Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA)
Call for Sites- July to August 2008
Bath & North East Somerset Council is undertaking a
Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA) as required
by Planning Policy Statement 3: Housing (PPS3). The
assessment will form a key part of the evidence base to the Local
Development Framework (LDF). The Draft Regional Spatial Strategy
for the South West sets requires that an additional 15,500
dwellings be built in B&NES between 2006 and 2026. The report
of the EiP Panel to the Secretary of State recommends that this
rise to 18,800. The Secretary of State is expected to publish her
proposed modifications to the Draft RSS in July 2008. The purpose
of the SHLAA is to identify opportunities for meeting this housing
requirement.
The output of the SHLAA will help Bath and North East Somerset
Council prepare its LDF Core Strategy and Site Allocation
Development Plan Documents. However, the assessment is not intended
to do the job of the plan. Whilst it will identify potential
housing land it will not make judgements about whether this should
be included in the plan or whether it should form part of the
5-year supply required by PPS3. The primary role of the SHLAA
is therefore to: (i) identify sites with potential for housing,
(ii) assess their housing potential; and (iii) assess when they are
likely to be developed.
The assessment findings will be particularly relevant to the
generation of strategic options for delivering new housing as part
the Core Strategy. The SHLAA will identify (i) the recent pattern
of housing development; (ii) the choices available to meet the need
and demand for more housing and provide a basis for making
decisions about how to shape places in the future; and (iii)
whether action would need to be taken to ensure sites will become
deliverable (including infrastructure investment) or whether
existing Local Plan policies need to be reviewed to enable suitable
sites to be developed for housing.
An initiation document has been prepared to discuss
methodological issues and is published for consultation in tandem
with a "Call for Sites". This is the first opportunity for
development interests to promote land and buildings that could play
a role in contributing to the districts housing requirement. The
document discusses how comprehensive (in terms of geographical
coverage) and intensive (in terms of the minimum size of site to be
surveyed) the SHLAA will be. Further, the document explains the
role of the SHLAA as evidence in support of the Core Strategy and
other Development Plan Documents.
Please consider the methodological approach and submit your
reaction together with any sites (assessing their suitable,
availability and achievability using the assessment form
accompanying the initiation document) to the address at the top of
this letter and/or email them to planning_policy@bathnes.gov.uk
by Monday 18th August 2008.
