T7: Housing

The delivery of housing has always been a key component of the land-use planning system – to ensure that places are created where people will enjoy living now and long into the future. This is particularly important in light of the ongoing emphasis on providing more and betetr quality new homes, particular affordable housing. 

Planning Policy Statements have defined the national objectives to create sustainable and balanced communities that offer a wide range of housing choices together with supporting infrastructure. This will involve ensuring that a well integrated mix of quality housing of different types and tenures is made available to support a wide range of household sizes, incomes and ages. Housing proposals need to respond to a variety of local circumstances, as the issues and challenges will differ depending on the underlying context, policy imperatives and location specific considerations. 

In light of the need to plan for balanced and mixed communities, and the wide range of other planning considerations related to large scale development, the approach taken to the scope, scale, targets and delivery of affordable housing becomes paramount. This can fundamentally effect the overall viability of any given development proposal, often more so than any other single factor. ATLAS has identified the importance of both rigorous evidencing of affordable housing requirements and for all parties being able and willing to evaluate information on site viability. The latter has become even more critical given the current situation in the lending and property markets. 

Based upon this underlying context, the information presented within this part of the Guide is intended to introduce: 

• the Government’s current agenda and objectives in relation to housing delivery with particular reference to large sites; 
• the mechanisms that are available to consider and address housing issues as part of the evolution of development proposals including the potential roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders and the evidence base needed to guide decision making; and 
• the key components of housing, including tenure mix, density and quality indicators that need to be given due consideration through these processes.