Housing Technical Paper 2011
The Coalition Government is in the process of bringing forward legislation which will enable it to abolish Regional Plans. One of these Plans, the South East Plan (2009), had provided the housing requirements with which the City Council's emerging Local Development Framework (LDF) Core Strategy would be required to conform.
With the Government's formal announcement of its intention to abolish Regional Strategies in May 2010 the City Council resolved that it would wish to take the opportunity to review its housing needs and to develop a locally-derived housing target. This reflected its commitment to implement the Government's 'Localism' agenda and the first key stage of the process saw the launch of 'Blueprint' in October 2010.
Blueprint was an innovative public involvement exercise which encouraged local people, groups and communities to think about the future development and other needs for their communities. It did not promote any particular scale or location of development but sought views on what these should be. This proved very successful and many events were held and responses received. Sometimes the views about the future of specific settlements were very consistent, but often they were not.
Although it promotes the development of locally-derived development targets, the Government remains of the view that these need to be robust and evidence-based. Local views on the scale and type of development needed form an important component in deriving such targets, but there is also a need for sound 'technical' evidence.
This 'Technical Paper' draws on various sources of technical evidence, as well as responses to Blueprint, to devise a suggested new target for housing provision in Winchester District. This has contributed to the formulation of 'Plans for Places - After Blueprint', the document which sets out the Council's proposals in relation to the levels, type and location of particular types of development in the District.