GOV.UK
Project
Housing numbers
As part of our wider project on local plans, we’re collecting and publishing the number of houses each local authority has committed to build. Focussing on just one piece of data will help us to learn how local plans are structured, what challenges there are around collecting data, and how to prioritise the wider local plans project.
We hope that by publishing these numbers in one place, local authorities can easily check and update their data, and other people who are interested can easily find, trust and use the data.
Contents
Current areas of investigation
The following areas of investigation explore how the data could be used and made easier to work with:
In progress
Collecting and publishing housing numbers
Questions we’re asking
What is the best way to collect and publish data from local plans?
What we’re testing
We’re focussing on one piece of data from local plans. We’ve now collected the housing numbers from most local plans, and are testing a tool to help us publish this data.
What we’ve learned
We now know that each local plan varies hugely in structure, format and how the data is presented. This means that finding one piece of information in each local plan can be challenging.
By focussing on finding housing numbers, we have developed efficient ways to find the right data in local plans. This will inform the discovery phase of our wider local plans project.
In progress
Validation of data
Questions we’re asking
How can we make sure the data we’ve collected is accurate and up to date?
What we’ll test
We’re currently building a tool which displays the number of houses each local authority has committed to building. This will allow local authorities a way to check and update their data.
We will send each local authority their housing numbers to confirm the data is correct, or to update the numbers and show where the correct data could have been found. This will help us understand how each authority is publishing their data, and will inform our wider local plans project.
Take a look at what we’ve built so far and join our local plans discussion on GitHub.
Timeline
April 2019
We collected the latest housing numbers from emerging and adopted local plans. We plan to validate these numbers with local planning authorities.
19 March 2019
We met with the Planning Advisory Service, Greater London Authority, and Aecom to discuss the housing delivery test and housing trajectories.