ABSTRACT
Soon after coming to office in 1997, the Labour government announced its intention of moving away from the ‘predict and provide’ approach to housing numbers to one based on ‘plan, monitor and manage’. This shift represented an attempt to take some of the rigidity out of the ‘predict and provide’ system, giving regional plans greater scope to take account of factors other than the household projections, such as inter-regional migration (Gobbett and Palmer 2002). The new approach was incorporated into national planning guidance in PPG3, where it was suggested that
In planning the provision of new housing, factors to be taken into account should include the Government’s latest published household projections, the needs of the regional economy, the capacity of urban areas to accommodate more housing, the environmental implications, and the capacity of the existing or planned infrastructure.
