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Government to consult on standardised housing need test
The government is expected to launch a consultation into proposals on a standardised methodology for councils to work out housing need this week.
Communities secretary Sajid Javid has previously said the launch would take place this month, and parliamentary business breaks up for summer recess after Friday.
It will be the first in a series of Housing White Paper promises to streamline the planning process to result in firm proposals.
A spokesperson for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said on Tuesday that the consultation would be launched “soon”, but that no further details were available.
Local authorities are currently able to choose the methodology they use to calculate their area’s housing need, but a standardised system would see all areas using the same formula.
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Colin Robinson, planning director at Lichfields’ Manchester office, said there would likely be a “get-out clause” for councils which could otherwise be forced to use the standardised assessment to form Local Plans.
He said: “The government will say to local authorities ‘you should follow this methodology, but if you can provide robust evidence to justify why you can’t follow it then you will be able to use your own calculation’.”
Mike Kiely, president of the Planning Officers Society, said a standardised methodology would send out the message that “government has realised there is not a correct methodology – they all have their biases”.
“Everyone knows it’s not an accurate picture so we all just have to accept the methodology and stop arguing about it.”
Mr Kiely suggested the proposals could be partly based on recommendations in a Local Plans Expert Group report from March 2016.
The Housing White Paper noted that the group “concluded that a more standardised methodology was one of the most important reforms that could be made to improve plan-making”.
The report broadly recommended that a standardised methodology should be based on household projection and migration data, economic markers and signals from the housing market.
Mr Kiely said he was “fearful” that this last indicator could lead to “ridiculous” housing need numbers in areas with very high house prices, especially London.
Last week, the Greater London Authority (GLA) released household projections for the whole of England for the first time. It will use the data as the basis for the updated London Plan.
The projections diverged from the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) figures, which are used to calculate housing need, by suggesting household growth would be smaller in London and greater in the rest of the country.
The GLA projection used migration figures from the past 10 years as its basis, while the latest ONS figures from 2014 only looked back five years.
Anthony Pollard, economics director at Turley Associates, said: “It will be interesting to see these different projections in the context of trying to standardise something – there is obviously an issue if the biggest conurbation takes a different view on its starting point.”
“This would automatically give every authority around the country a different figure already as a point at which to start from.”
But Jamie Sullivan, associate at Iceni Projects, said the disparity in the projections “highlights the importance of having a set methodology”.
Steve Quartermain, chief planner at the DCLG, has previously announced that a revised National Planning Policy Framework, including a standardised calculation for housing need, would be issued “towards the back end of the year”.
