Independent · Planning, housing and place · England
We read the documents.
Long-form reporting on housing, planning and place in England, written by people who work inside the system. Every number is traced back to the document it came from, and the document is named.
A short reading of the file, before any officer has written a word.
When the Council assessed this land in its own Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, the site was given an indicative capacity of 86 dwellings, a figure the Council reached by applying a density assumption to half the site area. The application is for 150. The objection is not that one number is larger than the other. It is that the reasoning between them has never been published, while the Council's preferred strategy already counts growth on this scale at Lechlade in its forward supply to 2043. The application itself, meanwhile, has not been determined. Its target date was 17 April 2026. No officer report has been published and no committee date has been set.
Continue reading, 17 min →Hope value, and the new power for parish councils.
A change in section 113 of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 lets land be bought compulsorily on behalf of a parish or community council without paying for the planning permission it does not yet have. Every explainer on this site tells parishes what they cannot do. This is the first thing in years that hands them something.
Biodiversity net gain, and what changed for small sites and self-builders.
Three things changed in biodiversity net gain on 6 August 2026. Almost all the coverage reported one of them, and it was not the one that takes a policy away from the people the government says it wants to help.
Migration, asylum dispersal and rural housing targets, and what the tables actually show.
A widely held explanation for why rural England is being told to build is that the homes are for people arriving from elsewhere. The figures are all published, so the claim can be tested rather than argued about. In one district the answer is unusually clear, and it is not the answer either side expects.
Ground Level is a professional editorial platform. Investigative, data-driven, written by industry professionals. Interrogating Britain's planning and economics systems driving housing and infrastructure.
What the standard method is, and what it is not.A formula, a set of inputs, and a missing cap. Three things, in order.
02The five-year supply, the tilted balance, and why your council can't say no.The mechanism that hands control to developers when a council falls behind.
03What "affordable" actually means, and what it costs.The gap between what the planning system calls affordable and what a local worker can pay.
04Viability, density, and why every estate looks the same.The product range, the economics behind it, and a planning system that cannot demand anything better.
05The Local Plan, and why most of England does not have one.The document that decides where houses go, how it gets made, what happens when it fails, and what happens without it.
06Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy.Two mechanisms for making developers pay for what development needs, and why both are under strain.
07The infrastructure that doesn't exist yet.How water, roads, schools, and GP surgeries are supposed to arrive alongside new housing, and why they don't.
08The neighbourhood plan, and what it can actually do.The most democratic tool in the planning system, and the one with the least power when the system is under pressure.
09How land gets its value, and who keeps it.The arithmetic underneath the English housing crisis.
Three rural districts, each handed a need figure by formula, and not one of them able to show five years of housing land when it was last measured. The methodology doesn't ask whether the land exists.
Coming next
Get the dispatch.
Long-form, data-first, independent. Housing, planning and infrastructure reporting delivered free to your inbox.