Stockport, Lancaster, Chorley fail Housing Delivery Test
The three North West local authorities will now have to treat residential planning applications with a presumption in favour of approval, formulate an action plan to stimulate residential delivery, and add a 20% buffer to their housing land supply.
Regarding the presumption in favour of approval, this will apply to all housing applications that comply with an up-to-date development plan, are situated on unprotected sites, and where the downsides of development do not significantly outweigh the benefits.
The news comes from the Housing Delivery Test results, which were published by government on Monday. HDT measures the number of homes needed compared to those that were built. The latest rendition looks at the years between 2022 and 2025.
Of the three councils, Stockport was the furthest behind in meeting housing demand, with only 43% of the homes needed actually delivered. This equated to 1,457 homes being built against the need of 3,408.
There were supposed to be more than a thousand homes built during each year of the HDT’s timeframe in the borough. Stockport Council came nowhere close to meeting this figure, with the best performing year (2023-2024) seeing 621 homes built.
The council is working to address this and is at work developing a local plan
A Stockport Council spokesperson said: “Working towards the government’s end-of-year deadline, we remain focused on delivering a local plan that supports sustainable growth, new homes, jobs, and infrastructure across the borough.”
Lancaster City Council fared slightly better, with 48% of the homes needed delivered. The housing need over the three years was 1,271 for the area, roughly 400 a year. However, only half of those – 612 – were actually built.
The city council’s cabinet member for planning, Cllr Sue Tyldsley, said that these latest HDT results were the first time Lancaster had fallen below 100%. She added that the score was not a surprise given challenges around land availability and infrastructure capacity.
“The application of nationally set housing targets that fail to reflect local circumstances means that there is a greater risk of housing being delivered in the wrong locations and without the necessary infrastructure to support it,” she said.
“However, the council is already responding positively to the need to build more houses. It has commenced work on a new local plan which is expected to identify housing land allocations. In addition, at each of the previous four Planning Regulatory Committee meetings, the committee has approved applications for new house building across the district,” she added.
“The council will continue to work with developers, landowners and our local communities to aim to secure the best and most appropriate housing outcomes for our district”.
Chorley Council met 63% of its housing demand, with 986 of the homes needed in the area being delivered against the 1,553-home target.
While the HDT figures are newly reported, all three councils have had a tilted balance towards residential development in place already due to not having a five-year housing land supply. Stockport Council has a 1.8-year housing land supply, Lancaster City Council’s is 2.8 years, and Chorley Council’s is 3.4 years.
Manchester City Council and Trafford Council were also found to be lacking when it comes to housing delivery, with Manchester meeting 75% of its housing need and Trafford 83%.
This equated to 7,972 homes being built in Manchester rather than 10,599 identified as needed and 2,046 homes in Trafford rather than the needed 2,451.
Accordingly, these two councils will need to create an action plan to find ways to increase residential development and will need to 20% buffer to their housing land supply sites.
A spokesperson for Trafford Council said: “The 20% buffer and action plan are not new requirements for the Council. We have made great improvements in our HDT, going from 47% in 2018 to our current total of 83%. That has been down to our positive action, including bringing our own land forward for development.
“We expect our HDT figure to further increase over the next 18 months as the large number of developments currently under construction are completed. We also have further major schemes in the pipeline.”
Liverpool City Council and Bolton Council both delivered 87% of their housing need. In this case of Liverpool, this meant 4,528 homes were built rather than the full 5,217 identified as needed. In Bolton, this was 2,023 homes being constructed against the need of 2,321.
These two councils will need to come up with an action plan.
The remaining councils in the North West passed HDT, meaning they met more than 96% of their housing need during the 2022-2025 timespan.
All councils named in this story were approached for comment.
But it’s not just numbers of homes delivered but the quality of design and materials used,plus the layout of homes and their suitability to a particular environment. Churning out numbers just for the sake of it is not good enough, nor is it satisfactory for locals to be asking for certain styles in an inappropriate location.
Liverpool says it prides itself on heritage, and architecture but when they ask people’s views they ask for semis with gardens in the middle of the city and that’s not right, therefore the local authority should be insisting on terraced townhouses more suited to the inner city townscape.
By Anonymous
So, in other words, and despite what Burnham says, the places in question are in fact now forced to green-light as many HMOs as his government can “stimulate demand” for.
By John
It doesn’t help when the government doubles the housing supply target for Stockport, so any local plan would’ve become obsolete straight away. This seems to give developers carte blanche to build houses on green belt – re-designated ‘grey belt’ without any thought to the pressure it brings onto existing infrastructure/health facilities etc. The improved infrastructure and health facilities etc. should be in place before the housing is built and not an afterthought.
By Anonymous
So basically all the builders have it handed to them on a plate .
By Anonymous
Chorley about to go into a new unitary authority with South Ribble and West Lancashire of course.
By Michael Turner
Often the infrastructure doesn’t match the desire to build or the environment isn’t suitable i.e a village road with poor facility for development or the land is a swamp and just isn’t suitable
Shoehorning every town village into one size fits all targets isn’t feasible
By Anonymous
Great, we’re about to see some terrible developments going up in that case.
By Anonymous
@ August 17, 2026 at 5:03 pm
By Anonymous
Terraced townhouses is a perfect compromise for cities. Add gardens to these at the back and you are on to a winner. Gentle density they call it. The courtyard block and the mansion block are other building types that should be pursued more.
By Rye
@Rye (August 18, 2026 at 9:14 am). Absolutely – its just a shame that the volume housebuilders, generally speaking, have no interest whatsoever in building such homes.
By Anonymous
The housing delivery test is, frankly, nonsense. Council’s are already required to approve, without delay, applications for housing (and other development) which accords with up-to-date local plan policies. If they don’t have up-to-date local plan policies relevant to the application they are essentially required to approve, without delay, so long as national policy requirements are met.
And the larger, 20%, buffer is nonsense. In the main these locations cannot meet their housing target because they don’t have enough suitable land – requiring them to identify 20% more suitable land isn’t going to miraculously result in such land suddenly existing that didn’t previously.
And an action plan? What measures are these councils not already doing, after 15 years of governments imposing (sometimes not much better than random) numbers from upon high with sanctions of varying difficulty for not meeting them?
And the biggy – after 50 years of relying on the private sector to deliver housing (and actively stopping the public sector from doing so), we have a test that imposes sanctions on the public sector because the private sector isn’t adequately doing the thing it has never adequately done.
This country needs a fundamental rethink of how it meets housing needs.
By Lee Nicholas
I don’t know about Chorley and Lancaster but Stockport have only got themselves to blame. Stockport left the Greater Manchester planning framework without an alternative plan and then failed to develop a local plan. The members have mismanaged the planning process for political gain leaving the officers in an impossible position. The people of Stockport have been badly let down.
By Anonymous
Planned developments on green belt are absolutely not sustainable. Where do you start! Green belt implies out of urban areas so where does the infrastructure come from for a start. People need cars to visit doctors, schools, shops etc and will literally have to travel on Lane’s to reach said urbanisation. No bus routes provided either! Changing climate and concreting fields leads to flooding on local lanes and roads meaning travel impossible in these areas!! We live close to A555 which is closed at some point every winter it’s been in existence for goodness sake!! Doesn’t anybody use their brains anymore and think these things through? There are so so many derelict and unused sites in our towns and cities to be used first and that would negate the need for using green belt. But of course, developers don’t want to do that as they can’t make as much profit from redeveloping brown field sites. Not such high council tax payments either for local councils. That is the biggest scandal in all of this.
By Wendy Evans
Race to the bottom.
By Anonymous
What a load of Tosh .
Chorleys infrastructure cannot cope already with the amount of new builds over the last 10 years .
Roads are a disgrace , Hospital facilities are disgraceful etc. need I go on !!!!!!!!
By Chorley Resident
So it becomes open season for housebuilders. LPAs and the residents are being punished by the inability or unwillingness of developers to build at the required rate due to capacity issues or for land banking purposes to drive prices up. What should count is the number of consented units not built ones.
By In The Trenches
Lee Nicholas: absolutely spot on. Required reading for the public and politicians alike.
By Bullseye
10:15 am By Wendy Evans doesn’t seem to acknowledge that respecting Stockport and Cheshire East greenbelt means greenfield housing gets displaced outside greenbelt to places like Middlewich, Sandbach and Crewe. I’m mystified why a field outside Sandbach is intrinsically more in need of protection, but I do know is you are displacing people who are still going to seek employment in Manchester to somewhere much more car dependent. If housing was added to Stockport it has much more chance of being able to access the Bee Network, than the threadbare system that operates in Cheshire. You might take the point of view that you should build in neither location, and the reality of that is these higher income people looking for family housing don’t go away, if you don’t build them new houses they simply bid up the price of existing housing and squeeze lower income groups and gentrify areas, and frankly brownfield sites don’t work for this segment. Stockport struggles with the idea that it can regenerate its brownfield core, bringing in a younger spill-over demographic from Manchester into apartment living that revives a town centre, see an office district get built next to the train station, have a fast growing airport nearby, and somehow that doesn’t turn into increased demand either today or a few years out from here to live in the Stockport suburbs.
By Rich X
The clue to the madness here is the Manchester assessment. If one of the most pro-active and positive planning authorities is on the cusp of failure what should that tell the Government – it is the viability challenges that are stalling development.
By Anonymous
Why are there so many empty houses but we still need new builds which aren’t selling as quick as construction companies want them to?
By Andrew Jenkinson
In Stockport, there seems to be a presumption that lovely green spaces such as Mirlees Fields, can be turned over to developers to build expensive houses on a prime green site. Even when the council tries to refuse planning and thousands of locals object, the government AKA civil servants, overturn the decision. Locals are left to find funds to run court cases which the large developers have no problem with. This is not a level playing field.
In the meantime, if land is short, we should be building at least maisonettes providing 2 properties on one plot
By Anon
Fifty years ago we were in Exactly the same position.they threw up many poor designed houses but because of the shortage , the prices kept going up and in five years they could triple in price , good for those who got in on time but a struggle for everyone else
It’s all happening again i. Five years time
By Anonymous
@ Michael Turner you’re correct, and what a farce this new South Lancashire proposal is. Ormskirk/Aughton now being lumped into some artificial unity authority with two towns that are 15-22 miles away, with next to no transport links and no shared identity. My concern is they’re going to class an area like Ormskirk as being part of a community that simply doesn’t reflect the area, it doesn’t operate as a Lancashire town anymore. I don’t want my council tax going towards areas where I do not work, socialise or benefit from. I want my council tax going to where I do my day to day life and feel a part of, which is Merseyside and the Liverpool City Region.
By Anon