Housing Land Supply - North Wales.

We've alluded to problems of Housing Land Supply in previous posts.

Welsh Government Policy requires a Council to demonstrate a 5 year supply of housing land  using something called the "residual method".  In simple terms this can be expressed as:-

Number of houses planned in Development Plan minus the number of units already completed and with permission to be built since the plan began, sprinkle a little jiggery pokery for units which may or may not be predicted as being completed within 5 years to give you the "balance to be built".  Divide that by the number of years the plan has left until its end date to give an annual requirement and multiply by 5.  Simples eh?

August is a fascinating time in consultancy whilst those of us not sunning ourselves on the beach await release of the latest Joint Annual Housing Land Supply reports. 

How are things currently looking?.  

*Anglesey: (stopped UDP)..  Cannot demonstrate a supply as no adopted plan.  1022 units available as at Feb 2016.  

Conwy: (adopted LDP).  3.7 years (August 2016).  Annual delivery requirement to meet LDP target has risen from an annual average rate of 420 units to 618.  

Denbighshire: (adopted LDP).   2.02 years (July 2016).  Annual delivery requirement to meet LDP target has risen from 500 units to 1055.

Flintshire. (UDP Expired 2015).  Cannot demonstrate a supply with no adopted plan.  LDP predicted adoption mid 2019.   3076 units predicted available.   

*Gwynedd:  (Adopted UDP).  2.9 years.  (August 2016).  Annual delivery requirement to meet UDP target has risen from 278 to 538.

Wrexham: (UDP Expired).  Cannot demonstrate a  supply with no adopted plan.  LDP predicted mid 2019.  1274 units available as at April 2015.  LPD adopted predicted mid 2018. 

* The joint Anglesey/Gwynedd LDP is moving toward examination in the autumn.  The overall target figure is 7902 (527pa) so it looks as though the LDP will be adopted with an immediate shortage and will be playing catch up straight away as the annual average rate of completions is expected to be 254 and 272 for Anglesey and Gwynedd respectively.  Neither rate has been achieved.

Using a relatively crude measure such as the residual method perhaps magnifies the effects of undersupply (or rather under delivery) during say a period of low build rates or economic downturn.  However its also reasonable that would smooth out over the 15year lifetime of a plan.  However its also the case that no North Wales LPA has witnessed housing completions  anywhere near its annual target in any recent year.  That merely compounds the problem by increasing the residual gap ever more.  Therein lies the challenge.

We may  do some further analysis down the line but the basic conclusions are:

• No North Wales Council has a five year housing supply and so must be open to additional housing proposals which meet the the PPW objectives of delivering sustainable development.
• The annual housing requirement for each authority is increasing year on year and we simply predict the gaps will get bigger unless more houses are actually built.
• The delivery of housing is nowhere near the levels required. 

In a future post we might look to some of the problems and thoughts on solutions.