Housing and economic land availability assessment

Planning Practice Guidance

Document Status

Current

Supplement

Sustainability, Environment, Development & Planning

Series

Planning Practice Guidance

Abstract

Comprises planning practice guidance focusing on the method for carrying out housing and economic land availability assessment. Covers: planning under the new plan-making system; purpose of the assessment of land availability; flowchart; stage one: identification of sites and broad locations; stage two: site/broad location assessment; stage three: windfall assessment where justified; stage four: assessment review; and stage five: final evidence base.

History

Last updated: 27 November 2025 - Added information about the new plan-making system. Sourced from: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/housing-and-economic-land-availability-assessment and converted to pdf. Whilst we endeavour to capture all updates it is subject to receiving alerts from the publisher and there may be formatting or punctuation changes applied to the html version that do not affect the text. Document type: guidance. First published: 6 March 2014.

Subjects

Publisher History

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is a UK Government ministerial department with responsibility for several policy areas including building regulation, community integration, economic development in coastal and seaside areas, energy efficiency in buildings, high streets and town centres, housing, local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and Enterprise Zones, localism, planning reform and the planning system. They were previously known as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, MHCLG, Department for Communities and Local Government, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Department for Transport and Local Government.


Information

NBS

NBS has produced specification systems and information products for construction industry professionals for more than 40 years. The National Building Specification is the recognised UK national standard and is used by over 5,000 organisations. NBS is part of RIBA Enterprises Ltd.

Accuris

We connect trusted knowledge to customers' workflows – mitigating risk, increasing efficiency and accelerating innovation For more than 60 years, leading R&D and engineering-intensive organizations have relied on us to achieve on-time, on-budget delivery of complex projects and new products. We deliver an unparalleled combination of technical content and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to surface answers from the vast universe of technical knowledge, both inside and outside the organization. In a single interface, we connect the dots between information scattered across many different sources, allowing technical professionals to make better, more informed decisions faster.