Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment

We received a large number of submissions through our Call for Sites for the new Local Plan and have over 1,600 sites to assess. We're working on assessing these sites ready to publish the Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment (HELAA) in the spring.

What is a Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment?

A HELAA is a technical study to identify and assess potential sites for future housing and economic development to inform new local plans.

Our HELAA will include details of all the sites submitted to the Council and identifies land with potential for housing and economic development. It forms part of the evidence base for the Local Plan and will provide the initial assessment of sites that are ‘potentially suitable’ or ‘unsuitable’ for development. Please be aware that the inclusion of any site in the HELAA does not give any status to the site in terms of the potential for future allocation in the draft Local Plan, nor any weight in decision making and it will still need to go through the formal planning process.

Following the publication of the HELAA, we'll be undertaking more detailed site assessment work on the sites that merit further consideration. It will be this critical work that will identify and clarify the sites that can be considered genuine options to be allocated in the draft Local Plan for consultation. When the plan is published for consultation, all interested parties will have the opportunity to respond to the draft plan site allocations, policies and the evidence that underpins them.