A new wheeze on the part of developers which a Conservative MP is annoyed about and which explains a lot. Oddly, the government has never plugged this loophole:
“… I do not pretend Test Valley is unique in facing the challenge of a five year housing land supply which appears to be a somewhat movable target, and I have noticed how successive developers seek to demonstrate their rivals’ schemes are, for whatever reason, undeliverable, only to then appear to struggle to deliver their own when it is granted permission, usually on appeal. Of course, there will always be some planning reasons why schemes are not developed at the rate initially predicted, but these should not be commercial reasons, where sites are delayed or developed only painfully slowly. In many cases these tactics can simply be a ploy to prove the local authority does not have a five year supply, thus improving the chances of yet another speculative site being granted on appeal.
Test Valley currently has granted as much as seven years of planning permissions, yet slow build rates, or in some cases no building at all, mean that each and every speculative application can point to the rate of delivery and suggest there is not a 5 year supply. In some cases we have even seen developers arguing against themselves, that a site they previously had demonstrated would be more deliverable than a rival’s, now for whatever reason is not, so they need to bring forward yet another one.”
East Devon Watch 