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Gorstyhills Planning Appeal Notes - October 2017 Ruling Available at SUMMARY The good news is that the Council has won on the issue
of a 5-year supply of housing (paragraphs 302 & 304). The bad news is that if we ever don’t have a 5-year
supply of housing then it will be open season for developers again (paragraph
284). EXTRACTS FROM THE RULING Cheshire East Council set out their interpretation of the
Supreme Court case at para 128 The Inspector acknowledges this at para 283, then says at
para 284 that 284. Furthermore, the SC
made it clear that this interpretation should not lead to the need for a
legalistic exercise to decide whether individual policies do or do not come
within the expression “relevant policies for the supply of housing”. The important question is not how to define individual policies but
whether the result is a five year supply of deliverable housing in accordance
with the objectives of paragraph 47. If there is a failure it does not matter if
this is because of the policies which specifically deal with housing provision
or because of other restrictive policies, the shortfall itself is the trigger
for the operation of the tilted balance in paragraph 14.
Paragraph 14 is engaged in this case. It requires the granting of
permission unless any adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and
demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in the
NPPF as a whole, a balancing exercise to which I shall return. The prematurity argument is accepted (para 298) Does the Council have a 5-year housing land supply? YES 302. Whilst the appellant
suggests the Council’s inability to address the shortfall over the preferred 5
year period is a consideration that weighs in favour of allowing the appeal, the
appropriate strategy for delivering sufficient housing to meet the housing
requirement and any shortfall is a matter for the LPS examination. If the
‘Sedgepool 8’ approach is adopted, which now seems likely, then this will
determine the annual requirement against which the five year housing land supply
will be calculated and monitored. The inability of the Council to address the
shortfall over the preferred 5 year period is therefore a consideration to which
I afford minimal weight. 304. It is considered that
the comprehensive analysis conducted for the LPS examination is a more robust
assessment having regard to all the elements of housing supply and delivery
comprehensively. That is not to say that some of the slippage highlighted by the
appellant on individual sites has not occurred since 31 March 2016 but all the
data has not been reviewed to see if other sites are likely to perform better
than anticipated during the five year period. This appeal cannot test the robustness of the overall evidence in the same
way as a local plan examination. Given
that this has been considered relatively recently as part of the examination and
the Inspector has indicated that the housing supply and delivery assessment
appears to be acceptable, the calculation of the Council is preferred at this
time. ANALYSIS As I said at the debate on the Cheshire East Local Plan, “So will we have a 5 year housing land supply? Well Cllr
David Brown did say at Cabinet last year that under the current government rules
we would never have a 5-year housing land supply. And he was right (well almost)
that it is the current government rules that are causing the problem. And it is
a problem – the winners are the speculative developers and the lawyers. I say
the lawyers because whether we have a 5.1 or maybe a 4.9 year housing land
supply will undoubtedly be tested in the Courts. But it gets worse - In order to maintain a 5-year housing
land supply, 1800 houses a year will have to be built. If only 1600 houses are
built in the next year, then we will no longer have a 5-year housing land
supply. Who controls the number of houses built? The developers. And who
benefits if there is no 5-year housing land supply? The developers. I hope you
can all see what’s going to happen.” “This is developer-led planning not plan-led
development.” If the Conservatives had accepted the Labour amendment of
immediately starting work on a new Local Plan that did take into account the
implications of HS2 and the correct air quality information, then we could be
using the
government’s new methodology for calculating housing need which gives an
annual housing need of 1142 homes rather than 1800. If
the Conservatives had accepted the Labour amendment then we would have a
robust 5-year housing land supply. Under the Cheshire East Conservative Leadership, supported
by Fiona Bruce MP, we have a precarious 5-year housing land supply and every
chance of returning to a speculative developer free-for-all in 2018. All this could be stopped by a clear ministerial statement
that ““All policies within Local and Neighbourhood Plans that have passed a
public consultation should carry significant weight even if there is no 5-year
housing land supply”. Sadly, no such statement has been forthcoming from the
Conservative Minister. |