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Land supply drought leads to housing application flood

Written by: Colin Marrs
Published on: 18 Sep 2015
Category:

Selby sculputure c Tim Green Flickre

Selby District Council is expanding its planning department in response to a glut of housing applications.

The council announced last year that it no longer has a five year supply of land for housing, opening the door for applications on land not allocated in its local plan.

The National Planning Policy Framework stipulates that councils without a five year supply should consider applications with a presumption in favour of sustainable development.

Louise Milnes, principal planning officer at the council said: “Since the announcement we are seeing a lot more house building in our area and that has caused an increase in work.

“In addition, the upturn in the economy means that more developers are starting on site, bringing forward reserved matters and non-material amendment applications.”

She said that the scale of the recruitment drive was yet to be fully determined, and would be partly determined by the number and quality of applicants.

Appointments could be made at different levels of seniority – planning officer, senior planning officer and principal planning officer, she confirmed.

The council’s policy team is working on replenishing the council’s five-year supply of housing land, she added.

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Image copyright Tim Green, Flickr