To address that deficit - and to speed up the local plan process - the government introduced the "standard method" for calculating house targets in 2019. Instead of councils having to come up with their own formula to determine housing need (which was prone to manipulation both up and down), the government set out exactly how it should be done. That was sound reasoning, except that the method used still didn't provide a national target of 300,000 homes.
A consultation on yet another change to the formula was carried out over the summer. While it had the benefit of finally producing an England-wide target of more than 300,000 homes, it has quickly become mired in political infighting as backbench Conservative MPs realised the impact it would have on their own constituencies, dubbing it "the mutant algorithm."
In his latest piece for Housebuilder magazine Paul Smith, our managing director, explains how we've arrived at this point and what the future may hold.
