Five-year supply of housing land and Housing Delivery Test

The government requires Councils to significantly boost the supply of new homes. This involves looking forward for at least 5 years (supply), known as the 5-year housing land supply position. It also involves reviewing the previous 3 years (delivery), known as the Housing Delivery Test (HDT). 

Five-year housing land supply

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 five years. The national planning policy framework (NPPF) requires 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.

These statements identify how many dwellings already have planning permission but have not yet been built. This allows us to compare the requirement for new homes in the district with the deliverable supply, to establish the number of years of supply that are available. Allowances are made for some sites that have not yet secured planning permission, but where it is highly likely development will take place in the next five years.

Latest housing land supply position

At the time of preparing the latest statement, the Council met the criteria to identify a four-year housing land supply. 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.

The government has updated its national planning policy and guidance to remove the four-year requirements. Therefore, future housing land supply statements will be based on a five-year supply.

View statements

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, see nutrient neutrality. As a result of those requirements, the Norfolk authorities, including North Norfolk, have been unable to grant many 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.

Housing Delivery Test (HDT)

The Housing Delivery Test is an annual measurement of housing delivery in local authority areas (excluding the Broads National Park). The HDT looks at how many new homes have been delivered over the previous three years. It measures this against how many new homes should have been delivered. Results are published by the government each year and are expressed as a percentage of local housing need.

The percentage rate dictates any consequences that may apply if housing delivery has fallen below the requirement (see paragraph 79, NPPF).

HDT results

The latest HDT results (2023) were published by the government on 12 December 2024. These identified a figure of 82%. However, following conversation with the government, the result for North Norfolk has been recalculated to 87%.

View HDT results

Related documents

Visit the monitoring section of the document library to view the Council's housing land supply statements.

Further information

Housing supply and delivery | GOV.UK