Highland Housing Land Audit

The number of new houses built in the Highlands in the first six months of this year has increased by 18% to 802, according to a Housing Land Audit, published by The Highland Council’s Planning and Development Service.

The Audit predicts there is a sufficient land supply to comfortably accommodate housing needs over the next four years, reporting there is a land supply of 13,329 houses – well ahead of the projected housing requirement of 6,400 houses. The total includes programmed development of 8,959 units on Local Plan sites and a further 4,370 units from extant planning permissions on windfall sites (those that have not been specifically allocated for housing with Local Plans).

Councillor Drew Hendry, Chairman of the Planning Environment and Development Committee, said the housing land audit is a crucially important tool for the Administration to ensure adequate land is available to deliver 6,000 new homes over the next four years and to strive to remove barriers to development.

He said: “The audit makes excellent reading. The upward trend in housing building is very encouraging and is on course not only to provide an adequate supply of land to meet housing need for 2007-2011 but to cancel out shortfalls identified in earlier years.

“This is due to the hard work that is going on to identify adequate land for development and to remove constraints affecting housing development in the Highlands.”

The housing audit can be accessed here.