Effective or Defective: The Housing Delivery Test
Colin Robinson
MRTPI
(Lichfields Planning)
Research Description
The Government’s Housing Delivery Test [HDT] aims to encourage LPAs to boost housing supply to avoid losing control of development in their areas. Lichfields produced an Insight report investigating how effective the HDT actually is as a mechanism to tackle housing under-delivery and how it can be improved. We found that 4 out of 5 districts that fail the most punitive threshold also cannot demonstrate an up to date 5YHLS, which means the tilted balance has already been triggered via another avenue. In practice, housing delivery in just 1 authority nationwide is likely to be significantly boosted by the HDT. Read here.
The Judges Said...
This paper goes a long way to helping planning practitioners understand the practical impact of the Housing Delivery Test in making planning decisions which affect the delivery of much needed housing. It offers a helpful contribution to the continuing debate on the policy framework for delivering housing and explores the practical implications of government policy in an innovative way.