Categories
Uncategorised

Housing Delivery Test 2020

On 19 March the government published its latest Housing Delivery Test results. They don’t make for pleasant reading.

At the beginning of each year, MHCLG releases figures for how many homes each planning authority in England has managed to deliver for the previous year. Based on their performance against predetermined targets, certain consequences apply depending upon how far off the mark they were. Any authority with a score of less than 75% (ie. the total number of homes delivered divided by the target for that period) is subject to a “presumption in favour of sustainable development” as set out by the National Planning Policy Framework. A figure of less than 85% requires the authority to identify a “buffer” of land supply to make up the difference, and a score of less than 95% requires an action plan to be prepared.

To complicate matters, these thresholds change each year: the threshold for “presumption” has risen from 25% in 2018 to 45% in 2019 and now to 75% for 2020. Of course, these figures are for homes delivered rather than granted planning consent, placing the targets rather out of their control.

In 2018 all of the London Planning Authorities (including London Legacy Development Corporation, but not Old Oak Common, which is currently excluded from these targets) exceeded the threshold for presumption, with fourteen falling below the 95% figure.

↑ 2018 Housing Delivery Test Consequences

None

Action Plan

Buffer

Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development

However, for 2019 – with the “presumption” threshold raised to 45% – both City of London and Havering Council fell short, although better performance was seen by others, with only eight boroughs falling below the “buffer” target of 85%.

Fast forward to 2020, and eight boroughs scored below the 75% figure required to avoid a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Havering remains the worst performing, with delivery of only 36% of homes against its five-year target 3,414. But Kensington & Chelsea is following closely behind with a score of 49% – a massive drop from 137% just two years before.

↑ 2020 Housing Delivery Test Consequences

None

Action Plan

Buffer

Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development

Although an allowance has been made within the government’s targets for the ongoing pandemic – and its knock-on effect on the housing pipeline – within the five year period up to the end of 2020 London’s authorities delivered 115,736 of their 121,801 target. Therefore if London were an authority in its own right, it would be hitting the 95% target to avoid sanctions. But with over half those being delivered by just 10 boroughs, it’s clear that some parts of London need to pick up the pace.

Categories
Uncategorised

Small Sites in the news

Our Small Sites work was mentioned in an article in the Sunday Times last weekend.

The article, by Hugh Graham, discussed how the development of small sites could provide much-needed new homes and provided several case studies for how architects have made clever use of narrow passageways and backland plots to create desirable new homes.

Our “Small Sites Near Me” got a mention in the section on how to locate similar opportunities in your local area.

You can read more on the Time’s website, here.

Categories
Updates

Updates: 9 July 2020

Page Design

  • Small update to vector maps to better show the currently selected borough
  • Corrected an error which crept into the Coronavirus dashboard graphs
  • Updated coding to enable links to specific pages from within London map rather than just to borough page
  • Added new page showing green belt figure data for individual boroughs, together with associated mapping (including areas of ITP London Plan policy H2 which overlaps with designated green belt)

Data

  • Updated planning maps, now including TfL and other stations
  • Added new dataset – total area of borough which is both within designated green belt land, and also London Plan small sites policy H2 zone
  • Added new data for mortality rates due to Coronavirus, and updated the Coronavirus dashboard accordingly
  • Updated green belt figures based on our own GIS mapping rather than external datasets. This came about because it appears there’s a very small area within Greenwich which falls under green belt designation which was excluded from the CPRE data we’d been using previously
  • Added new map showing all of London’s green belt, togther with those green belt areas falling within the H2 zone
  • Updated Corona virus stats for 7 July 2020

Categories
Updates

Updates: 9 June 2020

Page Design

  • Added Air Quality data to the London Borough page – the data already existed but there was no way of viewing it
  • We’ve added a new page which allows the comparison of any dataset on the site to be compared with any other. This isn’t quite ready for primetime yet (and there’s a question over how useful this is), so it’s not included on the main page menu yet. But if you want to check it out, you can do so here.

Data

  • Included new section “Golf courses” within borough data pages, providing following statistics. This data is based on the Ordnance Survey’s “green space” GIS dataset, updated April 2020. We’ve filtered the data using the term “golf” and merged all areas matching this criteria within each borough to provide an overall figure. Where golf courses overlap a borough boundary the area of that course has been split between the two boroughs accordingly. From this we’ve created the following data:
    • Total area of golf courses within each borough
    • Percentage area of borough occupied by golf courses
    • Housing capacity (based on existing density) of golf courses
  • Derived a new dataset from the GIS system showing the area of golf courses which do not sit within designated green belt (although note that we have not checked for other protections, eg. metropolitan open land). This has been used to generate a notional figure for new homes at existing borough densities if these areas were released for development (although a golf course which sits partially within greenbelt would presumably lose some of its holes, so the remaining area might not be much use as a golf club any more).

Categories
Updates

Updates: 20 May 2020

Page Design

  • Because some of the Shelter data is incomplete, fields with no available data (as opposed to a figure of zero) are now filtered out to avoid confusion. NULL values may still show in some areas of the site; these will be removed in a future update

Data

Categories
Updates

Updates: 15 May 2020

Page Design

  • London map rollover functions and clarity improved
  • New site icon
  • Text updates to Small Sites page, including improvements to borough naming
  • Cosmetic updates to styling to improve readability on mobile devices
  • Added new page showing design review panels across London
  • Added new pie chart for some data sets where
  • Added random “related” link at base of each data page
  • General improvements in coding to increase clarity

Data

  • Included data for Section 78 planning appeals (decided and allowed) for period April 2018 to March 2019
  • Included full list of dates of adoption of Local Plans for all boroughs, City of London Corporation, and Mayoral Development Corporations

Categories
Updates

Updates: 10 May 2020

Page design

  • Template updated to show wider central column on desktops
  • Consistent appearance of headings across all pages
  • Included bar chart at base of all ranking pages
  • Rollovers for London map with selected borough emphasised with bolder line
  • Added new “update” page to explain changes to site

Data

  • Added dataset on car ownership (number of licensed vehicles), based on DfT 2018 data, with the following calculations:
    • Number of licensed vehicles (cars only), 2018
    • Change in number of licensed vehicles (cars), 2004 – 2018
    • Number of licensed cars per head of population, 2018
    • Vehicle density
  • Updated Coronavirus statistics based on 9 May 2020 data
  • Added new category “Housing Stock” with associated data

Categories
Uncategorised

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!