluded from Table 6 so as to avoid under-estimating the true extent of the affordable housing granted planning consent. Hence, as previously stated, it is advised that Table 6's contents are treated as illustrative only.
• Copy of Bulletin and Further Information: A free copy of this Summary can be downloaded from the Planning Statistics page of the Scottish Government's Web site at:
  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning/Planning/Publications
  
  Enquiries on this Summary should be directed to
  Planning Statistics
  Communities Analytical Services Division
  Scottish Government
  0131 244 0439
  planstats@scotland.gsi.gov.uk