All pieces
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.
The Building Safety Levy, and why it costs twice as much on a green field.
From 1 October 2026 almost every new housing scheme in England carries a new charge, calculated per square metre. On land that has never been built on, the rate is exactly twice the rate on land that has. Here is where that money actually comes from.
What happens to a local plan when the council is abolished.
The government has told councils facing abolition that reorganisation is no excuse to stop making a local plan. Two districts have read the same instruction and done opposite things. Neither of them is obviously wrong, and the difference decides who spends the next several years without a plan.
The seven new towns, and the list that is already overdue.
Twelve locations became seven in March. The consultation closed in May, the final list was promised for summer, and summer is nearly over. What is proposed is around 191,000 homes at a 40% affordable target, which would be the most ambitious social housing commitment in decades if the mechanism that usually erodes it can be avoided.
The Housing Delivery Test, and why the results have not been published since 2024.
The Housing Delivery Test can strip a council of its power to refuse. The last time the government published the results was December 2024, and the page where they appear carries no explanation for the gap.
Water scarcity and housing targets, and the figure everyone is quoting from last year.
61,600 homes in the East and South East cannot be built because there is not enough water. That number is real, it is serious, and it was published in January 2025. It has been recycled as current all summer, and nobody appears to have refreshed it.
The 150 homes at Lechlade, and the growth the council had already counted.
Cotswold District Council says it is in a housing emergency, and that emergency is the reason 150 homes may be built on a sensitive field in Lechlade. The same Council has already written this growth into its own forward plan, before the application to build it has been decided. This is an account of what the developer's own documents say, and what the Council has done with them, as the application file stood in late June 2026.
The tilted balance is not a verdict, and how some councils have beaten it.
When the Wern was lost on appeal, it read like proof that a town council fighting speculative housing is wasting its breath. The law says otherwise, and so do councils that have won. But only on particular ground. A guide for town and parish councils in districts with no five-year housing land supply.
How land gets its value, and who keeps it.
The arithmetic underneath the English housing crisis.
A unanimous refusal, overturned by the tilted balance.
Refused by the councillors, the officers and the council's own evidence, then granted outline permission for up to 54 homes at appeal, where the tilted balance set the local plan aside.
The 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.
The 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.
Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy.
Two mechanisms for making developers pay for what development needs, and why both are under strain.
The 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.
Viability, density, and why every estate looks the same.
The product range, the economics behind it, and a planning system that cannot demand anything better.
What "affordable" actually means, and what it costs.
The gap between what the planning system calls affordable and what a local worker can pay.
The 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.
What the standard method is, and what it is not.
A formula, a set of inputs, and a missing cap. Three things, in order.
The Housing Algorithm.
How a government formula is overriding local democracy, ignoring physical reality, and reshaping rural England.