Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017
Regulation 6(4): “When forming an opinion as to whether development is EIA development, the relevant planning authority must take into account the selection criteria set out in Schedule 3.”
Schedule 3 – Selection Criteria for Screening Schedule 2 Development Includes consideration of: 1(b): “The cumulation with other existing and/or approved development.” 2: “The environmental sensitivity of geographical areas likely to be affected by development.” 3(a–d): “Characteristics of the potential impact (e.g. size of area affected, magnitude of impact, resource use, pollution, risk of accidents).”
🥇 1. Paragraph 1(b): Cumulative Impact
“The cumulation with other existing and/or approved development.”
✅ Why it matters most for Medstead: This is your strongest argument. Medstead has experienced non-plan-led, fragmented development, and Bargate clearly phased the current site following an adjacent build. Cumulative effects were foreseeable, quantifiable, and obligated under law. EHDC’s failure to screen this development cumulatively is likely the clearest and most actionable legal error.
🥉 2. Paragraph 2: Environmental Sensitivity
“The environmental sensitivity of geographical areas likely to be affected…”
✅ Why it’s significant: Medstead is a rural village with weak infrastructure, proximity to biodiversity, and no robust mitigation plan. While not designated AONB or Green Belt, its vulnerability increases the significance of even “moderate” impacts. This supports your cumulative argument by showing the setting amplifies the impact.
🏅 3 Paragraph 3: Magnitude and Scale
“The magnitude and spatial extent of the impact…”
✅ This reinforces the argument that scale is relative. 62 homes in a city might be minor; in Medstead, it’s substantial. This clause helps debunk EHDC’s claim that “most housing schemes don’t need EIA” — showing they’ve ignored the context-driven logic required by law.
This is a statutory instrument (SI 2015/595) that sets out how planning applications must be processed in England. It includes rules about validation, publicity, consultation, and decision-making.
🔸 Relevant points about publicising an application:
Under Article 15 of this Order, local planning authorities (LPAs) — like your council — must publicise planning applications in one or more of the following ways depending on the type of development:
a) For most applications (e.g., minor/household):
Site notice displayed for at least 21 days, or
Neighbour notification letter to adjoining owners/occupiers.
b) For major developments or those affecting listed buildings or conservation areas:
Newspaper advertisement in a local paper and
Site notice.
The goal is to give the public the opportunity to view, comment on, or object to the application within a statutory 21-day period.
🔸 Council’s Broader Responsibilities Regarding Public Consultation
While the 2015 Order sets the minimum legal baseline, councils can go beyond that in their Statement of Community Involvement (SCI). This is a document every LPA must produce under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
✳ The council’s responsibilities include:
Notifying affected residents in a clear and timely manner.
Making application documents easily accessible online and in physical offices (if applicable).
Ensuring consultations are inclusive, especially for developments likely to cause significant local impact.
Providing transparent records of consultation outcomes and how they influenced decisions.
🔸 Examples of Failures (that can be challenged):
Failure to post a site notice or notify nearby residents.
Inadequate or missing newspaper adverts (where required).
Not waiting the full 21-day period before deciding.
Refusing to accept late comments even when no decision has been made yet.
Making application documents difficult to access.
Ignoring material objections without addressing them.
🔹 Important Extras:
Developers themselves may carry out informal consultation before submitting an application — but this is separate from the council’s duties.
The Localism Act 2011 encourages early engagement with communities, but it’s not legally binding unless incorporated into policy.
✅ Summary:
Councils must follow Article 15 of the 2015 Order: publish notices/site notices/neighbour letters depending on the case.
The public must get 21 days to comment.
Councils have a broader duty to ensure meaningful consultation — especially for major or controversial applications — and this should be detailed in their Statement of Community Involvement.
Inadequate consultation or failure to follow publicity rules can be a ground for Judicial Review.
📊 Proportionality of Development in Medstead (2011–2021)
Dwelling completions in Medstead (net gain): 410
Dwelling completions across East Hampshire District (EHDC): 4,906
➤ Medstead accounted for ~8.36% of all new dwellings in EHDC
👥 Population Context (2011 Census)
Medstead population (2011): 2,036
EHDC population (2011): 115,608
➤ Medstead represented just ~1.76% of EHDC’s total population
⚖️ Conclusion: Disproportionate Development
Despite making up only 1.76% of the district’s population, Medstead absorbed 8.36% of all new housing in the 2011–2021 period.
This shows a development burden over four times higher than what would be expected if housing were distributed in proportion to population size.
📌 This is strong, quantitative evidence that development in Medstead was not proportionate. It supports arguments about infrastructure strain, planning fairness, and unsustainable growth at the local level.
It’s Friday — so I thought I’d have a bit of harmless fun with one of the more amusing parts of EHDC’s official response to what I considered a call for reflection. That call was addressed to elected representatives and focused on repeated planning outcomes that I — and many others — view as institutionally flawed and damaging to the integrity of the local planning process. More on that in another chapter.
Anyway, I’ve broken the response down into 27 specific points. This gem is Point 13 — and I figured it was too good not to share. I hope you’ll forgive a bit of sarcasm — just this once 🙂
Experience with Tilted Balance Is Not a Badge of Honour. Someone should forward Nick Upton the memo 🙂
Framing “significant experience with tilted balance” as a strength is like someone walking into a job interview and proudly declaring: “One of my key qualifications is that I’ve been repeatedly placed on performance improvement plans.” It doesn’t signal expertise — it signals repeated failure to meet core standards.
Likewise, regular exposure to tilted balance decisions isn’t a badge of honour — it’s a symptom of persistent strategic failure. If the planning committee is now comfortable operating in this fallback mode, it raises questions not about their experience, but about the council’s inability to correct course.
Cllr Angela Glass, a councillor who has “significant experience of determining applications under the ‘tilted balance’” 🙂 and has been in office since 2011, said the following at the meeting held on Thursday, 20 March 2025:
“~Beechlands Road — I don’t know when it was built, but that was supposedly, perhaps unsustainable. I don’t know. It’s a similar distance. It was presumably virgin land, as this is. But it was built. We’re talking about a narrow margin between the properties on that side of the road and the proposed properties on this site. And with the tilted balance and the state we are in at the moment, I really feel — however much my heart may say that fields perhaps should not be developed — I actually think that if this were to go to appeal, we would probably lose that appeal, because I think this would be deemed to be acceptable — whether sustainable or not. And I don’t often say that, but I really do think on this occasion that the tilted balance has to come into play.”
“Beechlands Road… that was perhaps unsustainable… but it was built… this is a similar site…”
This implies she’s using a prior development — one she admits may not have been sustainable — as a justification for approving the current application.
📌 Why it’s a problem: You cannot lawfully rely on a flawed precedent to justify a new planning decision. Each proposal must be judged on its own merits.
Planning law is not precedent-based like case law. Each application must be determined based on current evidence, local context, and specific material considerations. Relying on past approvals — particularly those not reassessed for sustainability — creates a circular logic loop where flawed decisions justify further flawed decisions. This undermines the purpose of NPPF paragraph 11(d), which demands an up-to-date weighing of site-specific impacts and benefits.
🧑⚖️ R (Smech Properties) v Runnymede BC [2016] confirmed that planning judgment cannot lawfully be substituted with speculation or retrospective justifications based on unrelated developments.
This type of flawed reasoning erodes the safeguards embedded in NPPF Paragraph 11(d), which mandates a live, evidence-based weighing of site-specific impacts.
2. Substitution of Planning Judgment with Appeal Fear
“I think if this went to appeal, we’d probably lose… I think it would be deemed acceptable — whether sustainable or not.”
Here, she openly substitutes her statutory duty to evaluate sustainability with a speculative fear of losing an appeal.
📌 Why it matters: This reverses the logic of NPPF Paragraph 11(d), which only permits approval when the benefits clearly and demonstrably outweigh the harms — after proper weighing of sustainability, infrastructure, local constraints, and other national policy considerations.
This isn’t just bad planning. It fits the public law definition of irrationality:
A decision made by abandoning the legal framework and replacing it with personal speculation.
The NPPF does not say, “approve unless you might lose at appeal.” It says the benefits must significantly and demonstrably outweigh the adverse impacts, measured against the development plan and the NPPF as a whole.
3. Pre-determination / Lack of Impartiality
“I don’t often say this, but the tilted balance has to come into play.”
This phrasing suggests that the “tilted balance” is being misunderstood — or misrepresented — as a green light for approval. It is not. It is a framework for weighing competing factors, not an override switch.
📌 Why it’s a problem:
Cllr Glass’s statement, delivered with rhetorical emphasis (“I don’t often say this…”), gave her comments extra weight during deliberation. But her explanation of the tilted balance was flawed — and uncorrected — during the meeting. This risks:
Triggering a ground of procedural impropriety in a Judicial Review
Spreading misunderstanding to less experienced councillors
Prejudicing the overall outcome of the vote
📈 The Bigger Picture
Between 2011 and 2021, EHDC approved over 410 new dwellings in Medstead alone — a rural parish — without ever reassessing the cumulative environmental impact through a fresh Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
By comparison:
East Hampshire’s population grew ~8.7% over that decade.
This is not a case of isolated planning oversights. It is a systemic failure of process — compounded by flawed reasoning and unsupported assertions made by a senior councillor, on record, during decision-making.
An interim position statement may be published when:
The Local Plan is out of date.
A full Housing Land Supply Statement has not yet been completed or published for the current monitoring year.
The council is awaiting confirmation of housing delivery numbers (e.g. completions, permissions).
There is uncertainty due to appeals or legal challenges that affect the 5-Year Housing Land Supply.
It is a way for the council to indicate its estimated position, e.g. stating that it believes it has 3.2 years’ worth of deliverable housing land, pending final verification.
Status of Interim Statements
Not binding — unlike a formally published 5-Year Housing Land Supply Statement.
Subject to change — as new data or appeal decisions are incorporated.
May be used by officers to inform development management decisions, especially for tilted balance cases.
Relevance to Tilted Balance
If the council publishes an interim statement indicating it cannot demonstrate a full 5-year supply, this can trigger Paragraph 11(d) of the NPPF, meaning the tilted balance applies:
Planning permission should be granted unless the adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits.
In such cases, the council must still apply planning judgment and local policies — but with less control due to the shortfall.
📉 4. No national investment strategy to match housing delivery
Even though local councils are told to deliver more homes, there’s no automatic funding for schools, GPs, roads, or public transport.
So you get:
Homes approved without sufficient infrastructure
Communities growing faster than services
Backlash and resistance
📍 Summary Table
National Control
Exists?
Notes
National Spatial Strategy
❌ No
England is the only UK nation without one
Housing Need Formula
✅ Yes
Standard Method sets minimums per district
Binding Housing Targets
❌ No
Targets aren’t enforced unless in Local Plan
Infrastructure Funding
❌ No
No automatic match to population growth
Land Use Redistribution
❌ No
No plan to rebalance growth across the country
🧠 Final Thought
There is national control over the numbers, but not over the consequences or coordination. That’s why districts like EHDC are under pressure from targets they didn’t shape — without the tools or funding to deliver them properly.
The Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) is a document that each local planning authority — including East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) — must publish at least once per year. Its purpose is to track the council’s performance in delivering planning objectives and housing targets.
Think of it as EHDC’s “planning report card”, offering transparency about whether it is meeting the commitments set out in its Local Plan.
The Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) is a yearly publication required by all local councils. It tracks housing delivery, Local Plan progress, and whether the council is meeting national planning targets. One of its most influential roles is confirming whether the council has a five-year housing land supply — a key measure used to determine how much control it retains over planning decisions.
In this article, we explain how the AMR works — and how windfall housing approvals (homes approved outside planned allocations) are sometimes used to improve headline figures. While this can help councils meet short-term targets, it can also mask deeper planning problems, such as overdevelopment in rural communities, underinvestment in infrastructure, or failure to deliver allocated sites.
🧾 What Does the AMR Include?
The AMR typically reports on:
📦 Progress on the Local Plan: Has the council delivered what it promised?
🏡 Housing completions: How many homes have been built each year?
📉 5-Year Housing Land Supply (5YHLS): Does the council have enough land to meet demand over the next five years?
🧮 Housing Delivery Test (HDT) performance
The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) is a national measure of how many homes a council has actually delivered, compared to how many it was expected to deliver over the past three years. If delivery falls below key thresholds (e.g. 85%, 75%), it can trigger penalties such as action plans or tilted balance.
🏘️ Affordable housing delivery
🧭 Windfall trends and development outside planned allocations
🌿 Environmental and infrastructure indicators
📆 Whether the Local Plan still meets national policy requirements or needs updating
🗓️ When Does EHDC Publish the AMR?
EHDC typically publishes its AMR between May and July each year, covering the previous financial year (e.g. 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024).
The most recent version as of early 2025 is the 2022/23 AMR, released in summer 2023.
📌 What Is the Legal Duty?
Under Regulation 34 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012, councils must:
Publish a monitoring report at least annually,
Make it publicly available, and
Keep it relevant to Local Plan performance.
⚠️ Why It Matters
The AMR helps determine whether EHDC has maintained a 5YHLS and met its housing targets.
If shortfalls are revealed, the tilted balance is triggered, weakening local control over speculative development.
The Housing Delivery Test (HDT) uses AMR figures to assess whether local planning authorities are delivering enough homes. Failing the HDT can:
Trigger an action plan,
Require an early Local Plan review, or
Engage the presumption in favour of development (tilted balance).
🚨 Pressure to “Patch the Numbers” Before the AMR Cut-off
Because AMRs rely on data captured as of 31 March each year, there is a risk that councils under pressure to meet housing targets might approve borderline or windfall applications in Q1 (Jan–Mar) to artificially boost completions before publication.
This creates a risk that:
Windfall approvals are rushed or strategic rather than properly assessed.
Councils may cut corners on cumulative impact, environmental risk, or consultation.
Settlements like Medstead — which already absorbed disproportionate growth — may be further burdened to “make up the numbers.”
🧾 Windfall allowances hide structural failure
NPPF Paragraph 71 allows councils to count windfall sites in their housing supply — but without any spatial limit.
👉 Result:
Councils can use windfalls to fill the numbers,
Even if growth is unplanned, disconnected from infrastructure, and overloads specific settlements (like Medstead).
This makes it look like delivery is working, while masking the failure to deliver plan-led, equitable growth
🚨 When the AMR Becomes a Trigger to Cut Corners
Although the AMR is designed to promote transparency, it can also create perverse incentives when councils are under pressure to meet housing delivery targets. Because each AMR captures housing data up to 31 March, local authorities may feel compelled to approve marginal or windfall developments in the final months of the year — even in unsustainable locations — simply to boost their numbers before publication.
In reality, this pressure can begin well before the AMR deadline. If internal tracking or draft housing completions reports indicate that delivery may fall short, councils like EHDC may accelerate approvals in Q3 or earlier, particularly for windfall or tilted balance schemes that can be counted toward annual totals.
This is especially risky when:
The council anticipates failing the Housing Delivery Test (HDT),
The Five-Year Housing Land Supply (5YHLS) position is already weak,
Or the tilted balance has been triggered and used to justify approvals.
🎙️ In the LPC meeting on 20 March 2025, EHDC’s Development Manager confirmed that the 2016 Ashwoods (Medstead) development was approved during a period when the council lacked a five-year housing land supply and was relying on an Interim Housing Position Statement. It was a windfall development, not part of a planned allocation.
📉 Every year, EHDC must report on housing delivery. When it appears that targets may fall short, windfall approvals can play a role in closing the gap. While this helps meet district-wide numbers, it also risks obscuring underlying planning weaknesses — with communities like Medstead absorbing the real-world impacts of unplanned growth.
In such moments, settlements like Medstead — which have already absorbed high levels of growth — may be exposed to rushed or speculative approvals without cumulative safeguards, long-term infrastructure planning, or meaningful local scrutiny. The AMR, intended as a tool for accountability, can unintentionally incentivise short-termism and overdevelopment, particularly in rural communities that lack formal delivery caps.
The Council’s Leadership Cabinet, which is responsible for setting and resourcing strategic priorities.
The Planning Policy Team, for managing the process (though often under resourcing constraints).
Full Council, if they failed to adopt or fund a timely review when warned.
⚖️ Why Accountability Matters?
Loss of Local Control
Increased Risk to Infrastructure and Communities Without an up-to-date plan, housing growth may happen in places without the necessary roads, schools, or GP capacity — and the council cannot effectively coordinate delivery.
Legal and Financial Exposure
An outdated plan may increase the risk of:
Planning decisions being overturned at appeal.
Costly Judicial Reviews.
Loss of control over CIL/S106 infrastructure negotiation.
Impact on Public Trust
Residents may lose confidence in the council’s ability to manage development fairly and transparently — especially when speculative schemes are approved without strong local backing.
Use the latest household growth projections for your area (East Hampshire). These projections come from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which estimates how many new households will form in each local authority area over time.
Look at the average annual household growth over a 10-year period.
🧾 Example (as of April 2025): ONS projects East Hampshire will grow by 3,678 households over 10 years → that’s 368 new households per year (baseline).
✅ Step 2: Apply the Affordability Uplift
If housing in the district is expensive compared to local earnings, the required housing number is increased.
🔍 What is the Affordability Benchmark?
The government uses a benchmark affordability ratio of 4.0, which assumes that housing is reasonably affordable if the median house price is no more than four times the median annual earnings in the area.
If the local affordability ratio is above 4.0, an uplift must be applied to the housing need to reflect increased demand caused by unaffordable housing.
💡 How the Uplift Works
For every 1.0 point above the benchmark of 4.0, the baseline housing need is increased by 0.25 (25%). This formula is set by the government in its Planning Practice Guidance (PPG).
🔎 What’s the Logic Behind the Benchmark of 4.0?
The 4.0 affordability ratio is a policy judgment: it reflects the idea that housing becomes unaffordable when it costs more than four times the average local salary.
Historically, house prices around 3–4× income were considered manageable by mortgage lenders.
The government uses 4.0 as a threshold where no uplift is applied — it’s the point where housing is just about affordable without overstretching buyers.
⚖️ If house prices are below 4× average income, housing is considered affordable enough, and no additional housing pressure needs to be factored into the council’s housing target.
📈 Why Apply a 25% Uplift per Point Above 4.0?
The uplift rate of 0.25 (25%) per point over 4.0 is meant to scale proportionally with housing stress.
For every 1.0 increase in the affordability ratio, the assumption is:
Demand exceeds supply
Additional homes are needed to cool price pressure
✅ Example: If the ratio is 5.0 (just one point over), the government assumes a 25% uplift is enough to help restore balance between supply and demand over time.
If it’s 13.0 (as in East Hampshire), the uplift becomes over 225% — because prices are so far detached from wages, the area needs a lot more housing just to stabilize affordability.
This method is intentionally simple and scalable. It avoids overcomplicated modelling and gives each council a clear formula based on just two data points.
✅ Example A: Affordable Area
If the affordability ratio is 4.0 or below, no uplift is applied.
✅ Example B: Unaffordable Area
If the affordability ratio is 13.03, as in East Hampshire:
Affordability ratio
13.03
Affordability benchmark
4
Above the benchmark of 4
(13.03-4) = 9.03
Adjustment Factor = 25 % of the excess over the benchmark
(0.25 * 9.03) = 2.2575
Baseline – Total projected new households (2024–2034)
3,678
Baseline – Annual average growth
3,678 ÷ 10 = 368 households/year
Affordability Adjustment (uplift)
+83 households per year
Total Annual Housing Need
368 + 83 = 451 households/year
✅ Step 3: Cap It (In Some Cases)
If the Local Plan is up-to-date (reviewed within 5 years and aligned with national policy), the number can be capped to avoid sharp increases.
⚠️ As of 2024, EHDC’s Local Plan is out of date, so no cap applies.
✅ Step 4: Use It for the 5-Year Supply
The final number becomes EHDC’s annual housing requirement.
To remain compliant, EHDC must show enough land for 5 years of housing need.
💡 If need = 560 homes/year → EHDC must show land for 2,800 homes over 5 years.
📌 Where This Is Written
National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – Paragraphs 61–62
Planning Practice Guidance (PPG): Housing and Economic Needs Assessment
Annual housing need for East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) using the Standard Method as of April 2025
📍 Data Sources:
Data Source: ONS 2018-based household projections.
Affordability Data: Latest median house price to income ratio.
🧾 Key Definitions (Glossary)
ONS (Office for National Statistics) – UK government agency responsible for population and economic data.
Affordability Ratio – Ratio of median house price to median local earnings; used to assess how affordable housing is.
Standard Method – The formula councils must use to calculate annual housing need.
Local Plan – The council’s official planning document setting out what can be built and where.
5-Year Housing Land Supply – A requirement for councils to show they have enough land available to meet 5 years of housing need.
Council publishes the plan it wants to adopt. You can now object on legal and soundness grounds (e.g. not justified, not effective, not compliant with NPPF).
🔹 Critical stage: your last chance to influence what gets adopted.
An independent Planning Inspector holds a public examination to test if the plan is “sound” and “legally compliant”. You may be invited to a hearing if you objected at Reg 19.
🔹 Required by law. Inspector checks legality and compliance with national policy.
📝 2. Regulation 18 – Draft Plan & Early Consultation
What’s happening? This is the first formal public consultation. The council publishes a draft version of the plan or “issues and options” — they might offer different scenarios or layouts and ask the public what they think.
📜 What does “Regulation 18” mean? It’s the legal requirement that the council must consult “any person or organisation it thinks will be affected.” This gives the public a first formal voice in the process.
🟢 You can:
Respond with general views on where homes, roads, and green spaces should go.
Highlight local evidence: flooding, schools, transport, nature, etc.
📣 3. Regulation 19 – Final Plan & Legal Objections
What’s happening? The council publishes the plan it wants to adopt — the Pre-Submission Plan. This is not a “what do you think” stage — this is a “tell us what’s wrong” stage.
📜 What does “Regulation 19” mean? The council must publish the final version for a minimum of 6 weeks and allow the public to raise formal legal or policy-based objections. These go straight to the Planning Inspector.
🔴 You must:
Say if you believe the plan is unsound (not justified, not effective, or conflicts with national policy),
Or not legally compliant (e.g. flawed consultation, missing evidence, or no proper Sustainability Appraisal).
🛠️ This is the last chance to get changes made before it becomes law.
What’s happening? The Planning Inspector tests the plan’s legality and “soundness”. There are public hearings — but they are technical, not like public debates.
🎯 They check:
Is the plan positively prepared?
Is it based on evidence?
Can it actually be delivered?
Does it comply with national policy (like the NPPF)?
📚 The Inspector may also suggest “main modifications” — required changes before it can be approved.
What’s happening? The council votes to formally adopt the plan. Once adopted, the plan becomes the law — developers must follow it, and so must the council (unless national policy overrides it).
After adoption, anyone can launch a Judicial Review if they believe the plan is legally flawed (e.g. flawed process, failed consultation, unlawful policies).
🧑⚖️ Challenges go to the High Court, and only succeed if a clear legal error is proven.
