Hart Council Leader stonewalls questions about revisions to the SHMA

Hart District Council Offices in Fleet, Hampshire

Regular readers may remember that we put a number of questions to the Hart Council meeting on 29 October about changes in household, population and jobs forecasts that should be incorporated into the revised SHMA.  All of these questions were met with a wall of silence and peremptory answers.  The Q&A can be found on the council website, with the relevant questions and answers re-produced in full below.

We have not yet received an answer from the Joint Chief Executive to back up his assertion that the brownfield capacity of the district is only 1,800 units.

Question: Given that the baseline estimate of the number of households in Hart in 2011 and 2031 used in the SHMA was 35,760 and 42,220 respectively, but the new DCLG 2012-based household projections (Table 406) for 2031 show that Hart will have only 40,618 households, a reduction of 1,602, can you confirm that these revised figures will lead to a corresponding reduction in Hart’s assessed housing need?

Response: A revision of the SHMA is currently under way and this document is part of the evidence base which will inform the assessment. I do not intend to anticipate the result of the assessment of this and other evidence.

Question: When will the 6,560 excess housing requirement for the whole HMA be removed from the assessed need in the SHMA given that the new DCLG 2012-based population projections (Table 426) show a population projection of only 289K for the HMA for 2031, compared to the SHMA (Appendix F, Figure 2) starting assumption of 307K and the final population estimate of 322K used to determine housing need?

Response: A revision of the SHMA is currently under way and this document is part of the evidence base which will inform the assessment. I do not intend to anticipate the result of the assessment of this and other evidence.

Question: What justification is there for assuming the significant social changes implied in the SHMA given that the SHMA increases the number of houses that need to be built based in part on very ambitious jobs forecasts which when combined with the population projections in the SHMA results in a massive increase in the proportion of people of working age who will be in employment (see table below)?

Response: A revision of the SHMA is currently under way and this document is part of the evidence base which will inform the assessment. I do not intend to anticipate the result of the assessment of this and other evidence.

Question: What steps will be taken to adjust the jobs forecasts in the SHMA given that, a) the revised BRES job numbers for 2013 show that the compound annual growth rate in jobs we have achieved since the recession ended in 2009 is ~0.5% which is much lower than the ~0.8% growth rate assumed in the SHMA for the period 2011-2031, b) this comes at a time when the UK is creating more jobs than the rest of the EU put together and c) it is inevitable we will experience at least one more recession during the plan period?

Response: A revision of the SHMA is currently under way and this document is part of the evidence base which will inform the assessment. I do not intend to anticipate the result of the assessment of this and other evidence.

Question: What steps are being taken to accelerate the delivery of the Local Plan given that the recent Government announcement indicated that Local Plans need to be brought into force by 2017 and the current LDS shows the Local Plan being adopted in Summer 2017 and other DPD’s in Autumn 2018 and the track record of past slippage?

Response: Section 99 of the Housing and Planning Bill which provides for the reserve powers for the SoS at DCLG to recover a local plan does not have any dates. The operative wording is “if the Secretary of State thinks that a local planning authority are failing or omitting to do anything it is necessary for them to do in connection with the preparation, revision or adoption of a development plan document”. The Joint Chief Executive, who is the planning lead on the District Councils Executive network, has ascertained that provided that councils are making reasonable progress towards a local plan, the SoS does not intend to intervene. The powers are intended for a small minority of councils who are making little or no effort to establish a plan. I have independently validated this with my own contacts on the Environment, Economy and Housing Board at the Local Government Association among others. We therefore don’t think the Government will intervene if we meet our new timetable given we will already be at examination in the Spring of 2017.