Strategic Housing Land Availability
Assessment
In order to meet future housing
targets set by the Regional Spatial Strategy, local authorities
have been instructed by Central Government to carry out assessments
of land to see whether there may be areas suitable for future
housing development. In response, a year ago
Purbeck District Council invited landowners across the district to
identify sites that they thought might be suitable for housing at
some point in the future. A total of 399 sites were put
forward by land owners, or identified from other sources. Planning
officers have now compiled them into one document called the
Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA). This
document is now available to view below. Hard copies can
be viewed at Westport House, in libraries and through Town and
Parish Councils. Due to the size of the document and appendices,
copies are not being made available for sale.
Purbeck District Council worked in partnership with the other
local authorities in Dorset to agree a common methodology for the
assessment. The process has been overseen by a Panel of interested
groups chosen from the housing industry, environmental groups,
environmental lobby groups and community groups. At a meeting in
early March, the panel endorsed Purbeck’s SHLAA for publication.
The SHLAA report meets the requirements of PPS3 and shows that the
Council has enough sites to meet a 5 year and 15 year land supply.
The report has a baseline date of 2007, but includes an update for
2008.
It is important to recognize that the SHLAA does not
determine whether a site should be given planning permission and
developed.
The decision on whether a site is allocated for housing or an
alternative land use will only be made through the emerging Local
Development Framework – the planning policy document for the
district – and this will be subject to full public consultation in
the future. The SHLAA is merely a database of sites that have
been put forward by various landowners and it is the council’s
responsibility to put them all together into one document. It is a
requirement that all sites identified as part of this process are
published, whether suitable or not. At this stage, the Council has
only ruled out sites that have constraints that could not be
overcome, such as sites that fall within 400 metres of
internationally protected heathland, or sites that are too far away
from existing settlements. However, this leaves a number of
greenfield sites around the edges of towns and villages that have
not been ruled out at this stage, although it is expected that only
a handful of these greenfield sites would be ever be considered
suitable for development and allocated in the future.
The Council is keen that the local community does not get the
wrong impression from this document. It is a technical piece of
work that every council across the country has been instructed by
the government to carry out, and the sites put forward are merely
suggestions from local landowners and submitting them does not
indicate whether they will be developed in the future. The Council
is also keen that landowners whose sites are ‘included’ within the
supply do not consider this as a green light for future development
as it is expected that the majority of greenfield sites will be
ruled out in future updates of the SHLAA as more information
becomes available (see Next Steps below).
Next Steps
The SHLAA is a technical assessment and it is not being
published for consultation purposes. However, we are happy
to accept letters pointing out factual inaccuracies from landowners
that can improve future updates to the SHLAA. This process is
part of the background evidence for the emerging Local Development
Framework, which is a collection of documents that will set out the
planning policies for Purbeck and help shape the way the County
will develop in the period to 2026 and beyond.
The Council is currently working on a Settlement Strategy, which
will identify the settlements where future development should be
concentrated. This will be the basis for determining alternative
options for future development in the Council’s Core Strategy,
which it is hoped will be published for public consultation later
in the year. As the content of the Core Strategy becomes clearer it
may be necessary in future updates to the SHLAA to ‘exclude’ some
sites that are currently ‘included’.
Future Updates
The SHLAA should be updated on an annual basis. Later this
spring, once again, the Dorset local authorities will jointly be
calling for further sites for inclusion in the 2009 SHLAA’s. It is
expected that the 2009 Purbeck SHLAA will be published in the late
summer.
Downloads
NB: Appendices D and E have also been split by Parishes
see below.
Link
Urban
Potential Study 2006
Contacts
Planning Policy Team
Purbeck District Council
Westport House
Worgret Road
Wareham BH 20 4JA