Worked district · issued 5 September 2026 · base date 13 October 2026

Harborough District, question by question.

One district, evaluated in full against the four questions, entirely on the Council's own published evidence. Twenty-eight measures across six parts, every figure sourced to the document it came from, and every major application on the register since January 2024 read whole. This is the deliverable — and the same evaluation runs for any authority.

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What follows is the summary. The full analysis runs to thirty-five pages with every source cited, and is sent on request.

The conclusion, in four figures §01 · summary

3.38

years of supply at 1 April 2026 on the Council's own schedule — and 3.13 when that schedule is re-timed on the Council's own register

63.8%

of its projected supply carries no planning permission

37.8%

delivered by the last plan's allocations against its own projection

37.9%

of assessed affordable need met across six years

Question one

Is the gateway open, and will it still be?

3.38 years at 1 April 2026, on the Council's own deliverable-supply schedule and its own arithmetic — 1,283 dwellings short.

The Council computes this figure itself. No modelling, discount or deliverability judgement is applied to reach it, and no published trajectory it has issued reaches five years at any base date those documents support. An applicant does not need to establish a shortfall; an applicant needs only to resist the Council establishing a surplus.

3.11Years the Council's own October 2025 statement conceded — 2,401 dwellings against a requirement of 3,860

2.80–4.77The range across four base dates its schedule supports. None reaches five

3.13Years when the same schedule is re-timed on the Council's own register and consenting record — 1,481 dwellings short

2.96Years at a 20% buffer, the position that follows any measurement below 85%

4Published figures for a single year — 444, 670, 550 and 185, three of them sharing a data date

80.7%The 2027 delivery measurement on the Council's own committed row — below 85%; 41.6% on its schedule as printed

560 daysAge of the Council's latest published five-year figure at the base date. No position it has issued appeared less than five months after its own base date

3.1 yrsThe position the Inspectorate has recorded in every decision since April 2026 — nine of seventeen by the Council's own hand

And this is the part that decides a case rather than describes one. The gateway is not open or shut in the abstract — it is open or shut on the day the application is determined. On the Council's own schedule the supply trigger narrows year by year, while the delivery trigger moves the other way.

Both S5(1)(j) triggers, projected from the authority's own published figures
Base date	Council's schedule, 5%	At 20%	Re-timed on its register, 5%	Gateway on supply
1 April 2026	3.38	2.96	3.13	Open
1 April 2027	4.17	3.65	4.53	Open
1 April 2028	4.77	4.17	5.79	Open on the schedule; shut re-timed

Open — below five years, S5(1)(j) engaged on supply Shut — five years demonstrated

The supply figure improves by 1.39 years across three base dates and still never reaches five on any of them as the Council prints it. The delivery trigger runs the other way: the 2025 measurement is 139% and carries no consequence, but on the Council's own committed row the 2027 measurement returns 80.7% — a 20% buffer — and on its deliverable-sites schedule as printed, 41.6%, below the 75% at which S5(1)(j) opens on delivery alone.

Stated against our own case The Council passes the Housing Delivery Test at 139%, published 17 August 2026, and no action plan is required. Recorded delivery across the five monitored years, 842.8 dwellings a year, exceeds every unbuffered requirement figure considered — 755, 747, 735 and 657. Neither 2026 nor 2027 is projected here as an outturn: the table states thresholds, and no consequence follows until a measurement is published. And on one construction the analysis puts in itself — the Council's schedule re-timed on its own register, with the pending applications the schedule omits added back — the 1 April 2028 position reaches 5.79 years. It is set out in full, with the answer: the limb carrying it is the pending pipeline the Council has assessed for deliverability nowhere and left out of the schedule it published, 1,186 dwellings at that base date; it is the only base date on which the construction clears five; and at the base date that governs, the same construction returns 3.13.

Question two

Is that supply deliverable?

63.8% of projected supply from 2026–27 carries no planning permission — 5,146 dwellings the Council must make good site by site.

Consent stage governs delivery far more reliably than allocation status. Every major residential application on the register since January 2024 — forty-four rows, 5,766 dwellings — is run through a consenting chain built from the Council's own observed periods, and the risk sits where the schedule assumes none.

93.5%Of the chained pipeline stands at outline — 4,926 of 5,269 dwellings, every one requiring reserved matters before a start

11.5%Of that pipeline the chain brings into the window: 607 dwellings of 5,269. Schemes of 250 and above bring forward 6.5% of theirs

83.8 → 15.7Percentage of each year carrying permission, from 2026–27 to 2030–31

48 of 1,327Allocated dwellings in the window that hold planning permission. The other 1,279 rest on a resolution, a pending application, a scoping request, or nothing

233 daysMedian from validation to committee on twenty-three rows of the register, against thirty weeks published and thirteen statutory. None inside thirteen

190 daysMedian from resolution to decision notice on the five completed periods, against twenty-one weeks published. Eight of twelve live resolutions have already overrun it; the longest has run 315 days

711 daysThe Council's own record from outline to first reserved-matters approval on sites of 100 or more, against the twelve months the chain allows it

29.5%Of allocated provision absent from the deliverable schedule entirely — 1,790 dwellings, including the plan's largest site

Stated against our own case The schedule's own exclusion note means its near-term columns understate the supply. The case is therefore put at its lowest on the one window the schedule was drawn to state completely, 2028–33, where it still falls short at 3,782 against 4,530. Every timing input in the chain favours the Council: twelve months from outline to reserved matters where its own record puts the step at 711 days, and national medians for lead-in and build-out. Across the whole observed consenting record, from 48 to 315 days, the governing window moves only between 2.97 and 3.30 years.

Question three

Does the plan distribute soundly?

37.8% of what the last adopted plan projected from its own allocations was actually delivered. Everything it did not allocate delivered 105.5%.

An allocation-led trajectory from this authority, on this method, has been tested once already. Its two strategic development areas — two-thirds of the allocated provision — have delivered nothing at all.

3.2%Compliance against the 20% combined small-and-medium-sites target now in national plan-making policy

29.3%Take-up of the capacity the Council's own SHELAA identifies, across twenty-nine settlements

9,573Dwellings of identified capacity left unused by the emerging plan

350 of 6,422Homes the plan provides for that sit on no site allocation at all, spread across eighteen villages

0Site-specific allocations in the two lowest tiers of the plan's own settlement hierarchy

4Settlements allocated above their identified capacity — one at 400% of it

2,460Dwellings in the last plan's two strategic sites. Completions to date: nil

One wordDeleted from the neighbourhood-plan test in the Framework published 17 August 2026 — and it decides whether policy S6 is available at all

That last one decides whether a made neighbourhood plan protects anything. Paragraph 14(b) of the December 2024 Framework required a neighbourhood plan to contain policies and allocations to meet its identified housing requirement. Policy S6(1)(b) of the Framework published on 17 August 2026 requires allocations. The five-year limb at (a) is unchanged, so that is the only movement in the test — and this plan allocates sites for Tiers 1 to 4 and gives Tier 5 a target instead. Where S6 is unavailable the proposal falls to be determined under S3: S4 within the settlement, S5 outside it, and where the authority cannot demonstrate five years, S5(1)(j) is engaged in terms.

What this does not say It does not say which Small Villages have made neighbourhood plans, or what any of them allocates; that turns on the made plans themselves. Nor is the emerging plan said to be unsound. The proposition is structural and district-wide, and the plan remains capable of addressing it — it was submitted on 17 April 2026 and examination hearings resume in the week commencing 9 November 2026.

Question four

Is affordable need being met?

37.9% of assessed affordable need delivered across six years — 997 dwellings against 2,634, a shortfall of 1,637.

The gap is widening, not closing: annual additions have fallen from 231 to 117 across the last four years, and 2024–25, at 80, was the lowest since 2016–17. The Framework published on 17 August 2026 directs substantial weight to meeting evidenced accommodation needs identified through assessments of exactly this kind.

439Affordable dwellings a year assessed in the Council's own evidence base — 58% of its whole standard method requirement, and the only assessment made on the current definition

231 → 117Annual affordable additions across the last four years of the record

£13,400Gap between the income needed to rent privately and to buy at the lower quartile — the widest in the housing market area

18.1%Of households sitting inside that gap: able to meet a market rent, unable to buy

1Genuinely new wholly affordable consent in ten years — and the Council promoted it itself

2.5%Of assessed need represented by every wholly affordable consent granted over the decade

+337%Reported gross homelessness expenditure across five years, the steepest rise in the county

64.4%Of the District's temporary accommodation is nightly paid and privately managed — the most expensive and least secure provision — against 37.9% for England

What this is not Assessed need is not a housing requirement, and no figure here is offered as one. The housing register indicates need rather than measuring it, and is not presented as an assessment. Where a needs assessment was made on a superseded definition it is treated as a minimum, not as a comparator. No causal claim is made from the homelessness figures: they evidence the cost, not the cause.

The record

What the Inspectorate has already recorded.

3.1 years — the position recorded in every decision since April 2026, from 3.55 a year earlier. Seventeen decisions in the corpus record the position.

Nothing in this part is our figure. Each entry is what the decision letter records, and the column that matters is how the figure reached the Inspector: nine of the seventeen carry it by the Council's own hand — accepted, confirmed, agreed between the parties, or recorded on its own decision notice. The position turned between February 2023 and February 2025, and it turned on the Council's own concession.

9 of 17Decisions in which the figure reached the Inspector by the Council's own hand; in only two did the Council put five years and go uncontradicted

12Decisions in which the tilted balance was engaged on the shortfall

2 of 5Most recent decisions allowed. The three dismissed failed on biodiversity net gain, neighbourhood plan conflict and form of development — not one on supply

6Decisions recording the Council failing in its statutory self-build and custom housebuilding duty, in terms the Council accepted

The full analysis

You have read the summary. The evaluation is the document.

Everything above is stated without its working. The full evaluation carries the arithmetic behind every figure, the schedule each was drawn from, and the notes recording what was done to it and what was deliberately left alone.

It is sent on request, to named recipients. We ask who you are because the document cites live positions that move, and we would rather be able to tell you when one has.

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35pages, covering all four questions and the Inspectorate's record in full
29sections across six parts, twenty-eight carrying a table and notes
28measures, with the benchmark and basis for each
44applications on the register since January 2024, read whole and run through the consenting chain, every date the register's own
3schedules of sources — authority documents, national policy and data, and conventions
0figures carried from an unpublished source

How it was built

One baseline. Nothing blended.

Every figure of supply comes from a single schedule — the Council's own deliverable-sites appendix of 12 June 2026 — and nothing is taken from an earlier statement to improve the picture. Application status is the Council's own register, extracted whole on 4 September 2026 and run to a base date of 13 October 2026, the Planning Committee next following.

Published figures are recorded as published, including where they do not reconcile. Where a point tells against the client it is volunteered rather than waited for, and identified as such where it arises. Thirty-five pages, twenty-nine sections, three schedules of sources, and no figure carried from an unpublished one.

What extends

The method is national.

Nothing in the four questions is particular to Harborough. Every measure runs on evidence each local planning authority in England already publishes: a deliverable-supply schedule, a monitoring report, a needs assessment, a site availability assessment, and a planning register.

The same twenty-eight measures, in the same order, have been run for Blaby District — where the first question answers the other way. Coverage is not the constraint: any authority in England can be evaluated to this depth. What varies is how much of the evidence base it has published, and that is established before anything is quoted.

Commission this for your authority.

An initial report sets out all twenty-eight measures. It is then kept current — re-cut quarterly, or on request whenever a position moves. Pricing turns on how much of the evidence base the authority has published, so tell us the authority and we will quote.