Affordable housing

HO2: Affordable housing Requirement Residential developments of 10 or more dwellings (gross) or sites of 0.5ha or more will be required to provide: West Planning Area a) Greenfield sites: A minimum of 40% affordable housing b) Brownfield sites: Up to 40% affordable housing, with the level of provision to be determined having regard to site-specific viability evidence. South and East Planning Areas a) A minimum of 40% affordable housing on both greenfield and brownfield sites North and Central Planning Areas a) A minimum of 25% affordable housing on both greenfield and brownfield sites, unless one of the following applies: i. If the residential development is on land in, or being released from, the Green Belt it should instead provide a minimum of 50% affordable housing on site ii. If the residential development is on land within the Chilterns National Landscape, schemes of five or more dwellings will be required to provide a minimum of 25 or 40% affordable housing depending on the planning area, as set out in criterion 1. Tenure mix The tenure mix will be agreed with the Council, considering the Council’s latest evidence. The council’s latest evidence is in the Buckinghamshire LHNA 2026, but this will be subject to monitoring and review and will be updated periodically. This demonstrates a need for the following proportions: a) minimum 60% social rent b) 20% affordable rent c) 20% shared ownership For flatted schemes, reasonable effort should be made to separate affordable tenures with market dwellings and rented affordable tenures from shared ownership dwellings to ensure service charge affordability. Affordable housing mix The appropriate mix for the size of affordable housing units is set out in Policy HO1 Housing Mix. Location and clustering Affordable homes will be required to be integrated throughout the development site and should be indistinguishable in appearance and quality from the wider development. Large concentrations of affordable housing should be avoided with a maximum cluster size of: Total dwellings in development site Maximum cluster size (unless otherwise agreed) 10-24 4 25-49 6 50-99 10 100-149 12 150-199 15 200+ 15 (18 for apartments) Financial contributions Affordable housing should be delivered on site. In exceptional circumstances affordable housing provision may be provided via a financial contribution made in lieu of such provision. This will need to be justified, as an exception to normal policy, as part of the planning application, and robust evidence supplied early in the planning application process. The contribution charge will be index linked to the House Price Index, to increase in line with inflation, and should equate to the cost of the land and construction of the number of units that would be required on site. Threshold Where a site forms part of a larger site of a size which is capable of being developed, the affordable housing requirements will be applied on a cumulative basis. Further detail, if needed, may be included in an updated Affordable Housing Technical Note. 7.9 Affordable housing is defined in the NPPF as housing for sale or rent, for those whose needs are not met by the market (including housing that provides a subsidised route to home ownership and/or is for essential local workers). This can include social rent, discounted market sales housing which is sold at a discount of at least 20% below local market value, shared ownership and rent to buy. However, the Council is committed to bringing Shared Ownership tenures forward on development sites unless exceptional circumstances can be proven. Discounted Market Sale is not an affordable tenure within Buckinghamshire, made evident by the Buckinghamshire LHNA 2026. 7.10 Affordable housing intended to meet the needs of essential local workers, or key workers, will be supported subject to compliance with all other relevant policies of this Plan. Where such proposals are located within one kilometre of the relevant place of work, greater flexibility may be applied to the affordable housing tenure and unit mix, where it can be demonstrated that this would better reflect the specific needs of the intended occupiers. A legal agreement will be required to restrict the housing to occupation for key workers. 7.11 For the purposes of this policy, essential or key workers include: a) Healthcare professionals, including NHS doctors, nurses, and paramedics. b) Education professionals, including teachers and teaching assistants; and c) Emergency service personnel, including police officers, firefighters, and ambulance staff. This list may be updated by the Council in the future, where further work identifies additional groups that should be recognised as key workers. 7.12 NPPF paragraph 63 requires Local Planning authorities to establish the needs of those who require affordable housing (including Social Rent). The Buckinghamshire LHNA 2026 has therefore been prepared. Requirement 7.13 Most of the affordable housing in Buckinghamshire is achieved by requiring developers to provide affordable homes as part of open market housing developments. To enable the Council to contribute to the identified need, it will seek to secure either 40% or 25% affordable housing depending on the area of Buckinghamshire, with specifically 59% of Social Rent required on qualifying development sites. The Buckinghamshire LHNA 2026 identifies an affordable housing need of 34,100 dwellings during the Plan period. This equates to almost 40% of Buckinghamshire’s overall housing need. While typically only developments of ten or more dwellings will be required to provide affordable housing, these form most of the planned housing supply, more affordable housing will be delivered on sites within or being released from the Green Belt. It’s considered that a rate of 25% on the housing sites over 10 or more dwellings in the north and central areas of Buckinghamshire, whilst lower than the identified need, will make a substantial contribution to the required total of affordable housing within the plan period and ensure that development is able to contribute to essential infrastructure and remain viable. Similarly, brownfield sites in the West Planning area are likely to have viability issues with delivering 40% affordable housing but these should aim to get as close as possible to this and the position should be robustly justified through an independently assessed viability appraisal. 7.14 These requirements apply to all residential schemes that include self-contained units, which provide all the facilities of a single dwelling, regardless of their use class. This includes C2 or extra care units. 7.15 In line with the NPPF, the provisions set out in the policy above will be reduced by a proportionate amount if the proposal supports vacant buildings which are being reused or redeveloped, cases where this does not apply are set out in footnotethirty0 of the NPPF. 7.16 Where the affordable housing policy would result in a requirement that part of an affordable home should be provided, the calculation will be rounded upwards, with social rent units taking precedence in all circumstances. 7.17 Proposals for schemes delivering 100% affordable housing will be supported, subject to compliance with all other relevant policies of this Plan. Tenure Mix 7.18 For the tenure mix, a tenure other than shared ownership for other affordable routes to home ownership will only be agreed in exceptional circumstances for that proportion of the mix and where evidence has been provided. 7.19 The Social Rent mix will need to broadly reflect the overall need for its tenure, based on the latest available evidence (which indicates a need for 63% of affordable homes to be in social rent), to ensure there are a range of house sizes delivered, and should not be seen as interchangeable with Affordable Rent homes. 7.20 Where a development is small in scale, the Council may be flexible in allowing more than 20% shared ownership, if the resulting proportion of affordable rent would be too low to be viable or deliverable. Location and Clustering 7.21 Affordable housing should be provided on the application site, as this offers the best prospect of ensuring a mixed and balanced community. To achieve this, it will be important to avoid the affordable dwellings being overly concentrated in only a few areas of a development. Affordable homes will therefore be expected to be integrated throughout the development site. 7.22 Service charge affordability will be a material consideration when concerning location and clustering of affordable housing proposed on sites. While tenure blindness is crucial in ensuring cohesive mixed communities, registered providers prefer managing buildings that are 100% affordable. This can still achieve tenure blindness, through separate entrances and cores, which should be considered an acceptable design response. Financial contributions 7.23 Exceptionally, off-site provision or financial contributions in lieu of affordable housing may be considered by the Council, where it can be demonstrated by an applicant that on-site provision cannot be achieved. Any such contributions will be used to enable the delivery of new homes for those whose needs are not met by the market within Buckinghamshire. Exceptional circumstances where this might be acceptable include : sites that are too small to attract a Registered Provider, it can be evidenced that Registered Providers are not willing to take on the type of affordable housing proposed, if the proposal is for C2 development that is not selfcontained flats, the tenure is being delivered in one block which would r esult in financial hardship to residents and quality standards cannot be achieved to abnormally high constraints. All exceptional circumstances are examined on a case -by-case basis during the application process.