Hampshire County Structure Plan 1996 - 2011 (review)

Policy H4 Monitoring Paper 2007, Consultation Document

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A total of 7,006 dwellings were built in the year ending 31^st March 2006. This is well in excess of the annual Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) requirement of 6,030 dwellings. Overall the RPG target for the five years 2001-2006 (30,150 dwellings) has been exceeded by 1,651 dwellings.

The estimated total supply of dwellings from identified sites and urban capacity 2006-2011 is 45,181 dwellings. The number of dwellings with planning permission has increased by 14% since a year ago; three-quarters of these have full planning permission. Planning consents are still being granted at a significantly faster rate than dwellings are being built.

The total supply has been adjusted to reflect the prospect of not all the available supply being developed by 2011. These discounts err on the side of caution and are for the purposes of this report only. The effect of applying the discounts is to reduce the dwelling supply to 41,083 dwellings. Even after applying the discounts, the adjusted supply still exceeds the 2006-2011 RPG requirement of 28,499 dwellings by 44%.

This year's Monitoring Paper concludes that there is no compelling requirement to release any of the Structure Plan housing reserve.

The Examination in Public of the draft South East Plan is currently underway, and it is anticipated that the South East Plan will be finalised in February 2008. The new Plan will supersede the Hampshire County Structure Plan and so bring to an end the need to monitor housing land supply in relation to Structure Plan reserve housing releases. For this reason it is anticipated that this will be the final Policy H4 Monitoring Paper.