Executive Summary

A total of 7,353 dwellings were built in the year ending 31^st March 2007. This is well in excess of the annual Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) requirement of 6,030 dwellings. Overall the RPG target for the six years 2001-2007 (36,180 dwellings) has been exceeded by 2,974 dwellings.

The estimated total supply of dwellings from identified sites and urban capacity 2007-2011 is 33,564 dwellings. The number of dwellings with planning permission has increased by 2% since a year ago; 80% of these have full planning permission. Despite the high rate of housebuilding the stock of sites with planning permission is still increasing.

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 30,892 dwellings. Even after applying the discounts, the adjusted supply still exceeds the 2007-2011 RPG requirement of 21,146 dwellings by 46%. Indeed, dwellings with full planning consent are sufficient on their own to satisfy that RPG requirement.

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