Housing Delivery Test Action Plan
The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) has been introduced by the Government as a monitoring tool to demonstrate whether local areas are building enough homes to meet their housing need. The HDT, which was introduced in February 2019, compares the number of new homes delivered over the previous three years with the authority's housing requirement. The HDT will be used to determine the buffer to apply in housing supply assessments and whether the presumption in favour of sustainable development should apply. Under the HDT:
- Where housing delivery over the previous three years has been less than 95% of the housing requirement, LPAs should prepare an action plan setting out the causes of under delivery and the intended actions to increase delivery;
- Where delivery has been less than 85% of the housing requirement, a 20% buffer should be applied to the supply of deliverable sites for the purposes of housing delivery assessment;
- Where delivery has been less than 75% of the housing requirement, the NPPFs presumption in favour of sustainable development will apply. Where an Action Plan is required, this should be prepared within six months of the test results being published.
August 2020 HDT Action Plan [930KB]
The HDT results published in February 2020 measured the period 2016/17 to 2018/19 and the percentage of delivery across the District was 79% of the total need which was again below the level required but an improvement on the previous year. For the second year running the Council has prepared an Action Plan which provides an analysis of the key reasons for the historic under deliver of housing and identifies the measures that the Council intends to undertake to increase provision.
August 2019 HDT Action Plan [8MB]
On 19th February 2019, the first HDT results were published by Government. They measured housing delivery over the period 2015/16 to 2017/18 in Staffordshire Moorlands against the required level of housing as determined by the Government's household projections for the whole of Staffordshire Moorlands, including within the Peak District National Park.
Following a recalculation of the HDT result by the Government which reflected housing completions in the parts of the Peak District National Park that lie within the District, the percentage of delivery across the District increased slightly to 68% of the total need, but was still below the level required.
As such, an Action Plan was prepared to identify the reasons for under delivery and to identify measures to improve the situation.
