Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effect of recent changes to the calculation of housing need on local authorities that are awaiting the adoption of their local plan.

We are committed to a plan-led system that delivers the homes this country needs, while protecting our precious environment. Up-to-date plans provide a sound basis for assessing land supply, and it is only where plans have become out-of-date that our standard method for assessing housing need is used instead. What this means in practice will depend on the amount of land with permission in each area, the protections that apply and the stage an emerging plan has reached, and so there is no national estimate of the impact. The National Planning Policy Framework protects emerging plans in certain circumstances, even in the absence of a five-year land supply, where a development would significantly undermine the plan.