East Cambridgeshire Local Plan Examination: Inspector’s Matters, Issues, and Questions for Discussion at the Examination Hearings Representations: Lichfields on behalf of Gladman Developments Limited Date: 22 May 2018 Our ref: 16168/MS/BHa Subject Matter 3: Objectively Assessed Needs for Housing and Employment Land Issue 1: Whether the Council’s approach to calculating its full, objectively assessed needs is justified, based on up-to-date and reliable evidence, effective, positively prepared, and consistent with national policy? 1.0 Objectively Assessed Need 20. What is the implication of there being a different time period for housing need and employment growth? What is the justification? 1.1 The Council uses different time periods for housing need (2016 to 2036) and employment growth (2014 to 2036). It is clear that this inconsistency in base date has arisen because ‘late in the day’ the Council has chosen to use the proposed draft ‘standard method’ as an assessment of housing need, which has a base date of 2016, rather than its OAN from PE6 which has a base date of 2014. The Council appears to have offered no justification for the application of different time dates. The Vision for the plan is forward looking and appears to overlook the inconsistency in the base date of the delivery of housing and jobs in the District stating that: “In 2036, we will have built a better East Cambridgeshire, accommodating the development of 10,835 new homes and 6,000 jobs”. 1.2 The delivery of housing and jobs are inherently linked in any given location and para 158 of the NPPF requires strategies for them to be integrated. The outcome of not providing sufficient housing to accommodate job growth is unsuitable commuting patterns as people are not able to live close to these new jobs. East Cambridgeshire is, effectively, not planning to meet the needs of housing over the period 2014-2016 but to deliver jobs; it cannot demonstrate that in doing so it will have properly integrated its approach or show that it will not lead to unsustainable patterns of commuting contrary to the NPPF’s golden thread for sustainable development. 1.3 Further, there are additional significant problems with the Council seeking to re-base its plan to 2016, relating to the impact on the HMA as a whole. These reasons are set out in more detail in Section 4.0 of the Technical Annex at Appendix 2 attached to this Matters Statement. In summary, the most recent HMA-wide assessment of housing needs (including drawing on employment growth estimates) is that set out in the Cambridgeshire SHMA. Because East Cambridgeshire has significantly under-delivered against its housing requirement in the 2011-16 period, but has seen quite high job growth, it is inevitable that there has been a significant change in commuting patterns which will have had knock-on impacts in the rest of the HMA Pg 1/10 Lichfields.uk 15890227v1 (i.e. areas are now needing to provide housing for workers commuting into East Cambridgeshire, or are not receiving in-commuters on the same basis as in 2011). An attempt by East Cambridgeshire to ‘bake-in’ these new commuting assumptions will impact on the rest of the HMA, but in a way that the Council cannot demonstrate. On this basis, a consistent updated employment-led scenario can only be re-based if it is done so for the entire HMA. This has not been the case, and the Council’s position on employment and housing cannot be demonstrated to be integrated as required by para 158. Nor can it be shown that there is a clear understanding of housing needs across the HMA, as required by para 159. This is a very significant failing. 2.0 Employment 21. Is the objectively assessed need for economic development based on an appropriately defined functional economic market area? 2.1 N/A 22. Is the need for 6,000 jobs consistent with the evidence? In particular, why is there such a difference between the East of England Forecast Model (EEFM) of 2014 and 2016 (7,100 jobs and 4,820 jobs respectively)? How do past trends inform the figure of 6,000 new jobs within the submitted Local Plan? How has the potential to reduce the level of out commuting been taken into account in calculating the 44.4 ha ‘need’ for employment land within the district? 2.2 The Council’s evidence (PE06) shows that over the 2014-36 period its concluded OAN would support the level of job growth set out the EEFM 2016 of 4,820. However: 1 The Council has not demonstrated that its chosen figure of 6,000 can be supported by the concluded OAN in PE06, and thus the 6,000 job figure is not consistent with the evidence; 2 In any case, the proposed housing need figure in the plan is not based on this time period because of a late-in-the-day, somewhat curious, and utterly mistaken change to apply the ‘standard methodology’ with a 2016 based date. This means any under-delivery of housing need associated with employment growth between 2014 and 2016 is effectively ‘wiped clean’; 3 For the reasons set out in Section 4.0 of the Technical Annex, the Council’s evidence base is infected with the more fundamental flaw that (due to significant housing under-delivery since 2011) it is inconsistent with the most recent HMA-wide evidence. The under-delivery of housing combined with job growth in the District means that there has been a significant change in commuting patterns since 2011. If East Cambridgeshire effectively ‘wipes the slate clean’ and plans based on commuting in 2014 or 2016, it is planning for housing based on commuting at those times, not in 2011 (which is the assumption adopted in the Cambridgeshire SHMA). Without producing a consistent assessment of employment and housing needs from an agreed based date with the rest of the HMA, East Cambridgeshire cannot demonstrate that its housing figure will not have a knock-on effect in the rest of HMA, and thus the Council does not have a “clear understanding” of needs within the HMA as required by the NPPF para 159 and is not able to show that its strategies are integrated (NPPF para 158). Pg 2/10 Lichfields.uk 15890227v1 23. Is the assumption that employment land would be lost to other uses, over the plan period, @0.98 ha per annum justified? Is it correct that the requirement for employment land to cater for both job creation, and the loss of existing employment land to other uses, is for around 66 ha of employment land allocations? 2.3 N/A 3.0 Housing: 24. Is the Council’s use of the standard methodology to determine local housing need, referred to within the consultation draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, justified, positively prepared, effective, consistent with national policy, and an appropriate alternative methodology to that set out within the Planning Practice Guidance? 3.1 No. Gladman considers that the Council’s chosen approach to applying the standard methodology to determine housing need fails all four of the tests of soundness. 3.2 Examination Document PS.EVR2 (Policy LP2) states at para 2.1 that: “The earlier stages of plan preparation relied on the ‘old’ local method of calculating an ‘objectively assessed need’ (OAN) for housing, rather than the new, national standard ‘Local Housing Need’ (LHN) method.” 3.3 The Council’s statement that OAN is an ‘old’ method no longer to be applied but replaced by the ‘new’ standard method is curious and factually inaccurate. At the time of writing, the draft Framework (which contains reference to the standard methodology) and a draft of the suggested text for the PPG on the standard methodology have both just closed for consultation. Whilst the Government has indicated its intentions to implement the new standard methodology upon adoption of the revised Framework, it remains the fact that at the time of this EIP it will not be adopted national policy. Even if it were the case that the draft NPPF was given weight, para 209 of the draft Framework sets out clear transitional arrangements for the use of the standardised methodology: “The policies in the previous Framework will apply for the purpose of examining plans, where those plans are submitted on or before [ ] [this will be the date which is six months after the date of the final Framework’s publication]. In these cases the examination will take no account of the new Framework.” (emphasis added) 3.4 On the basis of these proposed transitional arrangements and given that this plan is at examination, the draft Framework indicates that it should take no account of the new Framework, including the use of the standard methodology. 3.5 Setting aside the timing of the introduction of the standard methodology, the Housing White Paper first referenced the Government’s intention to introduce a standard methodology with a purpose to address issues with slow plan progress and in areas where objectively assessed needs were not being addressed because authorities were “coming up with their own methodology”. Nowhere in the Housing White Paper or in the draft NPPF does Government suggest that the purposes of implementing such a methodology is to render housing requirements in areas with post-NPPF up-to-date plans (as is the case in East Cambridgeshire) out-of-date as soon as the final revised Framework is published. There is nothing to suggest that Government believes Pg 3/10 Lichfields.uk 15890227v1 current requirements based on OAN are inherently wrong and/or that the approach of the current PPG guidance on OAN – properly implemented - should no longer apply by virtue of the fact that it is looking to adopt a standard methodology.