Places, people and planning: update on proposal 10

Proposal 10: Being clear about how much housing land is required.

We believe planning should take a more strategic view of the land required for housing development. The National Planning Framework (NPF) could consider housing from a strategic perspective, setting overall scale and ambition for growth by identifying strategic housing land requirements, focusing on those areas where there are significant pressures or constraints.

Why we are making a change

Using NPF to help steer strategic housing requirements would support more effective coordination of major growth with infrastructure investment. We want to settle any debate on housing requirements for local development plans as early as possible by using a 'gate check' process that will agree local housing requirements and how much land will be required to achieve this. This should be agreed before preparing a spatial strategy focusing on place making and identifying an effective supply of housing sites.

What we are doing

• Our work on this is ongoing with a view to informing future policy and guidance, rather than through structural change to the system.
• We set out a number of key principles in our last Review technical paper published in December 2017 and we will continue to engage with housing professionals and other relevant stakeholders to develop our thinking further in order to identify workable and appropriate solutions to best address issues.

How we will deliver change

• primary legislation – no
• secondary Legislation – no
• guidance – yes
• non-legislative action – yes

Next steps

We are commissioning research to identify best practice in Housing Land Audits and linking these with local development plan action programmes to identify recommendations on how improved quality and consistency can be achieved. The work will begin in early 2018 once a confirmed contractor is in place to carry out the work.