Chapter 9 - Meeting Housing Needs

Managing housing growth and distribution

Flexibility is needed to deal with uncertainties in forecasting assumptions. A balance has to be struck between a robust approach which seeks to ensure strategic objectives are met, particularly in relation to the drive to promote more housing within existing urban areas, and a flexibility to respond to an unforeseen demand for fresh housing land supplies.

The Strategy recognises the need to guard against pressure building up as a result of housing land shortages by providing for an estimated regional need of 160,000 dwellings by 2015. It acknowledges a consistent and recent higher house building rate. It also provides a contingency for a small over-zoning allowance for exceptional use, and introduces a Plan, Monitor and Manage approach to provide for more sustainable patterns of development and to assist regeneration.

HOU 1.1 Provide for a balanced supply of housing land throughout the Region by a robust and flexible approach to meeting future housing need:

• review housing projections every five years and adjust the Housing Growth Indicators;
• establish long-term reserves of development land, through the development plan process, and use a Plan, Monitor and Manage mechanism to ensure timely periodic releases of development land;
• reserve the possibility by exception of allowing, through the development plan process, for a limited level of housing land over-zoning up to a maximum of 10% as a contingency measure in those situations where a potential land supply difficulty is likely to arise. However, normally the preferred approach is to identify constraint in advance where this is possible and to proceed without over-zoning on alternative lands which facilitate planned and orderly development; and
• prepare a Regional Planning Policy Statement to provide detailed guidance on Housing In Settlements including setting out how the Plan, Monitor and Manage approach will work.

HOU 1.2 Use a broad evaluation framework (see Table 4 overleaf) as an aid for a comprehensive assessment to assist judgements on the allocation of housing growth to the main and small towns within the context of the overall Spatial Development Strategy for Northern Ireland, and SPG-HOU 2 and SPG-HOU 3.