Monitoring and Five Year Land Supply
The AMR also includes an update on the progress and implementation of the Council’s Local Development Scheme (LDS), which sets the timetable for the preparation of future Local Development Documents, and reports on the progress of Neighbourhood Planning in the district too.
Meeting the housing needs is a national issue and Local Planning Authorities are required to annually update and identify a supply of deliverable sites to provide 5 years’ worth of housing against the housing requirement. As such, the Council has separately provided detailed information on the latest Five Year Land Supply and Housing Delivery Test (HDT) on this page.
Current Authority Monitoring Report
The AMR reports on the period between 1st April and 31st March each year, the latest version is available below:
Authority Monitoring Report 2023-24
Previous Authority/Annual Monitoring Reports
Five Year Land Supply
The 5-year housing land supply is a calculation of whether there is a deliverable supply of homes to meet the planned housing requirement. The Position Statement below sets out the Council’s latest land supply position. An addendum to the Position Statement has been produced following the release of new affordability ratios on the 25 March 2024.
March 2024: Five Year Housing Land Supply Position Statement
April 2024: Position Statement Addendum
New Standard Method for calculating local housing need
In December 2024, the Government published a new methodology for calculating local housing need. Using this methodology, the Council’s housing requirement has increased from 1,041 new homes per annum to 1,265 homes per annum.
For the purpose of calculating Five Year Housing Land Supply (5YHLS), the NPPF also requires a 5% buffer to ensure choice and competition in the market. This means that the Council’s overall housing need requirement for 5YHLS purposes is currently 1,265 + 63 = 1,328 new homes per annum.
The consequence of this increase is a supply deficit. The Council is currently reviewing its land supply trajectory to understand the deliverable supply of homes over the next five years and will publish an updated Five Year Housing Land Supply Position Statement in due course. An interim calculation, based on completions up to late February 2025 and a reassessment of the Council’s District Plan allocated sites in the housing trajectory, suggests that the housing land supply calculation is currently between 3.4 and 3.7 years.
Housing Delivery Test
The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) was introduced by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) in 2018 to ensure that local authorities and other stakeholders are held accountable for their role in ensuring new homes are delivered.
The HDT assesses the number of homes built in local authority areas over the previous three years and compares these against local housing requirements. These results are published annually on Housing Delivery Test - GOV.UK.
There are planning policy consequences for not meeting the Housing Delivery Test, these are set out in the NPPF. The latest measurement in 2023 sets out that East Herts delivered 115% of its requirement. As such, no planning policy consequences apply.
