Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment Base date: 6 October 2017 Published February 2018 1 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 2 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 Contents CHAPTERS 1. Introduction 4 2. Methodology 4 3. Site Identification 5 4. Excluded Sites 6 5. Included Sites 6 Assessing Suitability 8 Assessing Availability 8 Assessing Achievability 9 Assessment of Timescales 9 Deliverability of Sites 9 6. Establishing Housing Supply 10 Deliverable Sites 10 Developable Sites 10 Windfall Allowance 11 Hartland Park 12 7. Is there a sufficient supply to meet housing needs? 13 8. Five year housing land supply 14 APPENDICES Appendix 1 The SHLAA Process 15 Appendix 2 Sources of Sites 16 Appendix 3 SHLAA Site Submission Form 17 Appendix 4 All SHLAA Sites 19 Appendix 5 SHLAA Site Exclusion Criteria 25 Appendix 6 Excluded SHLAA Sites 28 Appendix 7 Included SHLAA Sites 30 Appendix 8 Estimating the Housing Capacity of Sites 34 Appendix 9 Site Assessments (published separately) 35 Appendix 10 Outstanding Planning Permissions at 6th October 2017 708 Appendix 11 Local Plan Housing Trajectory 719 3 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 1. Introduction 1.1 The purpose of the SHLAA is to establish what land is available for housing development and to assess its suitability and achievability. 1.2 The NPPF states that local authorities must identify sufficient homes to meet housing needs over the plan period. Specifically, it states that Councils must identify enough deliverable sites1 for five years’ worth of new homes and identify land that we consider to be developable2 for years 6 to 10 and where possible for years 11 to 15. 1.3 The SHLAA is an important part of the evidence base for the local plan. If there are insufficient deliverable and developable sites identified in the SHLAA to meet housing needs over the plan period (in this case the period from 2016 to 2032), then the SHLAA provides an evidence base of other potential sites which form the choices available to the Council when plan-making. 1.4 For clarification, the inclusion of a site in the SHLAA does not mean that it will necessarily be allocated in a local plan or neighbourhood plan or gain planning permission. 2. Methodology 2.1 This SHLAA has been prepared in accordance with the national Planning Practice Guidance (PPG)3. The approach taken is also consistent with a SHLAA methodology agreed between the three authorities of Hart, Rushmoor and Surrey Heath which together comprise a single housing market area (HMA). 2.2 Appendix 1 reproduces a figure from National Planning Practice Guidance which provides a helpful overview of the approach taken. Essentially the process is as follows: Identify sites with potential for development; Assess their development potential (or capacity); Assess, suitability for development (in terms of constraints such as policy and environmental designations), their availability, and their achievability (i.e. 1 To be considered deliverable, sites should be available now, offer a suitable location for development now, and be achievable with a realistic prospect that housing will be delivered on the site within five years and in particular that development of the site is viable. Sites with planning permission should be considered deliverable until permission expires, unless there is clear evidence that schemes will not be implemented within five years, for example they will not be viable, there is no longer a demand for the type of units or sites have long term phasing plans. 2 To be considered developable, sites should be in a suitable location for housing development and there should be a reasonable prospect that the site is available and could be viably developed at the point envisaged. 3 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/housing-and-economic-development-needs-assessments 4 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 likelihood of development coming forward particularly with regards to viability); Reach a conclusion for each site as to whether it is deliverable, developable or not currently developable. Prepare a trajectory of deliverable and developable sites and assess whether there are enough sites to meet housing needs over the plan period; and if not, what the extent of the shortfall is that needs to be addressed through the plan-making process. An allowance is also made for small windfall sites. 2.3 The base date for this SHLAA, in terms of available data on completions and outstanding planning permissions is 6th October 2017. 3. Site Identification 3.1 This SHLAA adopts a site size threshold of 5 units. Site smaller than this are not assessed; instead they are dealt with through a small sites windfall allowance (see Section 6). 3.2 Most of the sites in the SHLAA are either known to the Council already through the development management process or are submitted by landowners or their agents/developers. The full list of sources is set out in Appendix 2. 3.3 SHLAA sites have been submitted to the Council on an ongoing basis over several years since SHLAAs were first introduced. The most recent call for sites was in August – October 2014, and subsequently as part of the Refined Housing Options Consultation in February and March 2016. The consultation on a Draft Local Plan Strategy and Sites 2011-2032 at the Regulation 18 stage4 also enabled new sites to be submitted, or existing sites amended, as part of the process. 3.4 Site submissions are usually made through a SHLAA Site Submission Form (Appendix 3) accompanied by a location plan clearly identifying the site boundary. This enables officers to gather some key baseline data on sites and gauge the potential timeframes for delivery of the sites. 3.5 In total 252 sites have been assessed as part of the SHLAA process. A full list of sites considered is set out in Appendix 4. 4 Regulation 18 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 5 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 4. Excluded Sites 4.1 Some sites have been ‘excluded’ from the SHLAA because they are subject to fundamental physical or environmental constraints that effectively preclude residential development, namely: Whole site, or majority of site, lies within a European Nature Conservation Site (i.e. the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area); Whole site, or majority of site, lies within the 400m exclusion zone of the Thames Basin Heath Special Protection Area, unless it has specifically been promoted by the land owner for a high dependency C2 Care Home; Whole site, or majority of site, lies within a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI); Whole site, or majority of site lies within flood zone 2 or 3; Access to the site lies within Flood Zone 2 or 3 (dry island site); Sites lying wholly within the Airport Public Safety Zone. 4.2 Further information on these on these constraints is provided at Appendix 5. 4.3 Sites submitted to the Council that are smaller than the site size threshold of 5 or more units (or 0.25 ha), are also excluded from further assessment. 4.4 A schedule of the excluded sites (55 in total) and the reasoning for their exclusion is set out in Appendix 6. 5. Included Sites 5.1 All of the sites that have been included within the SHLAA (156 in total) are shown in red in Figure 1. Excluded sites are shown in blue. The included sites are also listed at Appendix 7. 5.2 All of the included sites have been assessed for the following: • Site size, boundaries and location • Estimated housing capacity/development potential • Current land use and character • Land uses and character of surrounding area • Suitability, including policy, physical, environmental, landscape and other constraints • Recommendations for overcoming constraints • Availability • Achievability • Deliverability (deliverable, developable or not currently developable) 5.3 Most of these headings are self-explanatory. Further information on how housing capacity estimates were reached is set out at Appendix 8. The 6 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 approach taken in assessing suitability, availability and achievability is explained on pages 8 and 9. Figure 1: District SHLAA map at 6th October 2017 7 Hart District Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2017 Assessing Suitability 5.4 To help assess suitability, we have provided information on the site’s location, the current planning designation of the site (i.e. that in the Local Plan (Replacement) 1996-2006) and identified potential constraints to delivering residential development at the site. Assessing the suitability of a site will be guided by: The current planning designation; Physical limitations or problems such as access, infrastructure, ground conditions, flood risk, hazardous risks, pollution or contamination; Potential impacts including the effect on landscape features and heritage conservation; Environmental amenity impacts. 5.5 Where constraints have been identified, the assessment considers what actions might be needed to overcome them, along with when and how this could be undertaken. Recommendations for overcoming constraints are provided for each site considered. 5.6 Housing sites allocated in development plans, or with planning permission for residential development will be considered suitable for housing development. Assessing Availability 5.7 A site is considered available for development when on the best information available at the time, we are confident that there are no issues such as legal or ownership problems, which would prevent development happening. 5.8 Available land is often controlled by a developer or landowner who has expressed an intention to develop, or the landowner has expressed an intention to sell. 5.9 The NPPG advises that the existence of planning permission does not necessarily mean that the site is available and that consideration should also be given to the delivery record of the landowners putting forward sites, and whether the planning background of a site shows a history of unimplemented permissions.