Will strategic housing market assessments in England be given an appropriate role?

SHMA policy in the UK; Focus of SHMA practice; SHMAs in ESRC study; Reports in study area; Drawbacks in practice; 2013 amendments; Unaddressed shortfalls; Suggestions for change Debate continues about strong or weak markets. ‘Failing market’ subsumed within UK ‘delivery crisis’. Need remains to have tools to dissect localities. Frameworks must focus on sensible interventions. SHMAs currently focused on ‘assessment’ and not enough on ‘strategy’. Much of the strategic planning guidance developed by recent Labour and Conservative governments for England and Wales has now been replaced by a new ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ that has been promoted as a refined and simplified approach to strategic planning guidance. One element of previous guidance that has been retained (first introduced in 2006 ) is the requirement on local planning authorities to complete ‘Strategic Housing Market Assessments’ (SHMAs) as the basis for analysing local market dynamics and of the interventions that could assist the delivery of future housing provisions. New draft guidance has just been issued that proposes how this requirement to undertake a strategic assessment could be conducted - now entitled an ‘Assessment of Housing and Economic Needs’ : while it is clearly too early to assess the actual impact of such new guidance, it is still pertinent to reflect upon the assessment data previously collated, and about what kind of assessment practice could meaningfully help plan for future territorial development activity.