Issue - meetings

The report seeks the Committee’s agreement to the partial update of the council’s Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP) through publishing separate Annex to the HDTAP schedule of actions, to be dated 2023 and be uploaded to the evidence base web page.

The Planning Policy & Conservation Manager was invited by the Chair to present the report.  The update to the Arun housing Delivery Test Action Plan responded to the Government’s annual publication of the Housing Delivery Test performance figure for Arun.  The Council’s figure has been below the government’s threshold of 95%, which compared housing completions against housing need over the past three years.   The Council was therefore, required to achieve a figure of more than 95% by producing an Action Plan aimed at trying to boost housing delivery.  The previous Action Plan produced in 2019 had an appendix listing how the Council would do this. The report was before the Committee, as although the Government have not produced their figures for this year, there was a still a requirement to update the Action Plan.  One of the actions was to repeat the exercise to obtain signed Housing Delivery agreements with developers and agents, which would improve the level of evidence to say sites were deliverable.  The outcome of these agreements would assist in the delivery of the Five-Year Housing Supply, which was currently below a three year housing land requirement.  This year the Council had received a much-improved response in its attempt to produce delivery agreements.

          The recommendation was proposed by Councillor and seconded by Councillor Harty and seconded by Councillor Yeates.

The Chair invited questions and comments from members.  A member commented that the steps being taking help with the needs of the Council to demonstrate the Action Plan was functional. In response to a request for sight of the signed agreements, the Planning Policy & Conservation Manager said these would be available on the Council’s website.  This was important as this was the type of evidence that the Government required to demonstrate sites were deliverable.

          The Committee

                     RESOLVED

To agree the partial update to the council’s ‘Housing Delivery Test Action Plan’ (HDTAP 2023) though publishing an Annex to the schedule of actions and that this be published separately on the council’s evidence web page.