One of the local authorities that I work for has had an appeal
decision which challenges the way in which they have dealt with
surplus provision in the calculation of 5 year housing land supply.
The authority in question has exceeded the adopted plan requirement to
date and in calculating the 5 year land supply target has subtracted
the surplus provision from the plan requirement for the next five
years and then added the 5% buffer. The appeal Inspector considered
this approach to be out of step with the national
policy objective of boosting housing supply
significantly. He rejected the argument that oversupply should be
deducted from future supply for 2 main reasons. First, the
delivery of houses will vary from year to year, and deducting past
oversupply could lead to an artificially low expectation in the
future, which would conflict with the national policy objective.
Secondly housing need is expected to be reviewed every 5 years in
any event, so action could be taken to address significant
oversupply in the short to medium term. He also added that in any
event delivery expectations are not upper limits. This position
appears to be contrary to advice issued by PAS in the past and I
wondered if anyone has examples of appeals which have adopted the
same or perhaps a different position? I understand that this issue
is the subject of a case in the High Court, but I am not aware of
the details.
