Five-year housing land supply

Background

The National Planning Policy Framework requires all local planning authorities to identify and annually update a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide a minimum of five years' worth of housing against their housing requirement. This is also known as the five-year housing land supply.

The housing requirement used to determine the five-year supply must be that which is set out within adopted strategic policies, or against the Local Housing Need where the strategic policies are more than five years old.

The Local Housing Need is an unconstrained assessment of the minimum number of homes needed in an area. It must be calculated using the standard method, details of which are set out within Planning Practice Guidance. The standard method calculation was updated in December 2024 whereby changes were made to its inputs.

Previous update of the five-year housing land supply

In February 2025, the council published an updated five-year housing land supply position. This was calculated using the Local Housing Need because the strategic policy in place at the time was contained within the West Berkshire Core Strategy, a document that formed part of the Local Plan and which was adopted more than five years ago.

The Local Housing Need for West Berkshire at February 2025 was 1,070 dwellings a year.

At February 2025, the council were able to demonstrate a 2.6 years' supply of deliverable housing sites. This position changed following the adoption of the West Berkshire Local Plan Review on 10 June 2025.

Current five-year housing land supply position

The West Berkshire Local Plan Review (LPR) was adopted on 10 June 2025, and it supersedes in its entirety the West Berkshire Core Strategy (in addition to the Housing Site Allocations Development Plan Document and the West Berkshire District Local Plan 1991-2006 (Saved Policies 2007)). 

Strategic policy SP12 of the LPR contains the housing requirement, which is an average of 515 dwellings per year.

The council published an updated five-year housing land supply position on 11 June 2025, which uses the housing requirement contained in the LPR.

The council can currently demonstrate a 5.7 years' supply of deliverable housing sites, using a five-year housing land supply from 2024/25 to 2028/29 against a five-year housing land supply requirement, plus a 5% buffer.

The June 2025 housing land supply statement and its appendices are available to download below. This has been prepared in accordance with the NPPF and Planning Practice Guidance:

• Housing Land Supply Statement (June 2025) [216KB]
• Appendix 1: Schedule of Sites [1MB]
• Appendix 2: Site Deliverability Forms [3MB]