Decision

A Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP)
(May 2024) was presented as an update to the previous version. It
had been informed by the Government’s planning practice
guidance and a review of existing plans produced by other
Authorities. As the most recently adopted housing requirement
figure was over five years’ old, the new HDTAP required
‘Local Housing Need’ to be established using the
Government’s (unconstrained) ‘Standard Method’
and for a 20% buffer to be added to the five-year housing land
supply. This resulted in an annual housing requirement of 761
units. The Chair commented that this was a highly unrealistic
figure for the Council to be judged against, given that the
District comprised 94% Green Belt with two National Landscapes and
with key road transportation hubs already at capacity. Such
constraints could, however, be taken into account as part of the
(separatee) new Local Plan making process when seeking to establish
a justified housing requirement. 
 
Nevertheless, the proposed measures for
improving housing delivery against the ‘Standard
Method’ comprised:
 
·      the continued use of the Interim Policy
Statement for Housing Delivery for both
the delivery of site-specific allocations and the policy criteria
for determining planning applications
 
·      Local Plan Review:
 
(i)       production and
adoption of a new Local Plan
 
(ii)     
HELAA update to identify land for
housing
 
(iii)    Duty to Cooperate
engagement with neighbouring authorities and prescribed
bodies
 
(iv)    production of a
transport assessment to assess network capacity and potential
highway interventions
 
·     keeping the brownfield land register up to
date
 
·     continuation of previous measures, e.g. Planning
Performance Agreements and the pre-application advice
service.
 
It was confirmed that, where the granting of
planning permission was subject to a S106 Agreement, the associated
housing delivery would only count against the HDTAP once the S106
had been signed (in the absence of a S106, delivery would count
upon the determination of the application). In that respect, it was
anticipated that TDC’s actual
housing land supply provision would shortly be increased beyond two
years by three sites for which planning permission had been granted
and S106 Agreements were being negotiated.
 
R E S O L V E
D – that
the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP), May 2024, be agreed
for publication.