Less Housing Talk, More House Building

It is solution driven, removing barriers, closing down areas of debate and is focussed on what planners and the wider housebuilding industry want to actually do – build homes and create communities.

Bidwells fully endorse the new standard method for determining Local Housing Need (LHN), especially in the context of a revived Duty to Cooperate, which is still a legal requirement, while we progress towards a more strategic approach to planning for housing. The new method brings stability with only minor changes likely from year to year. The intention to remove all debate about higher or lower housing numbers brings certainty for the industry and local authorities, but more importantly local communities, which can now focus on where and how new homes will be built.

Bidwells also fully endorse the removal of the various adjustments made in the December 2023 NPPF to assessing 5-Year Housing Land Supply (5YHLS) and the weight given to the Housing Delivery Test (HDT). Tinkering with these essential monitoring tools was never the answer. If a pressure dial indicates that something is about to explode, you start with doing something about the pressure, not recalibrate the dial to a level more to your liking.

Fundamentally, since most of the LHN, 5YHLS and HDT provisions are set out in the WMS, they are a material consideration in all planning decisions now being made. The weight attributable to them will be subject to considerable debate, but none of them are entirely new ideas. Therefore, couched in the right way, this means they could be given significant gravitas. This will be particularly the case for 5YHLS where it is a more of a return to the established and long accepted approach.