Five Year Supply of Housing Land

The government requires that Local Planning Authorities should make sure that there is a regular supply of land that is suitable, available and deliverable for housing development.

Housing Land Supply Statements are prepared by the Council to help predict the amount of housing that will be built in the district over the next four or five years. Previously, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) required all Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) to identify and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide a minimum of five years' worth of housing against their housing requirement. On 19 December 2023, a revised version of the NPPF was published, which includes new provisions for the housing land supply.

Paragraph 77 of the revised NPPF now allows LPAs to demonstrate a minimum of four years' supply against their housing requirement if an emergency local plan has either:

• been submitted for independent examination
• reached Regulation 18 or Regulation 19 stage, including both a policies map and proposed allocations towards meeting housing needs

North Norfolk District Council meets the criteria to identify and update annually a four-year housing land supply, demonstrated against its five-year housing land supply requirement, including any buffer, with effect from 19 December 2023 for decision making. Therefore, the amount of land available should be sufficient to fulfil the housing requirement for the next four years.

These statements identify how many dwellings already have planning permission but have not yet been built. They make allowances for some sites that have not yet secured planning permission, but where it is highly likely development will take place in the next four or five years.

Nutrient pollution requirements

In 2022, Natural England advised us that in large parts of the district, we should only grant planning permissions for new dwellings if it is shown they do not add to nutrient pollution levels in the River Wensum or Norfolk Broads. As a result of those requirements, the Norfolk Authorities, including North Norfolk, have been unable to grant new planning permissions in the affected areas, pending the identification of measures and mitigations to make sure new housing development does not add additional nutrients to designated water sources. The Council has had to adjust its housing delivery expectations to take account of the inevitable delays.

Latest housing land supply position

The Council considers that there is a current annual requirement of 480 dwellings per year. This is based on the most recent evidence available. There are 1,759 dwellings that the Council considers to have a realistic prospect of being built over the next four years. This is the equivalent of 3.67 years of deliverable housing land supply over the four-year period set against the five-year housing land supply requirement.

To view the Council's Housing Land Supply Statements, please visit the monitoring section of the Document Library.