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.
No specimen yet
There is no published specimen for this document type. Rather than show a mocked-up cover, this page says so.
It is drafted for real cases. It is the specimen that does not exist yet, not the document.
Read this
There is no specimen for this document type yet. Rather than show you a mocked-up one, this page says so.
When
When your council will require it
- A scheme creating new residential floorspace where the council's own threshold is engaged
- Any application where the council's validation list requires one
Contents
What is in it
- 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
Authority
What makes it necessary
Your council's own adopted policy is the sole authority. Wren does not apply the national default in NPPF paragraph 65 where a local policy exists, because the local policy is what the council will decide on.
Two signatures
This document cannot be signed by a planner alone.
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.
Price
What it costs
This document is not priced on its own. It is part of the fixed fee for the application it supports, and a case producing three documents costs the same as a case producing one. On a minor application that fee is £1,995, with your council’s statutory fee passed on separately at cost.
A shorter research draft of this document is also available for credits, for your own use. It is clearly marked on every page as not for submission, and it carries nobody’s signature.
Questions
Questions
Why does this document need two signatures?
Because it answers two different questions from two different professions. A planner decides whether the policy is engaged. A valuer decides what the scheme can bear. Neither should sign for the other, and the system will not let them.
Does owning the site change the answer?
It changes the viability argument materially. Where an applicant already owns the site, the land value input to a viability appraisal is effectively nil, which tends to show the scheme is profitable, and the council will say so. The drafter is instructed not to recommend a viability route on those facts.
Start here
Does your site need a affordable housing statement?
Draw a boundary and the appraisal tells you which documents your route and your constraints require, before you commit to anything.