Document
Affordable Housing Statement
Sets out whether a scheme triggers your council's affordable housing policy, and what it must provide or pay if it does.
- The tier this usually sits in
- MinorThe tier this usually sits in
- Wren, for a case at that tier
- £1,995Wren, for a case at that tier
- Specimen you can read in full
- PublishedSpecimen you can read in full
- Sections inside it
- 6Sections inside it
What is inside
Section by section.
- 01The residential quantum: units, and net new residential floorspace
- 02The council's adopted affordable-housing policy and its threshold, quoted from the adopted text
- 03Whether the threshold is engaged, and on which measure
- 04The tenure split and the provision required
- 05Payment in lieu, where the policy permits it, and how it is computed
- 06Viability, where it is genuinely in issue
When it is required
Why a council asks for this.
Your council's own adopted policy is the sole authority. The National Planning Policy Framework (August 2026) sets no national affordable-housing threshold at all — policy HO8 defers to the adopted development plan — so Wren applies your council's policy, because the local policy is what the council will decide on.
The specimen shows a scheme that falls short of its council's requirement, because that is the case this document is usually written for. It states the shortfall in both percentage points and whole habitable rooms, and it sets out expressly what a chartered planner can and cannot certify: the viability case belongs to the valuer who signs alongside.
Additional sign-off. This document needs a second signature. Whether a contribution is payable is a planning question, and a chartered planner answers it. What a scheme can bear is a viability appraisal, which is a separate discipline with its own evidential standards, so a RICS-registered valuer or equivalent signs alongside the planner. The requirement travels with the document: it is written into the text, stored on the record, and the review queue blocks sign-off without it.
| Required when |
|---|
| A scheme creating new residential floorspace where the council's own threshold is engaged |
| Any application where the council's validation list requires one |
Asked and answered
About the Affordable Housing Statement.
Why does this document need two signatures?
Does owning the site change the answer?
Often alongside
Documents that usually travel with it.
Explains the design thinking behind a scheme and how people will get to and around it. Required by statute for certain applications, and the first thing a design officer reads.
Establishes which flood zone a site sits in, from every source of flooding, and shows how the scheme responds to that risk over its lifetime.
Find out whether your site needs one.
The appraisal names the route, lists the documents that route requires, and prices the set before you commit to anything.