Housing Land Audit: guidance

Purpose of the HLA

20. HLAs are an important tool to support housing delivery – they monitor the progress of sites through the planning process. By looking backwards, to monitor past completions of new homes, and looking forwards, to monitor future programming of new homes in an area, the evidence can inform decision making on plans and planning applications. Individual audits have the following key functions:

• to calculate the delivery of homes over the audit year: the past completions;
• to estimate the projected delivery of homes over a 10 year period: the future programming;
• to monitor progress towards meeting the Local Housing Land Requirement in full, therefore informing the deliverable housing land pipeline and the actions to be taken in Delivery Programmes; and,
• to contribute to a collective overview of the delivery of housing land at the national level.

21. Beyond planning purposes, the HLA can have wider use. This can include informing the preparation of, and being informed by, the Local Housing Strategy (LHS) and the Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP). There are important links between housing and infrastructure planning and delivery, therefore the HLA can also inform work undertaken by other local authority departments, such as transport and education, and key agencies, such as Scottish Water.

Delivery Focus

22. The approach to planning for new homes promotes an ambitious and plan-led system with a focus on delivery. The HLA has a more prominent role in supporting delivery than previously.

23. As part of the preparation of the HLA, every site should be considered for its deliverability at the base date of the audit, in line with the NPF4 definition of deliverable land and the deliverability factors set out at paragraph 64-67 of this guidance.

24. The annual HLA is a monitoring tool and provides regular information to review and update the deliverable housing land pipeline and related actions in the Delivery Programme. The annual HLA should not duplicate the two-yearly Delivery Programme but the documents should work in tandem with one another.