Partner Article

GVA Unveils ‘NEIGHBOURHOOD’ – A new toolkit for establishing development need

Leading UK property consultancy GVA, has developed a new cutting-edge toolkit for establishing development needs at the parish and neighbourhood level. The pioneering methodology, called NEIGHBOURHOOD, and the first model of its kind, will assist North West house builders, developers, landowners, Local Planning Authorities and Parish Councils to accurately assess the impact of housing on an area in conjunction with wider socio-economic needs.

The NEIGHBOURHOOD toolkit will will be used by regional house builders and developers to demonstrate the need for housing in particular locations and the benefit that housing can present to a local population and the vitality and sustainability of its towns and villages. It will also be used by residents and communities involved in Neighbourhood Planning to identify housing need should they wish to achieve certain goals such as maintaining the number of working-age people in the town or parish.

Nicola Rigby, Director in GVA’s Manchester Planning Development and Regeneration team commented: “Recent well-publicised appeal decisions have made it abundantly clear that neighbourhood planning is a key consideration in determining residential planning applications. Our NEIGHBOURHOOD toolkit brings together an understanding of demographic change, community needs, and deliverability considerations, to quantify and qualify what housing development means at the local level.

“Critically, NEIGHBOURHOOD is a robust basis for advising at Parish and settlement level on what makes local housing markets work – drawing on evidence to focus on this localised level rather than the inflexible, top down models which have dominated in neighbourhood planning in the past.

“NEIGHBOURHOOD allows a clear and understood process of joint working between communities and developers – allowing positive consideration of the benefits of delivering homes. We are now using this toolkit as the means for discussion with a range of partners across the region to assist in discussions around meeting locally defined housing requirements.”

The methodology assembles robust evidence on housing needs by identifying the existing vitality of the local area, including the opportunities to be maximised and the potential threats to be addressed in the future; the implications for future sustainability under a “do nothing” scenario, and an assessment of the implications for both population and vitality of different levels of new housing.

GVA’s NEIGHBOURHOOD model uses a bespoke forecasting tool that is locally specific. This unique feature provides the most accurate population and demographic data available built up from robust local information.

By working on a neighbourhood level that is not limited by administrative boundaries, NEIGHBOURHOOD offers a model that is flexible and adaptable to respond to differing budgets and requirements.

Nicola Rigby added: “We believe that NEIGHBOURHOOD is a genuinely market leading tool. We have developed it drawing on our wider multi-disciplinary property expertise, with a focus on its application rather than as a theoretical approach. Because of this, we have been able to identify the best evidence available enabling us to provide locally practical and critically deliverable advice.”

This detailed local knowledge of populations will combine with GVA’s planning and housing policy advisers in every region in the UK; in-house economists; local residential market data from its Capital Markets team; and full GIS capability.

For further information please contact Nicola Rigby, Director at GVA on 0191 956 4201 or email nicola.rigby@gva.co.uk, or Hayley Knight, Principle Planner at GVA on 0191 956 4258 or email hayley.knight@gva.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by GVA .