Two North East councils have failed the government’s Housing Delivery Test, and the consequence is a meaningful shift in how they must handle planning applications. As Place North East reported, South Tyneside delivered 505 homes against a target of 949, a score of 53%, and North Tyneside delivered 1,504 against 2,306, or 65%.
What the test does
The Housing Delivery Test measures homes actually completed against the number the area needed, over a rolling three year period. It is deliberately blunt: it counts finished homes, not permissions granted, so a council cannot pass by approving schemes that never get built.
The consequences step up as the score falls. Below 85% a council must add a 20% buffer to its supply of deliverable sites. Below 75%, the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies, which means housing applications should be approved where they accord with the development plan and do not affect protected sites. All failing councils must produce an action plan.
In practice the presumption tilts the balance at appeal. A council refusing a reasonable housing scheme while sitting below 75% is in a considerably weaker position defending that refusal, and developers know it.
The honest cause
South Tyneside’s housing lead attributed the shortfall to years without an up to date Local Plan, adding that “the recent adoption of the Local Plan marks a significant turning point and puts the borough in a much stronger position to guide and support future housing delivery.”
That is a fair diagnosis rather than an excuse. Without a current plan, a council has no agreed framework of allocated sites, so development arrives piecemeal through applications and appeals, and delivery becomes unpredictable. The uncomfortable irony is that the period without a plan is exactly what produces the failure that now reduces the council’s control further.
The regional picture is uneven
Most North East councils passed. Northumberland hit 262% with 4,530 homes, and Middlesbrough reached 174% with 1,335. Newcastle came in at 87%, above the failure threshold but below the level that avoids the 20% buffer.
Those gaps are enormous, and they say something about land supply rather than effort. Northumberland has room and viable sites. Urban Tyneside is largely built out, so its housing has to come from brownfield land where remediation costs bite and values are lower, which is the same arithmetic problem behind the Tees Valley brownfield fund we covered a fortnight ago.
What it means on the ground
For anyone with a site in North or South Tyneside, the position has genuinely improved and it is worth acting on. For residents, it means less local discretion to refuse, which will be unpopular in specific cases and is the deliberate design of the policy. The way out for both councils is the same: get homes finished. Nothing else moves the score.
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