Will Rethinking the Planning System make the Housing Delivery Test redundant?

The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) results were published last week on the Government's website and many local planning authorities will be heaving a sigh of relief that only 8 of them are below the threshold at which the 'presumption in favour' of sustainable development kicks in.

Housing Delivery Test more important after Nov 2020

The Framework's transition arrangements currently apply the 'presumption in favour' if a LPA is achieving less than 45% of its required housing, but this jumps to threshold of 75% from November 2020.  If the 75% threshold had applied now, 54 local planning authorities would have had the presumption applied.  They range widely from Bournemouth, Oxford and the City of London in the South, to Stockport, Trafford and Warrington in the North West and Gateshead in the North East (full list at the bottom of this page). 

Every part of the country will have a wake-up call to the Housing Delivery Test within 12 months, unless something changes.

Change in the air as Jack Airey becomes special adviser

Change is brewing.  Jack Airey (pictured below)was appointed as a special adviser to Downing Street last week.  Eyebrows have been raised because Mr Airey is a co-author of the radical report "Rethinking the Planning System for the 21st Century", published January 2020. His appointment is seen as highly significant at a time when the Government is preparing a White Paper on Accelerated Planning.

New Visions of Housing Delivery

The report 'Rethinking the Planning System for the 21st Century' proposes a fundamental change to the planning system that would remove the need for any housing targets.  Instead of the Local Plan setting a figure, the market would be left to find its own level. 

Housing allocations would also become unnecessary, as a presumption in favour of development would apply in broad zones around settlements.  Removing the numbers-based approach would enable planning to focus instead on design quality and infrastructure provision, argues Mr Airey.  The report is well informed and insightful, providing thoughtful, if radical, ways forward. It deserves careful reading, particularly as it could be a sign of the Government's future direction.

Devising housing requirements has long been fraught with problems and civil servants must be currently scratching their heads on the promised re-write of the Standard Method for calculating housing numbers.  The formula has to be rewritten to reflect lower household projections whilst justifying higher housing delivery in order to tackle inter-generational inequality.  A complete change of direction might be a way forward out of this conundrum.

Will design trump housing numbers in the 2020s?

The current planning system applies a 'predict and provide' approach to housing that reflects the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act's post-war assumption of a key role for the state in planning.  Boris Johnson might have very different ideas for post-Brexit arrangements.  The combination of Jack Airey's report and the recent report by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission might usher in a new era in which the Housing Delivery Test results become unimportant by this time next year.  Those considering appeals might want to hedge their bets on both design and housing numbers.

Fig 1. LPAs at 2019 with housing delivery below 75% of minimum housing requirements