The Supply of Land
The Council use something called the Housing Land Audit and Delivery Programme (HLADP) to assess the supply of effective land for housing in Edinburgh.
What is effective land?
Effective land must be free of any constraints that could prevent the building of homes. These constraints can include:
- who owns the land;
- contamination;
- how easily the land can be sold;
- infrastructure (including roads and schools for example) and;
- how the land is currently used or has been used in the past.
The Strategic Development Plan for South East Scotland sets out how many new homes the city needs. This figure is currently 20,222 to be built by 2026.
Our latest housing land assessment in October was the 2017 HLADP. We have identified effective land for 23,329 houses on a mix of both brownfield (55%) and greenfield (45%) sites.
Sites included in the 2017 HLADP are in the Local Development Plan or have planning permission.
The Delivery of Homes
The HLADP examines the supply of land and the expected delivery of new homes.
The output target is a five-year segment of the housing land supply target. The delivery programme is the number of homes likely to be built over the next five-years. We calculate this figure in agreement with Homes for Scotland.
Accelerating Delivery Rates
Many factors, including the strength of the economy and the demand for housing, can affect the construction of new homes. Even if we have enough land, it won’t always mean that houses will be built.
The credit crunch has affected the construction of housing in recent years. Although the country is still recovering from this, completions have doubled in the last four years. Current build rates in the city are steadily growing.
We are working to find ways to further speed up build rates in the city. The diagram below highlights some of the factors we have identified.
What’s next for the HLADP?
We will be using the HLADP to update our next Local Development Plan Action Programme. We’re also doing work to identify potential interventions to increase the delivery of housing. That will be reported next year.
Look out for our next blog post about a housing site currently under construction in the city.
Planning Edinburgh 