Five year housing land supply
We are required to maintain a five-year advance supply of land for housebuilding, updated annually. These are the most recent calculations as at March 2024:
| a | Core Strategy and Urban Core Plan (CSUCP) requirement 2024-29 | 2068 |
| b | Requirement plus 2010-24 net undersupply (taking account of student housing completions) | 4973 |
| c | Requirement including undersupply, plus 5% buffer (see note 3) | 5222 |
| d | Calculated supply 2024-29 from deliverable sites | 2717 |
| e | Calculated supply plus assumed windfall (see note 1) | 3202 |
| f | Total supply as a percentage = 3202/5222= | 61.3% |
| g | Total supply in years | 3.07 years |
Notes
(1) The annual allowance for windfall development has been increased to 97 homes. This reflects the increase in the minimum size threshold for the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA) from 3 to 5 homes and a review of recent windfall numbers, and is consistent with the expectation that windfalls are likely to increase over time with the lengthening of the period since the adoption of the Plan. There is a fuller explanation in paragraphs 18 to 20 of the SHLAA (also on this website).
(2) In contrast to the method used in some earlier years, no explicit allowance is made for bringing empty homes back into use, as the Core Strategy and Urban Core Plan (CSUCP) requirement already takes account of an assumption about reducing the vacancy rate by doing so.
(3) A 5% buffer was applied in the last SHLAA Update, for March 2023, as the latest available results of the Housing Delivery Test showed that Gateshead had delivered 93% of the requirement in the relevant three-year period. No Housing Delivery Test result for March 2024 has yet been issued (as of June 2025), but a result of 96% has been issued for the year 2022-23. A 5% buffer would still apply in those circumstances, as it would if the Council had exceeded 100%, under both the old and new systems.
(4) The figure in row (d) represents the estimated deliverable capacity on suitable sites within the five-year period. Details of the individual sites and their estimated likely annual delivery of completions is included in the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA) (for March 2024) and particularly in the Trajectory included in that document as Appendix 2. The Core Strategy requirement for 2024-29 (row (a) above) is calculated by annualising the five-year net provision totals in CSUCP policy CS10.
The new definition of deliverability published by the government in 2018, the increased Core Strategy requirement for the period 2020-25, and the cumulative net under-supply since the start of the Plan period are the principal causes of the progressive reduction in the calculated five-year supply since 2018.