The Court of Appeal has clarified the meaning of ‘deliverable sites’ in the key housing land supply provisions of Paragraph 47 NPPF (5YHLS). As well as emphasising the need for pragmatism when applying the NPPF, the judgment confirms the need to get timing right if challenges are to be made to the assumed rate of housing delivery.
Supply test in question
In St Modwen v SoS CLG, the developer challenged the housing trajectory put forward by the authority to satisfy the NPPF 47 requirement to show specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide five years worth of housing against objectively assessed need. NPPF Footnote 11 confirms that ‘deliverable’ means available now, offer[ing] a suitable location for development now, and […] achievable with a realistic prospect that housing will be delivered on the site within five years and […] viable.
The Inspector disagreed that sites without permission should be excluded. She accepted that the rate of consents was likely to increase in light of the draft plan. She acknowledged a distinction between deliverability and likelihood of delivery: ‘…it may well turn out that not all allocations currently identified as deliverable will in fact be delivered’. The submitted HLS figures were robust, because ‘the assessment of supply is distinct from that for delivery’.
The Secretary of State accepted the Inspector’s finding that there was a 5 year HLS and dismissed the two linked appeals.
Courts insist on common sense
The High Court and the Court of Appeal dismissed the argument raised in seeking judicial review of the decision that the SoS had misunderstood and misapplied the concept of ‘deliverability’. He should, it was claimed, have considered what would ‘probably be delivered’.
The Court of Appeal disagreed that Ouseley J’s judgment in the High Court suggested that assessment of ‘what probably would be delivered’ is part of, not separate from, the assessment of deliverability.
Ouseley’s judgment – that the assessment of “deliverability” … is an assessment of the likelihood that housing will be delivered. [It] does not require certainty that the housing sites will actually be delivered’ (emphasis added) – simply reflected the distinction between the HLS figure required under the first part of NPPF47 and the ‘expected rate of delivery’ required for the trajectory under the second part.
The Court of Appeal once again went out of its way to criticise ‘unreal’ arguments on the meaning of NPPF policy, holding that:
- there is a consistent and intentional distinction in the NPPF between ‘deliverability’ and the ‘expected rate of delivery’;
- deliverability in footnote 11 concern sites’ capability of being delivered – not the certainty/ probability of delivery;
- the appeal decision was being taken in light of NPPF49, engaging the question of demonstrable 5YHLS, not a question about the ‘the expected rate of housing delivery’.
So what?
The judgment serves to emphasise that:
- there need only be a ‘realistic prospect’ of delivery for sites to be relied in within the 5YHLS;
- challenges to the assumptions around the expected rate of delivery generally need to be taken up at the Local Plan examination stage;
- ‘Local planning authorities do not control the housing market. The NPPF recognises that.’
The last point underlines the fact that LPAs play a critical role, but are only one part of the housing delivery jigsaw. It is also illustrates how important the Housing Delivery Test will be, as a sense check on assumptions and progress, if it is introduced as promised in the Housing White Paper.
