Lower five-year housing requirement for Corby, Kettering, East Northants and Wellingborough

The adoption of a five-year plan to maintain a supply of housing land on a North Northamptonshire-wide basis instead of the former council areas is set to be discussed.

At a meeting of North Northamptonshire Council’s Executive Advisory Panel for Planning Policy tomorrow (JULY 29), councillors are due to consider the approach to maintaining a supply of deliverable housing land.

The council must maintain a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide a minimum of five years’ worth of housing against its housing requirement.

In the absence of a five-year supply development plan policies may be treated as out-of-date, making the area susceptible to speculative development pressures.

The panel is set to discuss maintaining supply calculated until July 16 against the local housing need for East Northants, Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough.

Then from July 17 it will be measured against the local housing need for the North Northamptonshire housing market area.

A report to the panel states: “The housing requirements set out in Policy 28 of the Joint Core Strategy (JCS) apply until July 2021, when the plan will be five years old and national policy states that they should be superseded by Local Housing Need (LHN) calculated using the government’s standard method.

“This needs to be kept under review in the light of factors including progress on the NN Strategic Plan and any changes to the standard method for calculating LHN.

“For North Northamptonshire, current LHN is similar to the JCS housing requirement in all of the former local planning authority areas.

“It results in a lower five-year housing requirement in areas all except East Northamptonshire, where it is only marginally higher.

“The choice to be made is between calculating housing land supply, post-July 2021, on a North Northamptonshire-wide basis, or based on the former local planning authority areas (in each case against LHN).

“Legal advice obtained by the Joint Planning & Delivery Unit confirms that either option is legally robust.

“The report concludes that maintaining a five year supply of housing land at the North Northamptonshire level (rather than for former council areas) will provide greatest protection from speculative development proposals for the whole area.

“In the event of a shortfall in five-year supply, the council would have flexibility to determine the most sustainable locations in which to release new sites in line with the spatial strategy of the JCS.”

It is being recommended that the advisory panel recommends the executive agrees that:

“Until July 16, NNC should continue to measure five-year supply against the (former) local planning authority requirements in JCS Policy 28;

“From July 17, in accordance with national policy, NNC should measure five-year supply against the local housing need for the North Northamptonshire Housing Market Area (HMA), calculated using the standard method.

“This approach should be reviewed annually to take account of changes in circumstances, including progress on the NN Strategic Plan and any changes to the standard method by which LHN is calculated.”