SHLAA - Allerdale Borough Council

A lle rda leLocal PlanEvidence Base• Development would have a harmful impactupon a Historic Asset (e.g. listed building,Scheduled Ancient Monument, sensitivearchaeological area)• Development would have harmfullandscape impact• Topography rendered the site unsuitablefor developmentAssessing site availabilityThe NPPF states that one of the key tests todetermine whether a site can be considered tobe deliverable or developable is whether it isavailable for development. Those sites fulfillingthe first sieve criteria were subject to anavailability assessment to determine whetherthe owner of a site was willing to allow it to bedeveloped as housing in the future.It was assumed that those sites that had beensubmitted to the Council by landowners andagents acting on their behalf has indicated theirwillingness to release the land for housing.Therefore these sites were deemed to haveautomatically fulfilled this test.For those sites that identified by the Council,ownership details were obtained from the LandRegistry. The owners were then contacted tosee whether they would consider releasing theland for housing.Sites were considered unavailable andtherefore discounted at this stage, if:• The Land Registry was unable to provideownership data• No response from the owner was receivedfollowing an approach from the Council.• Following an approach from the councilthe owner indicated that they did not wantto develop the siteAssessing site achievabilityThose sites deemed to be available were thenassessed in terms of their achievability. Thiswas essentially an assessment as to theeconomic viability of the site and the whetherthe site would yield a enough profit to makedevelopment a realistic proposition.A strategic viability model was used for thisexercise. Sites were classified in terms of:• Size: large, medium or small,• Type: brownfield or greenfield• Market value: high, medium or low (based5 SHLAA: Main Report